Abram Anders won the Association of Business Communication’s “2022 Outstanding Article in the International Journal of Business Communication” award for his “Human-Centered Leadership Development: A Communication-Based Approach for Promoting Authentic and Transformational Leadership” article. This award recognizes an article that contributes significantly to scholarship, research, and/or pedagogy and demonstrates originality of thought and careful investigation.
In his article, Dr. Anders makes for a human-centered approach to helping people develop leadership skills. He argues that people who participate in leadership training should have opportunities to learn that help them engage their personal and professional social networks. Through this approach, participants can develop leadership communication skills, better understand situated problems, and develop solutions that are responsive to stakeholder needs. To support his theoretical model, Anders presents an applied design for leadership training that integrates both evidence-based communication exercises and diverse human perspectives into the process. Ultimately, he argues that a human-centered approach is both more effective and more ethical, because it helps leaders learn to be more empathetic and accountable to their stakeholders as they develop their skills.