It's not just who I am: exploring EMBA students' leadership sensemaking, future possible selves and how to be in the world

Purpose Today's leaders face wide-ranging volatile and uncertain challenges. Helping leaders maintain a human focus in the face of such challenges requires insight into leader development processes. We shed light on those processes, specifically by comparing how Executive MBA (EMBA) students at the start of their MBA make sense of their current leadership and their future possible selves. Design/methodology/approach We conducted semi-structured interviews with EMBA students in the opening weeks of their 2-year program. Findings We demonstrate how EMBA students make sense of their current leadership and future possible selves on three dimensions of qualification, socialization and subjectification; all dimensions are central to participants' leader development. We illuminate shifts in sensemaking processes at the dimensions' intersections, showing how participants make sense of their current leadership in terms of leader identity, and of future possible selves in terms of how they are in the world (subjectification). We suggest that subjectification plays a guiding role in identity processes early in the EMBA, and that sensemaking processes direct action in the absence of a clear future possible self. Originality/value This study underlines the importance of an individual leader development approach in the design and running of EMBA programs, providing space and time such that students' current and prospective sensemaking on the three dimensions is supported. We suggest that this both prepares students for their future leadership challenges and promotes human-focused leadership.