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Technological advances, globalization, network complexity, and social complexity complicate almost every aspect of our organizations and environments. Leadership educators are challenged with developing leaders who can sense environmental cues, adapt to rapidly changing contexts, and thrive in uncertainty while adhering to their values systems. In a complex leadership context, inadequate leader responses can result in devastating organizational impacts akin to the butterfly effect from chaos theory. This paper advances a simple model for leadership education based on a program we designed to develop leaders who understand the nature of complex systems, reliably use their ethical value systems, are emotionally intelligent and resilient, and can adapt to emergent situations.

While the career literature does acknowledge that personal strengths may function as protective factors that increase the likelihood of positive career outcomes, the topic of strengths has predominantly been studied in the context of career guidance for adolescents and young adults. However, the evolution of strengths persists throughout the entire career and individuals’ awareness and inclination to leverage their strengths change when aging. This paper aims to examine strengths over the (career) lifespan.

For this purpose, a conceptual analysis was made of the interplay between age and strengths application within the work environment, based on a narrative review of both empirical and conceptual literature on strengths and lifespan (career) development.

Based on lifespan development theory and results from studies that investigate the relationship between age and strengths, it can be expected that the prominence, awareness and use of strengths, as well as the active engagement in strengths development increase with age. Also, based on the corresponsive principle it is proposed that strengths prominence is reciprocally related to the awareness, use and development of strengths. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Whereas positive psychology has contributed to research on career development by its focus on healthy functioning, human potential and well-being the implications from theorizing and research on strengths for the career-lifespan are still relatively unclear. This paper develops testable propositions regarding the relationship between age and strengths and discusses implications for the types of organizational support for strengths that workers of different ages might need.