This research study explored the relationship between a student's college-going generational status, involvement in leadership development experiences, and leadership self-efficacy at four-year, public rural-located institutions across the United States using data from the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership collected in the spring of 2021. Throughout the study, attention was paid to leadership self-efficacy as an input characteristic and an outcome of the collegiate environment. A reciprocal relationship was found between leadership self-efficacy and involvement in leadership development programs for first-generation college students, with the retrospective assessment of pre-college leadership self-efficacy correlated to leadership involvement and leadership involvement correlated to in-college leadership self-efficacy. However, first-generation status was not a predictor of pre-college leadership self-efficacy or in-college leadership self-efficacy when other variables were controlled. Implications of this study include consideration of how first-generation identity impacts a student's leadership self-efficacy and involvement in leadership development experiences. Higher education institutions should attend to first-generation status, as they are a large subset of students. Additionally, leadership educators and researchers should advance a broader definition of leadership, allowing many experiences to be reflected upon as contributing to leadership learning. This study contributes to leadership scholarship in its focus on the social identity of first-generation status' relationship to leadership self-efficacy and involvement in leadership experiences at public rural institutions, revealing opportunities for future research further exploring how first-generation students become involved in leadership development experiences and develop their leadership self-efficacy. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]