Making Leadership Development Developmental (original) (raw)
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1 Making Leadership Development Developmental
2016
Abstract: For leadership development to be effective, it must also address the development of structures of consciousness. Practices aimed at the transformation of consciousness and used in a leadership course are described. Research using Q-methodology is presented. Preliminary interpretation of research results indicates one factor as having the most capacity in areas indicated by the literature as important. It also points to the effectiveness of the course processes of dialogue and reflection in developing consciousness.
Leadership Approach in Relation to Level of Consciousness: A Correlational Analysis
MIER Journal of Educational Studies, Trends and Practices, 2016
The present empirical study was designed to explore the relationship between the leadership approach of teacher trainees and their level of consciousness. A descriptive survey was conducted on 100 teacher trainees (both male & female in the ratio of 1:1). The level of consciousness of teacher trainees was assessed using Consciousness Quotient Inventory (CQ-i) by Brazdau (2011). To assess the leadership approach Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-6S) by Bass and Avolio (1992) was used. The relationship between scores on seven leadership factors (comprising three leadership approaches) and the level of consciousness was studied using Pearson's product moment correlation. Results indicate a significant positive correlation to a varying degree between consciousness and three leadership approaches .
I introduce an approach to leadership development based on self-understanding and self-transformation. The new approach uses structured, logically consistent models of a person"s modes of being as tools which the trainee uses to understand his or her own behaviours-including mental behaviours, aka "thoughts"-and to effect purposive and lasting changes in these behaviours, aka "transformations". I guide the reader through several detailed case studies of transformation-oriented interventions that are guided by precise, specific and detailed models of the behavioural pattern that a trainee is attempting to modify and highlight the relevance of this approach for the broader field of leadership development.
2013
Mindfulness practice and a particular form of embodied learning (the Feldenkrais Method) can be sources for new perspectives on leadership development. These two areas offer deep ways to connect to the ground, both physically and in terms of the fundamental ground of being—something that leaders rarely receive in today’s forms of management education. This chapter provides an introduction to both the Feldenkrais Method and mindfulness as methods relevant to leadership education, based in the author’s experience as a teacher of Feldenkrais and years of study and practice of mindfulness.
The Phenomenology of Leadership
Teaching people about leadership is different from creating leaders. Teaching leadership uses a third-person approach to impart someone else's knowledge, which grants learners limited direct access to the being and actions of effective leaders. In contrast, creating leaders entails a first-person phenomenological methodology, which provides direct access to what it means to be a leader and what it means to exercise good leadership in real time, with real results. The distinc-tiveness of the first-person " as-lived/lived-through " approach lies in its capacity to disclose the hidden contexts that shape the ways of being, thinking, and acting that are the source of the lead-er's performance. When these contexts become unveiled, it allows for the creation of new contexts that give leaders more space and more degrees of freedom to lead effectively as their natural self-expression. A phenomenological inquiry into leadership does not study the attributes of leaders, but rather the fundamental structures of human " being " that make it possible to be a leader in the first place. Because the phenomenological " facts " of lived experience reside in language, creating for oneself what it is to be a leader entails mastering a special language (that includes terms like intentionality; thrownness; being-in-the-world; clearing-for-action; absorbed coping; hermeneutic; and, breakdown) from which leaders can orient their being, thinking, and actions. Learning to be a leader is not first and foremost about the acquisition of knowledge or certain personal attributes. Rather, only when leadership becomes an as-lived/lived-through experience does it grant access to its actual nature and essence.
Promoting post-conventional consciousness in leaders: Australian community leadership programs
This study explored the impact on consciousness development of participating in either standard or enhanced community leadership programs (CLPs) in Australia. Aligned with Manners' and Durkin's (2000) conceptual framework, CLPs offer experiences that are interpersonal, emotionally engaging, personally salient and structurally disequilibriating for later conventional consciousness stages. Enhanced CLPs include additional psychosocial challenges. Participants were 335 adults who took part in one of 4 standard CLPs, 7 enhanced CLPs and 2 (control) management programs. Modal program length was 10 months. Standard and enhanced CLPs were successful in facilitating consciousness development (as measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test—WUSCT) within the conventional stages. However, enhanced CLPs were significantly more successful in triggering post-conventional development, and specifically in those participants who had a preference for Sensing (as measured by the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator—MBTI). Enhanced CLPs could provide a model for other development programs aimed at promoting post-conventional consciousness. Introduction Humanity clearly needs to come to terms with the complexity and urgency of our adaptive global and local challenges. These challenges involve multiple systems and threats in which the solution to one part of the problem may unintentionally exacerbate another (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009). Adaptive issues cannot be solved with technical expertise—no matter how 'state-of-the-art'. Nor can they be solved with charismatic or single minded leadership—no matter how alluring these qualities may seem in times of uncertainty. As Kegan (1994) noted " The expectations upon us [in modern life]…demand something more than mere behaviour, the acquisition of specific skills, or the mastery of particular knowledge. They make demands on our minds, on how we know, on the complexity of our consciousness " (p. 5). We are, as he asserted, 'in over our heads' with the kinds of adaptive challenges we are facing today; our 'conventional' consciousness is not geared to respond effectively. Once the purview of education and counselling programs, adult constructive development theory and research has recently begun to impact the field of management and leadership (Laske, 2003; McCauley, Drath, Palus, O'Connor, & Baker, 2006). Constructive developmental theory focusses on how individuals construct their understanding of self (consciousness)—the principles by which they make meaning. As meaning-making capacity expands, so does the capacity to cope with complexity and ambiguity, to self-reflect, to collaborate more effectively with diverse others, view problems holistically and engage with them courageously and creatively (Cook-Greuter, 1999, 2004). Increasingly, these capacities are seen as the drivers of success in leadership (Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, 2013).
2020
How can we do leadership better, for any place, for whatever we need leadership to do there? In this thesis I propose that the ongoing ability to perceive, reflex on, choose and act to get safe-enough, problematized-enough to make confident-enough decisions on the leadership practice needed is a key practice to practise. This is doing containment. Practising involves paying critical attention to place, practices, power, pace, position, performance, processes, purpose for our people (the Ps). It involves getting comfortable-enough sitting into discomfort. Practise, as explored in the Development section, necessitates seeking guides, resources, models and other 'stuff' and making critical agentic choices to purpose this 'for' doing development (of self, of others). Enough is key to this. I draw on voices from multiple academic fields and also from other philosophical, cultural, practice-based ways of knowing, being and becoming, particularly the work of Nagarjuna. Thes...