Leadership: influencing what matters

A very quick post to flag up the fact that I have an article up on the HR Magazine website on leadership as being about influencing the things that matter.

It's a piece which tries to define leadership as a highly political construct and to draw on some basic ideas from psychoanalytic theory to illustrate this - all in accessible language. The argument is essentially that a big part of leadership is about generating debate and surfacing what people stand for - but that this is hard work.

You can access the article here:
http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/features/1144167/leadership-influencing-matters

Oh and I have no idea why they chose a picture of a shadowy man in a doorway ... I am rather pleased with this image actually, just not quite sure how it is related to influencing!
- Owain

Join in! A week of (free) webinars on leadership

I wanted to flag up a series of really interesting (and free!) webinars taking place this week on leadership from The Open University. These webinars will be a chance for you to engage with some leading academics and practitioners, such as Jean Hartley, Caroline Ramsey, Ben Hardy and Murray Eldridge. 

Jean rose to prominence within the academic world as the authority on political leadership but holds broader expertise in public leadership. She will talk about political astuteness in leadership. I have long admired Caroline Ramsey as a critical scholar and provocative thinker. Caroline is currently exploring leadership through conversation. Her ideas in this area are quite original but also very relevant to practitioners. Murray Eldridge holds vast experience in business, particularly in oil, gas and telecoms. He will be talking about resilience and learning from set-backs (not that any of us have ever done anything other than succeed in all we do, perish the thought!). Ben Hardy opens the week of webinars with a session later today on the panoply of leadership theory and writing, which he views as a positive thing. Ben is an engaging writer, speaker and teacher, so no doubt he has some mischievousness in store!

On Wednesday I will be hosting a session with Rob Paton on leadership as influencing the things that matter. Rob is an academic with a significant track record of voluntary sector scholarship. His current focus is on a collaborative project with the Ghana Ministry of Education on the introduction of Open Educational Resources. And Owain is ... Well you probably know me well enough. In our webinar we will be talking about leadership as only really being of value if it addresses things that matter to people. Sounds a tad obvious and banal? Well, once you start digging you get to the interesting stuff. How do we decide what's important? Who decides what's important? Who does the leading and why? How can more people learn to lead and follow robustly? So we will be tackling power, authority, the political, the inspirational and a healthy dose of the psychoanalytic along the way.

You can join in by following the link below, which will also link you through to the other webinars. Registration is easy and there are no gimmicks. This is a free series of events as part of Learning at Work Week. That said, if any of you come away from the sessions thinking that the OU is a wonderful institution and raring to sign up to one of our degrees, you really should not fight the urge.

http://www.open.ac.uk/business-school/alumni/news-and-events/forthcoming-events/webinar-leadership-%E2%80%93-influencing-things-matter%E2%80%99

I'll see you all online.

- Owain

Book recommendation: Steve Kempster, How Managers have Learnt to Lead

I’m writing fresh from a really successful research fair I helped organise at the Open University for our policing research and education consortium. I will fill you in on some of the details further down the track. Suffice to say I will be thinking a lot about structures, accountabilities and ethics in relation to leadership over the coming months.

For now, I wanted to share a book recommendation with you.

I’m often asked by students and practitioners who want to start thinking about leadership development design: where to start? Excellent question!

I can safely say that the vast majority of books out there on both leadership and leadership development are total nonsense. Poorly thought out material that simply latches the word ‘leadership’ to whatever half-conceived, barely theoretical trendy tag is available. Throw in an [insert random number]-step guide and some unscrutinised experience in consulting and you have yourself a book. For added spice, mask a lack of knowledge of education, development or research with flowery, metaphysical, uncritical, poetic celebrations of the figure of the individual leader.

Result? A mountain of fluff which crowds the field, diverting attention from serious, empirically-grounded work. Superficiality is easier to find and promises a short-cut to what is a tough process in need of careful planning and shepherding.

What leadership development really lacks is a theoretically rich, empirically sound, yet still broad introduction to the field as a whole. More to the point, what the field really misses is a book which does all of the above, yet from a perspective which both adopts a critical, inquisitive stance but also respects the complexity and contested nature of our contemporary organisations.

Step forward Steve Kempster’s How Managers have Learnt to Lead, which stands as a tall poppy in a field of sludge. I have asked myself whether I turn to Steve’s book so much because the competition is so poor or because it is actually a really valuable book for designers, deliverers and scholars of leadership development. There is no getting away from the fact that the competition is indeed poor. Nevertheless, I think that even if the book was up against robust competition it would merit a leading place on the go-to section of your bookshelf. Why?

Firstly and most importantly, the book links leadership development theory with learning theory. Sounds like a simple enough step but actually not one I have come across elsewhere. The author evaluates the relevance of particular learning theories according to a reading of leadership as systemic, process-driven, while of course influenced by individuals as drivers. Taking this step means that right from the start, leadership development is considered alongside robust and established learning theories, such as situated learning, communities of practice etc.

Second, the book is so well researched, based on the author’s PhD research and subsequent work as an academic with a special interest in development practice.

Third, the stories of development change offered by the author are interesting and relatable to one’s own practice and experience.

Finally, Steve Kempster carries with him the reputation of being one of the leading university teachers in the field of management and leadership, so he speaks from a position of credibility.

I have found myself recommending the book to two particular groups of people. First, students starting out on research in the area of leadership development, either at Master’s or PhD level. Second, to managers or learning and development professionals who want a more rigorous basis for their design work.

Naysayers might point to the fact that the author emphasises experiential learning models at the expense of alternatives but it really is quite difficult to think of an effective leadership development intervention which would not place experience and practice at its heart. Leadership is something brought to life through practice and cannot easily be contained within the four walls of a classroom.

As a footnote, I will add that there is a book in the offing courtesy of the New Zealand Leadership Institute, based at the University of Auckland, spearheaded by Fiona Kennedy, which promises to be essential reading. But that is probably a year or so further down the line.

For now, you can access Steve Kempster’s book via Amazon. It has not received a paperback release yet and the price of the hardback tends to fluctuate quite a lot. But if all else fails, perhaps you can persuade your organisation or library to shell out on a copy.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Managers-have-Learnt-Lead/dp/0230220959/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394030815&sr=8-1&keywords=steve+kempster#_

- Owain

Ethics and leadership development in the Zero Dark

First thing first. Happy new year everyone. I hope you had a restful Christmas break and a lively and fulfilling new year. Everyone I work with seemed to have worked harder than ever over the Christmas break and I have been no exception. I am now project managing a large and ambitious public sector collaboration for The Open University. There will be plenty of material here for future posts but for now I apologise if postings are more fractured than late last year.

I have been thinking a lot about ethics in leadership over the past months. This thinking has taken me through most of the classic texts – Aristotle, Machiavelli, Kant, Locke, Bentham etc. I will have a little more to say on Kant especially in the months to come. What I have quickly realised is that there is no sense adopting one theoretical framework as some kind of definitive guide. They are all ultimately different ways of thinking about problems, a means of sensemaking.

Perhaps the most fundamental question to ask when thinking about ethics in leadership development is whether we need to include such discussions in our development activity at all. Yet perhaps leadership itself becomes meaningless if stripped of its purpose. If we strip reflection on purpose out of leadership all we are left with is a series of cold, detached processes. And doing good with leadership is surely as important as doing efficiency.

But what is doing good? And perhaps if this discussion is as straightforward as distinguishing between good and bad, then there isn’t such a big problem after all. Of course now we immediately enter into the terrain of subjectivity – one person’s good is another’s bad etc – but I won’t bore you with repetitive debates on moral relativism here.

Instead what I am going to do is report a conversation I had recently with Keith Grint and have been following up with numerous chats with The OU's very own ethics sage, Anja Schaefer. Then I am going to talk to you about how a recent film I saw – Zero Dark Thirty – seems to amplify some of the main points I drew from this conversation.

Keith Grint put it to me that a hallmark of an ethical decision was not distinguishing between right and wrong at all. That is not an ethical dilemma because we can already distinguish to a large degree what is right and what is wrong. This choice is one between courage and cowardice. We know what the right course of action is but we fear too much for our own welfare.

An ethical dilemma is choosing between wrong and wrong. In other words, each decision seems just as wrong – but in a different way. One of the examples Keith cites in his lectures and development work is that of the Jewish administrators of the Polish ghettos during WWII, placed in a position about whether to sacrifice some of their number (the elderly, sick, children) in order to save the majority. Of course with hindsight it is easy to look back on such situations as not really ethical dilemmas at all – Nazism was one devil one really could make no pact with at all etc. But we say that now, with all the information at our fingertips and the horrors seared into our collective psyche. At the time things would have appeared quite differently.

The first lesson then – if we’re talking about leadership of ethics – things are never straightforward. So let’s turn to Zero Dark Thirty. For those of you who might not be aware of the film, I won’t give away the plot – you know a lot of it already, or at least the ending. It is the back-room story of those in the CIA tracking Osama Bin Laden. It really is a wonderful character portrayal of the kinds of obsessive, intelligent, detail-hungry people who populate intelligence services. But that’s not the film’s genius.

That genius lies in its vivid portrayal of ethical ambiguity. In fact its hallmark is that it steadfastly refuses to take sides. Perhaps that is why it seems to have upset people of all political persuasions. The film begins with visceral clips of people trapped inside the World Trade Center, some aware of their imminent deaths. We hear these voices in darkness. So immediately any idea that this is going to be a film taking ideological pot-shots at Bush et al is cast aside. We are then introduced to a torture scene – CIA on terror suspect. And so similar scenes are enacted for the majority of the film – at least until the point at which Obama takes over. For information I debated about whether to put ‘torture’ in inverted commas because as we know there is a lot of disagreement around the definition and specifics of torture. The fact I ultimately chose not to do the academic ‘xxx’-thing I think conveys my opinion on this debate.

Ethical dilemmas in the Zero Dark

Kathryn Bigelow, the director, neither exercises her narrative power to express these actions as right or wrong. The scenes are violent but perhaps less violent than the original terrorist act or the subsequent suicide bombings. We are granted some views of the chaos of Afghanistan many have argued was perpetuated by the Bush administration. But the ambiguity and difficulty of making leadership decisions in such situations is also brought to the fore. The Obama administration is portrayed as cautious but hardly naive. If something had to be done then what and how? There are no easy answers. Just ethical dilemmas – wrong and more wrong, the problem being that we don’t really know what the ‘more wrong’ is until later. And often not even in hindsight to these matters become much clearer.

So now we get to the meat of the problem for developing leadership. Leadership development comes into the equation because it is one way in which participants can hone their sensemaking. It is one way in which they can develop – with their teams – a means of holding each other to account, of questioning held moral assumptions, blind spots etc.

I know that can sound a little vague and postmodern. And for the record I accept bits of the postmodern ethics argument while others are a little relativist for my liking. Here is just one of those shortcomings. To some extent developing an ethical sensemaking framework could lead, perversely, to a false sense of security, that the veracity of following a process of sensemaking defends us against ethical wrongdoing.

There is a role for some generalist ethical framework in all of this, and I’ll have more to say on this in the future. But the bulk of the ethical task is surely to help participants find their way – together, collaboratively – in those times of Zero Hour Darkness.

In the meantime, I would love to hear what you think of all of this. Post a comment, get in touch.

- Owain

Embracing the radical? Learning (or not) from Nelson Mandela

I confess that I have spent the past couple of weeks dithering, in the knowledge that really it would be a little strange if a blog aimed at promoting public leadership development ignored the death of the pre-eminent public leader of our times.

What can we learn from the life and struggles of Mandela? How can Mandela, even after death, inform our leadership practices?

The answer is that, honestly, I am uncertain. I feel conflicted about the global response to Mandela's passing. I feel that his life and death - and the public response to both - do offer us some important lessons in leadership. But they are uncomfortable lessons.

On the one hand of course Mandela was the most impressive leader of his times. Not simply in terms of his personal attributes, although of course he was charismatic, funny, gritty, determined. He was also a master at assembling coalitions, working behind the scenes to keep group process alive in the most trying of circumstances. The emerging media consensus on his life seems to be that keeping people together, absorbing contrary positions while not compromising on the core principles of his cause, was the defining feature of his leadership. Of course to a large extent that is a fair assessment. Nevertheless, I wonder if it is also an overly technical postscript.

Of course at momentous times like these the media largely sees its role as a unifying one, finding a common basis upon which viewers and readers can relate and cohere. So sure, Mandela (along with others) was wonderful at bringing and keeping people together. His conscience and capacity for forgiveness has also rightly been described as the glue which enabled his coalitions to remain durable.

And so there we have it. It is tempting to write up the rest of the post on how important coalitions of leadership are and that leadership development theory and practice under-represent the centrality of coalition building in general. This is largely due to our preference for single-leader explanations of success, of course. But that is for another day, I think.

Because something has been gnawing away at me about the fall-out from the death of Mandela. Namely, that the man’s radical edge has been lost somewhere along the way. I am bothered by the parade of cautious, conservative politicians and public figures in turn proclaiming Mandela as a great. In truth, I have long been concerned at the number of candidates for political office who reference Mandela as their political inspiration. Not to mention the business executives. I have almost certainly been guilty of co-opting Mandela at points in my life and career – and vow forthwith to stop. This post is as much a reflexive self-indictment as anything else.

I am bothered because so many of these leaders, in truth, are united in their mediocrity and lack of radicalism. By mediocrity I am not suggesting that these are poor leaders. It’s just that when historians reflect back in a few generations, they are not leaders who will leave much of a legacy. Fair enough?

In some ways, I suppose, the co-opting of Mandela as an inspiration for all manner of the bland is perhaps partly down to Mandela himself. He became a figure who used his authority to challenge the mainstream from within. Out of necessity – pushing the image of South Africa as a successful, modern capitalist state. But even in power he remained a radical figure – challenging dominant power blocs over HIV medication, poverty and war. And he did so with enormous dignity. I believe in the concept of ‘dirty hands’ – that you don’t get anything done by staying somehow always above the fray. Such a realm is best left to the quixotic figures of this world (and alternate dimensions of time and space). They rarely attain positions of power and when they do never seem to be able to hold people together for long enough to achieve much of note. Mandela’s genius was that he retained his radical spirit in power.

Let’s remember that Mandela became a hero because of his radicalism. His willingness to risk his life and sacrifice the majority of his lifetime for a cause he believed in. And that cause was turning over entrenched power. Let’s here recall the final words of his speech, delivered from the dock at his 1964 trial:

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

These were not words spoken in the abstract. His comrades were routinely executed for their actions. He delivered his speech in the full knowledge that a similar fate could await him.

Here we have flashes of the spirit of Antigone, the exposure of great injustice and violence through a noble, ethical act. And this was not a one-off act but a sustained one of sacrifice in the fight against brutishness.

The radical-ethical spirit of Antigone

Now let’s reconsider whether it is appropriate for Mandela to be referenced so often as a figure of inspiration, or a role model, in the development of leadership. How much of my life is really conducted in the spirit of Mandela? Very little, in truth. On one level the co-option of the radical Mandela should irritate, even anger us. When there are so many enormous issues facing the world, why is the dominant response of major leaders often so timid? Why is our response often so timid, conservative or reactionary?

On the other hand, perhaps our organisations don’t need to be filled with Mandelas. Perhaps plodding, mediocre leaders have their place. Without them, after all, much of our infrastructure and daily life would come to a thudding halt. What’s wrong with keeping things ticking over?

Being a great radical is not for everyone. It would be refreshing if the majority of us publicly came clean and embraced modest incrementalists when discussing our leadership role models. “Well thanks for asking. My leadership role model is John Major.”

In fact the next time I read or hear someone claim Mandela as their inspiration I am going to ask that person to justify the statement. I am going to ask what it is about their leadership that offers a radical edge. I would urge you all to do the same – at work, socially, politically. Doing so would open up a valuable conversation.

Do we want a radical, challenging discourse of leadership or something more modest? Surely this is a question that should drive any leadership development initiative. My personal answer is that I believe in the former but in truth wish I did much more in its name.

If this is the kind of conversation you believe in and want at the heart of your leadership development, why not bring in the figure of Nelson Mandela? I doubt anyone could think of someone more impressive. If not, best to leave Mandela out of it.

- Owain

Winter is Coming ... So Beware Exposure

Yes it is freezing cold here in Milton Keynes. And to quote from one of my favourite works of literature (the Game of Thrones series), winter is indeed coming. So it is perhaps suitable that this post will concern exposure in leadership development.

I see this as the first of several posts in this area over the coming months.

I have spent the week on and off catching up and reminding myself of one of my favourite organisation writers, Yiannis Gabriel. Prof Gabriel is unusual in that his articles, books and chapters read somewhat like a stimulating (if ‘difficult’ in the best possible way) novel. They capture the imagination, challenge perceptions and are really very difficult to put down.

He is also a fascinating blogger:

yiannisgabriel.com

Prof Gabriel came to the attention of the wider organisation studies world as someone who applied a psychoanalytic perspective to his work. And why not? I have never bought the purist Foucauldian argument that absolutely everything is discourse, that we are somehow total prisoners to a regime of discourse. Well, ok I am not even sure that Foucault really believed that either. But that is for another blog post.

The point here is that psychoanalytic perspectives on leadership allow us a glimpse of why people seem to attach to some discourses over others. Sure, not everything is affect and emotion and I would be the last person to overlook the importance of material conditions in people’s identifications with discourse. For example, very real material injustice can in large part account for people’s (largely historic) affinity to trade unions. But let’s not overlook the emotional underbelly of attachment. In the case of trade unions, would they not also appeal to people’s needs for safety, as well as self-esteem (narcissistic enhancement)?

So psychoanalytic perspectives can offer us a glimpse into why people attach to discourses, to leaders, to organisations. To return to Gabriel, a consistent theme in his work has been that of the symbolic importance of the leader figure in our lives. Leaders provide an authority structure. They provide an outlet for our narcissistic identifications. They also provide a convenient scapegoat when things go wrong! Robert Cluley and Keith Grint have also both addressed these issues in their work.

Of course these identifications we hold with such figures can take a turn for the worst, when the priorities of organisations become concerned with pampering the ego of the leader. Nevertheless, psychoanalysis provides one explanation for why the figure of a strong individual leader seems relatively effective in keeping people together.

So you must be wanting to finish your morning coffee or lunchtime sandwich by now, so let’s get to the point. When we talk about the development of collaborative leadership, what is it that we put at risk – what is it that we expose? If leadership development programmes systematically dismantle the figure of the individual leader … What takes its place? What do we unleash by eroding the authority structures within organisations?

The implicit assumption underlying much collaborative leadership writing is that we will enter a kind of democratic idyll. I wonder, though … I mean it is not as if there are too many examples of sustained collaborative leadership practice out there to come to a view on the question of what replaces individual-based authority structures.

I do not pretend to know the answers to these questions. But I am left with several reflections:

First, I am not saying that we should give up on collaborative leadership. Clearly challenging authority and questioning power are vital. Moreover, I think there is an energy to collaboration that is missing when someone just tells us what to do. Such an energy, if channelled well, can undermine corrosive over-identification with authority.

But second, I am not sure that enough thought has been given to the ethical dimension of leadership development design in general. In particular, to the notion of what is left behind when figures of authority are stripped away. Are we left with a mess of paranoid, anchorless individuals scrambling about for meaning? That is clearly one of the dangers. Or else will participants project their authority identification onto a group? Groupthink hardly seems like much of a happy alternative.

These are issues of exposure. Of exposing human participants to the limits of their (and our) identifications.

So third, what comes of the leadership development participant who re-enters her/his organisation full of notions of collaborative leadership models? If they go about attempting to undo the fabric of authority in place in their organisations, then perhaps they should be aware of the risk, of the exposure.

There seems to be a need for balance somehow. That is why the work of Grint and Heifetz appeals so much to me. There is always an agent, or agents, at the heart of a collaboration, providing that need for a figure of credibility who can push others into taking more responsibility for leadership.

Or perhaps there is a certain strength and possibility in creating a kind of authority vacuum in leadership development. As long as we are reflexive about what we do in that space. But that is for another day … For now it’s time to wrap up warm and keep ingesting those vitamins. Winter has indeed arrived and it is time for some good fireside reading. I recommend Yiannis Gabriel’s Organizations in Depth: The Psychoanalysis of Organizations as a great place to start if you are interested in applying psychoanalytic thought to your practice.

You can purchase a copy here, although I have yet to find a university library worth its salt which does not hold a copy.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Organizations-Depth-The-Psychoanalysis/dp/0761952616/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1385751969&sr=8-5&keywords=yiannis+gabriel

- Owain

Farewell … And thanks for all the Foucault: Why the New Zealand Leadership Institute is at the Cutting Edge of Leadership R&D

Perhaps borrowing one of Douglas Adams’ better known lines was not entirely appropriate for this post. Adams’ iconic ‘thanks for all the fish statement’ is delivered by the departing dolphin intelligentsia as Earth faces ‘demolition’. I left the New Zealand Leadership Institute (NZLI) only two weeks ago as a quite inferior intelligent life form and with the organisation in rude health, plotting its trajectory into the future.

What I experienced at NZLI as a research fellow and facilitator over the past couple of years is worth capturing, as many of my experiences there go against the grain of what is regarded as conventional leadership development. So what is it that makes NZLI unique and special?

First, it is committed to an R&D of leadership development. The mantra of the Institute is that really we should remove the ‘&’ in the equation because the research and development conducted there is so interwoven. Perhaps a case of ‘revelopmerch’? It does help of course that the employees of the Institute are people who naturally think across and between the research and practice domains.

Either the researchers (who are leaders in their field, people like Brigid Carroll and Brad Jackson) also think in terms of practice relevance, or the facilitators (people like Joline Francoeur and Sarah Bowman) value the role of developing theory in developing leadership. Then there is the hybrid, Fiona Kennedy, who finds it difficult to ascertain whether she is a ‘practitioner’ or ‘researcher’ – a true pracademic, something I aspire to. Delve just slightly in the background and you encounter Phil Collins, Ann Moore and Josh Firth – it is a mark of a great organisation when every member of the team is just as enthusiastic about learning and leadership. And of course let’s not forget the energetic and challenging presence of Lester Levy, who founded NZLI almost a decade ago now. Lester is a man who has achieved a lot in his life and could easily now just kick back and enjoy his well-earned material comfort, but instead has decided to direct an ambitious university research institute.

The NZLI team in 2012

The overlap of R&D can be witnessed in the Institute’s continuous design meetings. I say continuous because the conversations never really end and stretch across media and time. These are what are commonly referred to as ‘generative conversations’, little practiced but oft written about. Not just soft conversations, although they can be, but also ‘rattling good rows’, as Brigid Carroll refers to them: that getting out in the open passionately held views concerning the progress of a programme or direction of theory. Both are essential.

Second, the Institute is selective in terms of who it takes on as a client. It is run as a not-for-profit charitable trust within the University of Auckland. This is surely a key differentiator – remove the overriding money element and you arrive in a zone where better understanding of leadership becomes the paramount concern. I have taken the notion of bespoke leadership development to heart as a result of working with NZLI – careful research in the context of the organisation followed by a programme targeted at appropriate participants and linked to experience. How often the two apparently straightforward words ‘appropriate participants’ haunt development programmes – people who were sent and don’t want to be there; people who are there expecting something quite different (charisma lessons or management training anyone?); people who are there because it will look good for future promotions; even people sent along as punishment, to be straightened out!

Third, NZLI is committed to critical theory. This is not the poke-your-tongue-out, holier and-purer-than-thou stuff which often plagues critical theory. NZLI tries to learn core lessons from critical thinking – constructionist thought, critical identity theory, discourse analysis and political theory – to shape design of development interventions.

Finally, the development and research work is linked closely to purpose. Developing more humane, as well as robust and relevant leadership is the goal. So this is best described as collaboration with a hard edge. The classic iron fist in a velvet glove. Collaborative leadership is so important when tackling intractable and complex problems. But it is not a case of group hugs and endless discussions about feelings – it can be a hard process of challenging dominant discourses.

Interventions which deal with the realities of local power relations rather than wishful thinking. Interventions which ask participants to re-evaluate the identity they carry in their work – to enact ‘wicked’ leadership you can’t carry around a managerial mindset! It takes guts to pursue this kind of pedagogy. The early programme evaluations and feedback can reveal some participant discomfort as their dominant constructions of what constitutes leadership are challenged and they begin to grapple with the implications of this challenge for their everyday work. This is not edutainment, folks. Surely if a development programme results in comfort and entertainment, it is not really a development programme but a passive, detached, if interesting, experience.

Leadership confronts: a characteristic calling card of NZLI

So as we think into the future about the possibilities for leadership development, of an open-source leadership development, then I offer the following four points as absolutely key. A development agenda rooted in:

• Crossover between theory and practice to the extent that they are almost indistinguishable and participants who embrace this challenge.
• The adoption of participating groups and individuals who are prepared to be unsettled.
• A commitment to relevant critical theory.
• Leadership development for a purpose: the development of more humane, creative and relevant organisations.

These are all lessons I will take with me into the future and into Our Leadership. So farewell NZLI and thank you indeed for all of that Foucault – you made him relevant and essential.

- Owain

You can explore the NZLI world here:
http://nzli.co.nz/