Three ways to access learning about leadership?

There are arguably three ways to learn something about leadership, but only one has transformational potential for the self. Before listing them, however, here is one caveat about the words "transformation" and "transformational", which have become so familiar in leadership theory that they are now often loaded with meaning/direction not found in their dictionary definitions.

While transformation does denote change (in form, shape, appearance, character etc.) it does not inherently carry information about the nature of change. Transformation is neither inherently good nor inherently bad, and may be desired or accidental in equal measure without changing anything else. However, we have to believe that, when we say transformational leadership" that changes must be certain kinds of change. This is not quite the sense I am using it here. I'm using transformation as a neutral (perhaps indifferent) description of a natural process, with no value judgment, whereby the state of something or someone at one time is noticeably different to the state at another. Transformation may be planned or unexpected, in this sense. It may be inevitable, or it may be contingent. It's quite open, and what makes it good is how one chooses to frame it.

So, it occurred to me the other day that there are three ways to understand, or approach an understanding, of leadership (actually, this is going to be true of a range of management subjects):

1. Vicariously, from a distance
2. Rationally, through theory and models
3. Directly, by application of imagination, awareness and curiosity to experience

Vicariously, from a distance is another way of saying that everyone else's actions are a story to be told. We read accounts of leader's experiences, good or bad, and draw inference and conclusions about leadership based on what they say. Organisations are storied systems, and so this is a very alluring and powerful medium. It explains much of the identification of leadership in the person of the leader and satisfies our need for complete plots and fully-formed stories. The down side is that the story can never be complete. Not only must certain details always be left out (as no map includes all the information in the territory), but the story is being told through the story-teller's filters, biases, assumptions and (perhaps) agenda. We don't learn what leadership is from another person's experience, we learn what their experience was like for them and although this is a great way to set oneself up in leadership as a pundit, consultant or commentator, the most it can lead to is imitation, not transformation

Rationally, through theories and models is generally what academia strives for. Explanation, arrived at with rigor and relevance (ideally) in a measurable, testable (falsifiable, perhaps) pattern of theory construction. This is, of course, where we get nearly all our concepts, models and frameworks to describe (and it is mostly description, not prescription) leadership. There is an ocean of leadership theory out there and it is perfectly possible to become an accomplished and successful navigator of the idea of leadership this way, in principle. This is not a bad thing - leadership is, after all, an idea. The problem is that social science has on the whole tended to fail to deliver a single leadership theory that a) leads to the identification of a single axiomatic underlying truth, and b) a way that could break that barrier. In other words, the advancement of leadership theory is designed to be reactive. It has become almost impossible to say anything original about the idea of leadership without offering a new idea which already contains the structure of the old one. Just try to publish in a peer-review journal an article about leadership that doesn't start with all the other journal articles about leadership! And yet look at the yawning gap we face between the reality of our current situation in business, commerce, politics and the environment, and the kind of changes we will need to see (assuming we know what they are - see the caveat above) actually implemented in the next 10-30 years. Because it is so self-referential and backward looking, the study of the theory of leadership cannot be transformational.

Directly, by application of imagination, awareness and curiosity to experience is the third on my list, but it doesn't have to negate the first two, which in my opinion are also welcome to the party. But it does offer the only truly way to be transformational because it is the only one that the person invents for themselves. The important thing here is direct application of facilities you already possess, but in a particular way that dissolves the filters, prejudices and myriad thinking biases that might otherwise stand between you and your experience of the world. This is an educational process and there is a genuine and legitimate role of higher education and the business school in this, but at its heart is not ignorance of theory (i.e. we're going to teach you what leadership is) or ignorance of conventions (i.e. we're going to find out what everyone else thinks leadership is), but your own ignorance of how you think. The antidote to ignorance is curiosity, that insatiable yet trainable sidekick to awareness. If leadership exists, and if it can be understood, and if it's not just another social convention such as "boss", or "performance" or "servant" (the list is long), and in short, if it actually matters, then it MUST be something that each person is to discover for themselves, defined and lived by in a way coherent with their self-esteem. The only way is to work it out for yourself, though it is also the hardest way. To illustrate what I mean, a question: can you observe leadership without the label "leadership"?

While you ponder that, I'll end with an Albert Einstein quote (I believe it is actually a genuine one) that is firing in the same direction:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

Don't stop to marvel.”

Albert Einstein, 1955

Leadership is not the subject area I say I teach but it does relate nicely to Personal Development because it draws on a common need to answer certain questions about choices, purpose and survival. Those are all pretty personal topics! We must be open to exploring leadership from every angle. When leadership comes from a place of self-awareness, it may be said to emerge genuinely, unlabeled, unmediated and from our nature. When leadership comes from a rational understanding of how the world works, perhaps eventually a scientific one of how the social world works (though this has so far still largely eluded us), it may be said to result from education. The art is perhaps to see that being genuine can be a route to becoming educated and that being educated can be a route to becoming genuine.