Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World

leaders within these complex contexts are inclined to focus solely on their project or their sector at most, assuming that they can change things if they could just get the ear of those who seem to be in charge. Their inability to use a more complex and systemic mode of analysis blocks their access to more comprehensive and effective forms of perce

It must be underscored that it is the reflection on one’s own experience of leadership failure that is the essential, vital feature of this leadership formation process. Further, some evidence indicates that presenting one’s own failure in a semi-public, professional setting contributes to a greater sense of confidence and freedom. The discovery ap

As is implied throughout this exploration of the experience of the artist as a primary metaphor for the reimagination of leadership, to be an artist is to be invested in the work.

The creation of something new emerges from what isn’t working or fitting—from dissonance, doubt, confusion, irritation, opposition, devastation, gaps between values and practice, or the unexpected curiosity appearing on the horizon that has all the properties of the proverbial Trojan horse.

Myth cannot be dismissed as mere fiction. Myths are epic, powerful stories that arise from, pervade, and shape the cultures we breathe. They are formed from our collective capacity to understand, interpret, and shape our world. The potency of myths is that they provide ways for us to make sense of our experience, to make meaning we can count on and

a more effective deployment of self,

Imagination—A Dynamic Process

Different people have different things to learn, and by the end of the term, my aim would be for people to have learned a lot that was relevant to them in regard to their own capacity to mobilize their communities or their organizations to make progress on the hardest of problems, which is what I think leadership is about—mobilizing people to make

Holding steady is a key metaphor at the core of this approach because it captures the recognition that in the process of adaptive leadership there are always powerful forces at play. Leaders who can be fully present and resist being buffeted about in the wind and chop of adaptive work help to provide the ballast that is critical to making progress.