The Exercise and Development of Leadership
Description
My research in this stream contributes to three recent trends in leadership scholarship. The first is the resurgence of a perspective less preoccupied with leaders' impact on organizational performance and more with their function as sources and symbols of the values and meaning making of organizational members. The second is a move beyond the study of traits, behaviors, and contingencies that allow leaders to exert their influence over followers. The third refutes a view of leadership as the preserve of individuals in positions of formal authority and places the process of internalizing and enacting a leader identity at the core of the emergence and exercise of leadership.
My work bridges these recent trends with an established stream of scholarship that regards individuals' life story a central place in their development as leaders. I examine the processes through which individuals build personal foundations for the on-going exercise and development of leadership, as well as the ways they manage (or succumb to), social pressures from within and outside their organizations. This research stream also encompasses work on the conceptual foundations for a unique approach to experiential leadership development currently used in business schools and organizations in a variety of industries. This approach aspires to help leaders examine how their history and ambitions, as well as the dynamics of the groups and social systems they are embedded in, affect the way they think, feel and act in personal and professional roles. It invites them to take their experience seriously without however taking it literally, so that they can make new meaning out of that experience, and experiment with a broader portfolio of options for working with it.