Teaching people about leadership is different from creating leaders. Teaching leadership uses a t... more 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.
Teaching people about leadership is different from creating leaders. Teaching leadership uses a t... more 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.
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