Can Leadership Be Taught?

Thursday March 28, 2013 Carl Rogers once said, "I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher. . . . I am only interested in being a learner, preferably learning things that matter." Leadership is something that matters to me as an educator and as a leadership practitioner. But can leadership be taught? Have you ever been taught emotional intelligence by an instructor that uses PowerPoint slides? When I started teaching leadership, I vividly remember facing the challenge on how to make my content match my way of teaching. When teaching leadership, this call to congruence—how what I am teaching is demonstrated in how I teach it—was the major headache of my work. It forced me to explore a fateful inquiry that led to a powerful discovery: for the congruent educator teaching leadership needs to be in itself an act of ... leadership. So when asked to design a leadership course, I decided that, rather than teaching or preaching, I would rely on evoking, naming, reminding, recognizing, questioning, acknowledging, and affirming. I stopped asking "How can I teach?" and instead started asking "What if leadership is already in the room, and my work is to give it the space and freedom to manifest itself?" I discovered a methodology called "Case-in-point", straight from the Adaptive Leadership framework developed by Ron Heifetz, Marty Linsky and others at the Harvard Kennedy School and started experimenting with it... Teaching Hands-on Leadership Using The "Case-in-point" Method With this approach, In front of our eyes, the group dynamics of the class provide powerful material for reflection in real time, helping participants in a day class, leadership retreat, or university course to develop their ability to innovate and adapt to changing circumstances in their organizations. Case-in-point has allowed me to learn and practice leadership experientially in a way that is aligned with my purpose as an educator. And in teaching leadership using Case-in-point I can use in its practice all I learned from other frameworks. In fact: ·         As an Action Learning Coach (a process to learn and take action to solve a tough problem) I use the capacity to leverage the power of great questions in order to learn in real-time as individuals, as a team, and as an organization. ·         As a World Café Host (a methodology that allows large groups to deepen their inquiry through important questions in a setting that promotes informal conversations and authenticity) I bring into it the artistry of hosting conversations that matter. ·         As an Open Space Technology Convener (a meeting process rooted in participants' passion and responsibility in which attendees create their own meeting agenda and run the meeting in real time) my Case-in-point practice is informed by the trust that groups know how to self-organize for the greater good and by the power of systems to naturally exhibit the distributed leadership that makes change happen. I continue to find that Case-in-point provides me with the best  way to teach leadership experientially and encourage you to explore its power. Read more about "Case-in-point" in my article published on March 2013 in THE SYSTEM THINKER