About This Presentation

1. “In a highly original way, taking “Critical Theory” as a point of departure, Dr. Western helps us to obtain greater insight into the enigma of leadership.” Manfred Kets de Vries Director INSEAD Global Leadership Center ‘‘Leadership A Critical Text’ is an outstanding addition to the Leadership literature. This is an excellent text which takes the field to new heights in the first decade of the 21st Century". Professor Cary L. Cooper, CBE, Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health at Lancaster University “The book provides a unique and much needed 'voice' to the field of leadership studies, and will have a significant impact worldwide.” Professor Jonathan Gosling, Director of the Leadership Centre Exeter University Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

2. About This Presentation This is a brief presentation outlines a few main ideas from Dr Simon Westerns’ book Leadership A Critical Text. Sage 2007. For further information on the book, a teaching guide, training opportunities, or to contact Simon go to www.simonwestern.com What are your leadership assumptions? Also found on this website is the WILD Questionnaire (Western Indicator of Leadership Discourses). This will reveal your leadership preferences in terms of the assumptions/discourses set out in this slideshow. This tool is very useful to explore the most appropriate forms of leadership for yourself or your organisation and an excellent training aid for business, management and leadership students. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

3. Chapter Outline Chapter 1. Why A Critical Theory Approach To Leadership? Chapter 2. What is Leadership? Chapter 3. Leadership, Power and Authority Chapter 4: Leadership and Diversity Chapter 5. Asymmetric Leadership Chapter 6 The Discourses of Leadership Chapter 7. The Leader as Controller Chapter 8. The Leader as Therapist Chapter 9. The Leader as Messiah Chapter 10. Religious Fundamentalism Chapter 11. Christian Fundamentalist Leadership and Corporate America Chapter 12. An Overview of The Leadership Discourses Chapter 13. Emergent Leadership: The Eco-Leader Discourse Chapter 14. Reflections: Leadership Formation Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

4. What is Leadership? She was a courageous leader The company board showed great leadership Scandinavia takes a lead on social welfare An innovative leadership culture flourished in the company These statements show that leadership is not just the property of an individual figure. Leadership is much more. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

5. When we think of leadership we usually think of heroic good leaders, Martin Luther King, Ghandi etc. The story of history is most often told this way and reinforced by ancient myths, fairy tales and contemporary Hollywood films. However we imbue individuals with heroic leadership even though ‘networks of activity’, involving many people, are behind achievements attributed to individual leaders. Individuals do have agency and make a difference, but only as one agent amongst many. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

6. Asymmetrical Leadership • Chapter five demonstrates how leadership is asymmetrical rather than a neat symmetrical and linear • process. An analysis of a few pages of writing by Leon Trotsky on Lenin’s leadership of the Russian • revolution gives a clear example of how, in any given situation, leadership manifests in many • different forms. Each of these is discussed in depth in the chapter. • Intellectual leadership - thought leadership • Unconscious Leadership- projective identification • Corporate leadership- The party • Dispersed leadership- Cadres- the party activists • Individual leadership -Lenin was vital to the revolution • Social Movement leadership - the collective leadership of a social movement • 7)Symbolic leadership - signifying actions Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

7. Leadership Discourses Assumptions about Leadership Over the past century, four key discourses have emerged that dominate leadership thinking. A discourse in this sense is an underlying set of assumptions that becomes accepted as the norm. It affects our views about something. So for many people leadership means a heroic charismatic figure, but there have been other discourses of leadership. These have determined how leadership is enacted but are not always explicitly known to us. The book deals with the four discourses outlined here in depth, discussing how they became powerful, how they demised, and how they impact on leadership thinking today. It is important to identify which discourse dominates your thinking, or the thinking in your organization/culture. Only when you become aware to the discourse/s pervasive to your organization can new forms of leadership emerge. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

8. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

9. Leader as Controller Discourse The assumption the Controller Discourse is that the leadership will focus on maximizing efficiency and control to increase output. Employees are treated in a functional way as replaceable ‘human resources’, cogs in the wheel of the efficient machine. This leadership assumption gained credence from the cultural belief in modernism and scientific rationalism highlighted by Taylorism in the management field. The Controller Discourse remains with us particularly in manufacturing. Recent attempts to ‘modernise’ the public sector in the UK have seen a reversion to Controller leadership, focusing on targets to achieve greater outputs. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

10. Leader as Therapist Discourse The basic assumption is that the leadership task is to work on human relations. The idea being that ‘happy workers are more productive workers’. Emerging from the post-war culture and 1960s ideas of personal growth and the rise in individualism. Leaders encourage workers to self-actualize through work, so that people ‘come to work to work on themselves’ (N. Rose). This discourse embraces ‘therapeutic culture’ and focuses on engaging workers in order to increase motivation and commitment. Personnel departments were established to achieve this. This discourse is very popular in education and the public and voluntary sector and other people focused organizations. Leadership development is dominated by the therapist discourse; often focusing on ‘developing the self’ e.g. using psychometrics, 360s and coaching to attempt to offer personal insight and modify behavior. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

11. Leader asMessiah DiscourseThe messiah discourse arose in the 1980s following an economic slump in the USA. A newcovenantal leadership emerged. The aim was to create strong and dynamic cultures under the vision of a transformational leader. Loyalty and commitment within teams, and linking personal success to company success was a key goal. Control is achieved via peer and self surveillance, rather hierarchical power or coercion. This book links the Messiah discourse to the rise of Christian Fundamentalism in the USA, claiming that corporate leadership wanted to mimic the unusual new organizational forms, created by a highly successful transformational church leaders. These prophetic leaders managed to create entrepreneurial and dynamic yet highly conformist cultures. However the long-term results can create totalizing and fundamentalist mindsets, that resist critical reflection and difference. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

12. Leader asMessiah Discourse Isolated elements swimming in the same direction for the purpose of understanding. Damien Hirst (1991) Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

13. Leader asMessiah Discourse Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

14. Eco-leadership Discourse Leadership Spirit Ethics Connectivity This new emerging discourse has become powerful since 2000. The ecology of leadership focuses on leadership spirit, ethics and connectivity- creating distributed leadership at local levels. The leadership works to create and sustain an eco-system that includes stakeholders and competitors building coalitions, networks and collaborative relationships. Seeing the need to address in the present the issues of the future: e.g finite resources, climate change and social responsibility. This new leadership assumption until recently is was a marginalized voice. Now progressive business and political leaders are finally embracing this discourse. It is not just about the environment but dealing with the internal ecology as well. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

15. The Eco-Leader faces both ways: internally and externally Organizational ecosystem External environment Eco-leadership faces both ways, focusing on internal organizational ecosystem, i.e. building networks, preventing the formation of silos, creating an organizational architecture that allows a distributed leadership at local levels, thus creating an adaptive organization. They also focus on the external environment i.e.stakeholders, competitors, political and environmental trends, to ensure that they address how their organization functions as an ecosystem within a wider ecosystem. This is no-longer considered an altruistic act, but vital for sustainable success. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

16. Leadership Formation Beyond Leadership Development In the final reflections the book looks forward to how to develop a leadership fit for the 21st century. Contemporary leadership development sits largely within the leader as Therapist Discourse, i.e. HR departments identify hi-potential individuals, and a process of psychometrics and leadership development programmes are used to increase an individuals leadership skills. Yet leadership is not a technique to be learnt. Leaders are formed through multiple experiences, and it is an organizations task to create this formation process; specific to its organizational needs. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

17. Leadership Formation Beyond Leadership Development Leadership Formation questions the current focus on the individual leadership development and draws upon orthodoxy in order to find a radical solution (G.K.Chesterton). Drawing on 1,500 yrs of monastic history and the concepts of how a monk undergoes ‘spiritual formation’ the book draws lessons from this. Leaders often describe their formation as being through mentors, role models and learning from experience at work. The book looks into ways in which organizations can ‘institutionalize’ this ad hoc process, and create contexts and structures where this formation process and a distributed leadership can flourish. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

18. Leadership Formation The task is to create an organizational architecture that places leadership at its centre. Spaces have to be created that enable formation to take place on a daily basis. Leadership formation means developing people through learning from the liturgies, rituals and daily performance of work. Leadership cannot be reduced to a set of universal idealized competencies that are separate from specific work contexts. Mentoring and coaching should mirror ‘spiritual directors’ in the monastic setting, to act as elders, and guide individuals and teams through a formation process, tailored to their specific requirements and goals. Two conditions need to be met: • Leadership Formation must be holistic and embedded in organizational culture 2) Leadership Formation requires both an informal and a formal process. Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

19. Locating Ourselves • The Institution and Context: In my case the University, which carries with it the history of academia and elite knowledge, which I represent in the ‘here and now’ when standing in front of a lecture theatre. • ‘Embodied and Cultural Self’: My whiteness, my sexuality, being British, my maleness, my age, and my ‘able-body’, etc. • Personality: Any ‘charisma’, personality traits, intellectual capability, etc. My personality will trigger some people’s feelings in powerful ways, in others they will have a bland reaction to me. • Expertise:I teach Coaching at Masters Level drawing on my psychoanalytic and systemic background.Coaching and Therapy can carry the mystique of the ‘shrink’, and with it the fear/curiosity of being able to read the hidden unconscious. 5. Role Power As Course Director I have the power and authority to assess students, I also have power and influence in the lecture theatre Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com

20. Critical Approach Emancipation Oppression and violence can be both subjective and systemic, subtle and pervasive (e.g poverty and its results) or acute and obvious (individual violence to another). The latter receives maximum attention at the expense of the former. Depth Analysis This means to take a hermeneutic or interpretative stance. In this book, depth analysis is derived mainly from psychoanalytic theory with the aim to reveal what is beneath-the-surface. It is concerned with the underlying assumptions that lie beneath conscious awareness, within discourses and within individual and group behaviours. Psychoanalysis is important with the ideas of using the self and emotional experience, and taking an interpretive stance Looking Awry Zizek claims that a frontal view of an object or text offers not the best view but a distorted and a limited perspective. To really see what is happening he suggests the need to look awry and take a view from a different place: like a film director revealing the true emotion, through a different camera angle. Systemic Praxis Systems theory is important but too often it remains theory . Systemic Praxis means how to intervene in a system as well as analyse one. To intervene is to account for power in a system which is lacking in most systemic theory. . As Marx famously said: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it’ Western S. (2007) Leadership A Critical Text. London Sage www.simonwestern.com