Rethinking Leadership

From the Introduction

This book makes the case for a rethinking of the contested term 'leadership', arguing that we seek to understand leadership-as-narrative. When leaders set out a direction of change, they are projecting a future story. When they justify decisions, they embed those choices in story arcs. When they inspire action, they encourage their audience to see themselves as characters in unfolding dramas. This reframing is not an analogy. To say storytelling is analogous to what leaders do would be a logic of substitution. It leaves 'leadership' intact and adds stories as an optional extra. To claim more strongly that we should rethink leadership-as-narrative is a logic of association: the two depend on one another. Individuals become leaders through narrative positioning, and narratives gain force through leaders' enactment of them.

1. What story are we currently inside, and who authored it?
2. Is this change adjusting what we do, or altering what we are?
3. Where does the existing organisational story fail to account for what people are being asked to do?
4. What would it mean to treat communication as constitutive rather than as the final step?

• Constitutive vs instrumental
• Incremental vs transformational change
• Castle and microscope
• Hedgehog and fox
• Strong plots
• Boundary object
• Adaptive challenge
• Shock absorber
• Flattering mirrors
• No story-free zones

• NHS transformation

Related lens: All six lenses

Related tools: Change Type Reflection

Status: passage quoted directly from the manuscript · this chapter has no abstract · questions and concepts are site-written · author review required