Character — Rethinking Leadership

In plain terms

Character in two senses held together. In the Aristotelian sense it is a disposition cultivated through repeated practice in specific settings, visible only across time. In the dramaturgical sense it is the role a person occupies within a larger narrative — the position from which they act and through which others understand them.

What the chapter argues

From the abstract to Chapter Two: Character
This chapter studies leadership in relation to another ancient word - character. It works with a dual sense of the word character. In the Aristotelian sense character is not a trait someone possesses (which is perhaps the simplest way to think about leadership) but something developed through repeated action in specific contexts. It is only something one can evaluate across the course of a career or a life.
The other sense of character is what comes to mind more immediately when we think about stories. A character is a role that is occupied within a larger narrative, the position from which someone or something acts and through which they are understood by others.

Related concepts

Terms you will meet in this chapter, kept in the author's vocabulary:

Meaning void
Habituation
Narrative accountability
Emotion as judgement
Impossible jobs and impossible tasks
Prospective emplotment
Meta-emplotment
Agency myth
Lowest common denominator of values

One short example

A question to sit with

In the change you are living through, what are people being asked to become, beyond what they are asked to do — and who has no role at all in the new story?

Where to go next

This lens is developed in Chapter Two: Character.

Status: the abstract above is quoted directly from the manuscript · surrounding text is site-written · author review required