Academic Legitimacy for Leadership Studies



		Original post by Barbara Mossberg: Date: 13 Nov 2006 14:43 Sender: ILA Discussion List <ILA-EXCHANGE@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU> From: Barbara Mossberg <mossbergb at aol dot com> Subject: Re: The loss of Leadership Re: our attitudes towards power. Emily Dickinson has great poems in which she explores the concept of power, political, cultural, psychological, natural, and has insight into the generative tension caused by feeling that she is silenced and invisible, outside of formal power structures, governed by power decisions made by people that categorically do not know or regard her, and being a “nobody,” at the same time as she is confident that her own poetry is powerful as a natural and political force, and ultimately more powerful in ways that matter than political power. I also am reminded that writers, whether Thoreau or Emerson or Harriet Beecher Stowe, or John Muir, or Havel, or Neruda, exert a real power in terms of political events that drive leadership “bottom up”. I agree that power is a concept as a “strange attractor” that is central to our understanding of leadership: how things happen. Barbara Dr. Barbara Mossberg President Emerita Goddard College Senior Scholar James McGregor Burns Academy of Leadership University of Maryland Director and Professor Integrated Studies California State University Monterey Bay 100 Campus Center Seaside, CA 93955



		Reply by Nathan Harter: Date: 15 Nov 2006 8:30 Sender: ILA Discussion List <ILA-EXCHANGE@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU> From: ”Harter, Nathan W” <nharter at purdue dot edu> Subject: Re: Barbara Mossberg and power The single most thought-provoking analysis on power I have read is Martin Heidegger’s 1995 book titled Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta 1-3 out of the Indiana University Press. For example, he points out that people are already more or less purposeful creatures, en route to some desired state, and in order to get there, they must resist attempts from many sectors to stop them or deviate from their path. In other words, they have a power not to be influenced. Every child ignores certain influences every day, just as many of us refuse to do what advertisements urge us to do. Leadership as a phenomenon indicates that people, whom we call followers, suspend their resistance to the outside world, tolerating an influence. That to me is a striking way to look at things. I can’t do justice to his intricate work, but the focus is on the follower and the follower’s powers, not unlike the marble’s role in determining the statue. The follower lives in a bounded reality, imposing many of these boundaries himself (consciously or not). A leader gives the follower an opportunity or excuse to see beyond those boundaries and consider framing their lives in a new way – often a way that will appear at first blush to be limitless (although that’s not possible). The boundaries are simply redrawn. But as a kind of optical illusion, the follower sees freedom in the new boundaries, and why not? The fact that one can re-draw the boundaries in the first place is the real freedom. One is never free of boundaries per se. To think otherwise is to be an ideologue, a utopian, and frankly not very useful in the world. Leadership seen in this light is a forbearance on the part of the follower to choose a different set of boundaries. I don’t know about you, but this is hard for me to get my head around. Nonetheless, for a penetrating experience, try Heidegger’s book. You might find that my interpretation isn’t fair, and I’d like to know whether this is the case. Nathan Harter



		Reply by Barbara Mossberg: Date: 15 Nov 2006 10:05 Sender: ILA Discussion List <ILA-EXCHANGE@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU> From: Barbara Mossberg <mossbergb at aol dot com> Subject: Re: Barbara Mossberg and power Nathan, It is fascinating to consider this work as you beautifully articulate its thesis (it is interesting to explore the significance that Aristotle was Alexander the Great’s tutor), and what strikes me particularly is in what ways classical and multi-cultural children’s literature and culture (including films and drama) express the points you are making about Heidegger’s analysis of Aristotle. In my First Year Seminar this Fall, as well as my Multicultural Children’s Literature for Teachers courses, we study how literature for children has a deep structure of developmental growth, sets forth a central plot as how one experiences life as a path or journey, chooses a path, has essential companions, makes choices, recognizes wisdom, and understands and accepts the power and capacity within that is there all along, whether in fairy tales or Wizard of Oz. I have thought that one of the aspects of leadership, in this light, like teachers, is the catalytic vision and ability to recognize and invoke power in others that they may not experience or know in themselves. It can be in relationship with others that our ability to make essential moral choices can be revealed to us, as in Huckleberry Finn’s development, he experiences the world through the lens of his friendship with the escaped slave Jim, to culminate in his decision to repudiate a cruel and unjust world and “light out for the territories” away from “civilization.” In making this choice, he feels lawless and certainly not a leader, but he has recognized and accepted a power in himself to make judgments and order his world. He is spiritually liberated and I have often wondered what an adult Huck would be like in his world. Your thinking through the relevance of Heidegger’s work brings to light not only themes of what we call “children’s literature” but our greatest literature across time and cultures. Through this lens, this literature is a window into our understanding of leadership and “power” and human development, and probably expresses what emergent neuroscience reveals about how the brain works (in developing neural pathways and making choices of what to see, what to act on). Thank you for this mental coffee this morning. Barbara Dr. Barbara Mossberg President Emerita Goddard College Senior Scholar James McGregor Burns Academy of Leadership University of Maryland Director and Professor Integrated Studies California State University Monterey Bay 100 Campus Center Seaside, CA 93955



		Reply by Jim Wolford-Ulrich Date: 15 Nov 2006 14:59 Sender: ILA Discussion List <ILA-EXCHANGE@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU> From: Jim Ulrich <ulrich at duq dot edu> Subject: Re: Barbara Mossberg and power Peter Drucker once wrote, “Today, there is a great deal of talk about ‘empowering’ people. This is a term I have never used and never will use. Fundamental to the discipline of social ecology is not a belief in power, but the belief in responsibility, in authority grounded in competence and compassion.” I have often wondered what he meant by this. As the final sentences in an autobiographical essay, it seems to come as an awkwardly appended afterthought. In the article, Drucker describes himself as a ‘social ecologist,’ concerned with the balance between change and continuity in society. He concludes the article with a discussion of the importance of language as a tool in the discipline and practice of social ecology. So we can assume he was choosing his words quite carefully. Ever since I read these words of Drucker, I have been uncomfortable with leadership competence models that use the language of empowerment, e.g. “... empowers others” to act, to make decisions, to take risks, to use their talents, etc. I’m not qualified to comment on the accuracy of your interpretation of Heidegger, Nathan, but I like the emphasis placed on the power(s) that followers already have. Even if so-called leaders attempt to re-draw and enlarge the boundaries followers may or may not have imposed on themselves, followers still have the power to accept, reject or re-negotiate the very frames leaders suggest. Or, if the first task of a leader is to “define reality” (De Pree, 1989), then the first task of followers is to critically co-construct and re-construct that reality. No doubt many “followers” perceive themselves to lack the effective ability to act in one or more ways in a variety of contexts. And I would not minimize the subjective reality of the many forms that systematic disenfranchisement takes in the world and in organizational life today. But I think it’s a fair question to ask: to what extent does the rhetoric of empowerment (on the part of leaders, leadership educators, and possibly even ‘disempowered’ followers themselves) subtly undermine the taking of responsibility? Perhaps the exercise of power would not be such a strange attractor if we implicitly recognized the freedoms and responsibilities followers already have. De Pree, M. (1989). Leadership is an art. New York: Dell. Drucker, P. F. (1992). Reflections of a social ecologist. Society, 29(4), 57-64. Jim Wolford-Ulrich, Ph.D. Assistant Professor and Team Leader, Leadership Faculty School of Leadership and Professional Advancement Duquesne University Pittsburgh, PA 15282 Phone: 412-396-1640 Fax: 412-396-4711 E-mail: ulrich at duq dot edu Web: http://www.leadership.duq.edu/ Bio: http://www.leadership.duq.edu/home/main.cfm?SID=185&L=U&facID=14 *********************************** You are subscribed to the Discussion listserv of the International Leadership Association (ILA). This is a moderated discussion listserv sponsored by the ILA to discuss leadership related topics. To unsubscribe, please email ila@ila-net.org. For more information on the ILA, please visit our Web site at: http://www.ila-net.org How to cite this handout: Wolford-Ulrich, J. (2006, Nov. 15). Barbara Mossberg and Power. Message posted to the Discussion listserv of the International Leadership Association, archived at http://listserv.umd.edu/.