Complexity and Leadership

Leading organisations in our contemporary world means grappling with unpredictability, painful pressures and continual conflict, all in the context of an acceleration in the pace of change. We expect the impossible from heroic leaders and they rarely live up to expectations. With countless recommendations, self-help books and new concepts, scholars and management consultants often simplify and dream unrealistically. This book challenges the more orthodox discourse on leadership and presents a way of thinking about leadership that pays closer attention to experience. The contributors in this book, all senior managers or facilitators of leadership development, resist easy solutions, new typologies or unrealistic prescriptions. Writing about their experiences in Denmark, the UK, Israel, Ethiopia, South Africa and beyond, they are less concerned with traits that people can possess and learn, or magical promises of recipes for success, and more with the socio-political process of the interaction between people from which leadership emerges as a theme. We focus on understanding leadership as a practice within which communication, research, imagination and ethical judgements are continuously improvised. So rather than idealising leadership, or reducing it to soothing tools and techniques, we suggest how leaders might become more politically, emotionally and socially savvy. This book is written for academics and practitioners with an interest in the everyday challenges of both individual and group practices of formal and informal leaders in different types of organisations, and is an ideal resource for executives and students on leadership development programmes. We hope this volume will help readers to expand the wisdom found in their own experience and discover for themselves and for others, a greater sense of freedom.

1 Introduction Kiran Chauhan and Emma Crewe PART I BEING LEADERS 2 From magico-mythical thinking to making promises and forgiving: A headteacher’s critique of transformational school leadership practice Keven Bartle 3 Acting into the unpredictable future: A project manager’s appreciation of a complexity perspective Leif Iversen 4 Leadership as inquiry: Rhythm analysis as a response to contemporary idealisations of freedom Rikke Horup 5 A dialogue with Adam Habib: Radical pragmatism – navigating social justice in universities in the neo-liberal era Adam Habib, with the editors PART II DEVELOPING LEADERS 6 A critical look at corporate leadership development Sharon Moshayof 7 Leading as practice: Expedition-based learning with NASA in the Canyons Sam Talucci 8 A group analytic approach to executive education: Lessons from the larger group Kevin Flinn 9 Can talent be managed? A critical perspective on the practice of talent management Tali Geiger Avigdor 10 A dialogue with Sewit Haileselassie Tadesse: Developing leadership Sewit Haileselassie Tadesse, with the editors 11 Final notes on the practice of leadership Emma Crewe and Kiran Chauhan

Kiran Chauhan is an organisational consultant at The King’s Fund, a health and care policy think tank in the UK. He is also a visiting lecturer at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, UK. Emma Crewe is Professor of Social Anthropology at SOAS, University of London, UK. She is also a visiting professor at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, UK. Chris Mowles is Professor of Complexity and Management at Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, UK.