Handbook for Teaching Leadership
The quotes below are from the editor’s introduction of a chapter titled “Creating Leaders: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model” written by Werner Erhard, Michael C. Jensen, and Kari Granger in the book “The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being”. The book is edited by Harvard Business School’s Scott Snook (Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School), Nitin Nohria (Dean, Harvard Business School, and George Baker Professor of Administration), and Rakesh Khurana (Dean of Harvard College, and Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development).
“How does one teach leadership in a way that not only informs them about leadership but also transforms them into actually being leaders? …this eclectic group of scholars argues for adopting a decidedly ontological approach to leadership education that promises to leave students actually being leaders. Contrasting their ontological approach described as being and action as experienced “on the court” with more traditional perspectives where leadership is observed and commented on “from the stands,” this chapter presents a rigorous theory of leadership education that begins and ends with the following bold promises to students:
- “You will leave this course being who you need to be to be a leader.
- “You will leave this course with what it takes to exercise leadership effectively.
“…by following a rigorous, phenomenologically based methodology, students have the opportunity to create for themselves a context that leaves them actually being a leader and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression.”
The chapter described above by the editors is available for download at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1681682.
