Foundations of Leadership Thought Part 1: Hegel by Dr Richard Claydon

How do you teach leadership? It’s a question that has been front of mind for many years. 

• Some teach models. However, they don’t accurately capture reality. 
• Others use case studies and biographies. However, they don’t generalise. 

While both can be useful doorways into leadership, they are not enough in themselves. You can include them as parts, but assuming they are the whole is wrong and dangerous. 

The style must also reflect the subject. Those learning to lead must actually lead, which is difficult when they are following a course. How do you embed that dynamic into your training? 

My solution?

To teach leadership as a two-hundred-year-old conversation, and for people’s personal leadership approaches to emerge from BOTH being exposed to AND contributing to this conversation. This way, it becomes possible to adapt content to reflect the direction participants are taking it, meaning they change the conversation, shape their own development, and experience their own leadership in action. *

In this Drinking Dialogue, we will examine the origins of this conversation by looking at the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - the last great systems builder of Western philosophy.  

Hegel provided a stunning analysis of how self and system dynamically interact, and how this interaction generates leadership capacity. We will explore three elements of this dynamic - Gestalt, Gestaltung, and Geist. 

• Gestalt: The dialectic tensions of society and organisation, and how gestalt awareness engenders stoicism, scepticism and widespread dissatisfaction
• Gestaltung: The courage to tap into this unhappy awareness and start acting on and in the system in ways that can shape and adapt it
• Geist: The spirit, sense and mind of leadership - how to energise and illuminate others; how to become hyper-sensitive to emerging conditions; and how to make reflective decisions at speed

Come along and become part of this two-hundred-year-old conversation.

*  DD regulars will understand exactly how this method works.  

Dr Richard Claydon is the co-founder of EQ Lab, and the designer of the Future of Leadership module at Macquarie Business School’s Global MBA Program (ranked #6 globally by CEO Magazine).

He was awarded the highest achievable marks for a Ph.D in behavioural science. A Harvard Top-200 Management expert and business columnists for the Guardian newspaper have described this research as “a touchstone for the future work in management and organisation”, “outstanding in daring imagination” and “at the forefront of modern discussion and debate.”

Richard is a tier one tennis player, have coached tennis professionally, and also designed the tactics creator for the multi award-winning and world-leading management simulation, Football Manager.