Ironic Leadership: Performance Art or Piss Artistry? - Dr Richard Claydon

Irony. It’s just taking the piss, isn’t it.

Not really.

In William Torbert’s stage-based leadership consciousness model, the ironist is the highest stage people can achieve.

In Firms of Endearment, the prerunner of Conscious Capitalism, the ironic manager was identified as at the heart of world class organisational performance.

In Gideon Kunda’s Engineering Culture, the entire mode of working in the prototype high tech culture was described as being ironic.

What do they mean by this?

How has irony become attached to the notion of high performance?

And is there anything of worth in irony that you can apply in your work?

In this DD, we’ll dive deeply into the concepts of irony and ironic leadership.

• The Ironic Perspective: how to view the world through an ironic lens
• The Ironic Performance: how to effectively communicate ironic insights
• The Ironic Personality: how to live an entire life coloured by irony

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.