Leadership, Then & Now | Part 1 by Dr Richard Claydon.

Happy New Year. Kung Hei Fat Choi!

To open the 2024 DD season, I’d like to reflect on what I’ve learned from DD regulars over the last three years, and how I’m trying to incorporate that learning into my work. Over the last few months, I’ve been seeing if there are any deep patterns of leadership within Ancient, Classical, Renaissance, Enlightenment and Modern leadership texts that I can use as a foundation for my thinking on the potential evolution of 21st Century leadership practice.

In this DD, I’d like to explore some patterns from Ancient China, India and Africa, and Classical Athens and Sparta. You might be very surprised at how deeply they still frame today’s leadership developments and challenges. I was.

The themes:
• Ancient Leadership: Harmony, Ambiguity, Balance & Poise
• Classical Leadership: Why do we look to Athens and not Sparta for our inspiration
• Philosophical Leadership: How to lead and how to cope with bad leadership

I’d especially like to thank Gemma Jiang, Navarun Bhattachyra and Nicola Robins for the intellectual prods that pushed me in this direction.

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.

Rewatch DD 2023.

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