Meaningful leadership learning and development ought to prepare students to productively contest the proper relationship between, and the inner-workings of, the social (civil society), political (governing institutions), and economic (systems of production and distribution) spheres.
This post, by Associate Professor of Civic Leadership for the Staley School of Leadership Studies, Brandon W. Kliewer, Ph.D., unpacks the three categories of leadership learning and development that were identified in the initial post of this series and points readers to additional resources appropriate for leadership learning and development committed to advancing the project of democracy.
1. Deepening our understanding of democracy and the contested nature of the “common good”
Leadership learning and development in a democracy should NOT just be about celebrating the possibility of a common good or learning that it occurs at the levels of individual, community, and society. Under the common good frame, leadership efforts are often assumed to move groups towards a shared consensus. This type of consensus is really only possible when groups are largely homogenous and already share a large degree of common ground. Dialogical approaches to leadership learning and development call for what Chantel Mouffe might refer to as “agonistic pluralism,” channeling conflict between groups with different values in a positive way.
Agonistic pluralism assumes social, political, and economic conflict is inevitable and the ability of groups to understand this conflict from common ground is increasingly small. As a result, leadership learning and development ought to emphasize elements that improve the conditions of disagreement. This is the turn that moves leadership activity to emphasize dialogic interactions and conditions that produce productive disagreement.
Accepting some of the assumptions of agonistic pluralism, leadership learning and development becomes a project of shoring up internal tensions within the practice of democracy and working to create the conditions for productive disagreement in social, political, and economic spheres.
Leadership learning and development needs to prepare learners to ask:
Who has the common good in social, political, and economic spheres been for? When are claims to a common good productively contested? In what ways has the common good frame failed to recognize members of society across dimensions of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ability? What is required to re-imagine the process associated with the common good frame to be more equitable, inclusive, and just? What is required to re-form the common good frame to accommodate an increasingly multicultural and value-plural society?
Summary: The common good frame alone is inadequate to serve as the theoretical basis of leadership learning and development in increasingly multicultural and value-plural Complex Adaptive Systems. Agonistic pluralism offers useful framing to make sense of disagreement, conflict, and varying types of difference.
2. Defining and practicing small “d” democratic teaching and learning
Leadership learning and development experiences must include a complete commitment to free speech, expression, and intellectual engagement. However, that commitment does not require creating space for perspectives that call into question the inherent dignity and equal standing of learners because of who they are as a person.
Perspectives that call into question someone’s inherent dignity as a human being or offer interpretations only possible within a white supremacist, ethno-nationalist, or authoritarian ideology, need to be acknowledged in the moment. Recognizing what Sigal Ben-Porath calls “dignitary harm” in the moment is a practice of dialogic democracy.
When dignitary harm is acknowledged in real-time and adequately addressed during the learning and development experience, each person can continue to contribute as a full participant recognized as having equal standing and moral worth. Acknowledging dignitary threat and maintaining dialogic conditions that recognize the inherent dignity of all participants will be extremely difficult to execute in practice, as practitioners will have to find a balance between navigating free speech claims and holding up the moral worth of all learners.
Summary: Dignitary harm undermines the full participation and undermines the inherent dignity of learners. Dialogic practice requires dignitary threat to be acknowledged in the moment and situated within the learning and development space. Working through dignitary harm in the moment requires dialogic capacity and contributes to in-the-room leadership learning and development necessary for democracy.
Leadership developers interested in exploring this focus area in more depth are invited to read the following resources:
Ben-Porath, Sigal. (2017) Free speech on campus
Bromwich, David (2020) The dying art of political persuasion
McCarroun, G. P., Jackson, G. R., McNaughtan, J. L., Olesova, L., Schmidt, G. B., and Adams, T. T. (2020). Centering dialogical and digital approaches in leadership education pedagogy: Priority 6 of the National Leadership Education Research Agenda 2020-2025.
Aikin, S. and Talisse, R. (2020) Political argument in a polarized age: Reason and democratic life
3. Rooting leadership practice in media literacy and group, system, and institutional dynamics
Leadership education ought to include media literacy and political argumentation that prepares learners to avoid basic logical fallacies. This will help to develop and offer reasons for their public positions, and to evaluate the rationale offered by others on the terms in which they are presented. Leadership learning and development methods, like Case-in-Point, Intentional Emergence, and Group Relations, which make group dynamics visible and create opportunities to unpack dialogic interaction and exchanges, prepare learners to be critical interpreters of public claims and positions. These are sense making learning and development methods that improve capacity to see systems through the lens of dialogical interaction. A commitment to navigating difference without domination should be part of leadership educator professional development and established as a hallmark of civic leadership development.
Summary: Dialogic learning associated with leadership learning and development prepares community to design interventions that can make micro-political interactions more equitable, inclusive, and potentially lead to more just systems and institutions.
Leadership developers interested in exploring this focus area in more depth are invited to read the following resources:
Allen, Danielle and Somanathan, Rohini. (2020) Difference without domination: Pursuing justice in diverse democracies
Raelin, J. (2020) Hierarchy’s subordination to democracy and how to out rank it
Giddens, A. (1994) Beyond left and right: The future of radical politics (Chapter 4 is most relevant to dialogic democracies)
Koonce, R and Von Loon, R. (2019) The dialogical challenge of leadership development
Consider following the National Association for Media Literacy Education on Twitter @MediaLiteracyEd
Crevani, L., Lindgren, M. and Packendorff, J. (2010). Leadership, not leaders: On the study of leadership as practices and interactions. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 26(1), 77-86.
Ospina, S. M., Foldy, E. G., Fairhurst, G. T., and Jackson, B. (2020). Collective dimensions of leadership: Connecting theory and method. Human Relations, 73(4), 441–463. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726719899714
