The Leader Poet: Ethical Growth through Reflexive Poetic Engagement

  • Kae Reynolds (Speaker)

    Activity: Talk or presentation typesOral presentation

    Description

    The pursuit of personal growth has been widely considered a desirable process in leadership development. However, the capacity to improve ethical engagement remains enigmatic. Launching from Bendell and Little’s (2015) conceptualization of critical leadership studies and Edwards, Elliot, Iszatt-White, and Schledlitzki’s (2015) call for creative techniques, the proposed contribution assumes that rational, behavioural, knowledge and skills-based approaches to enhancing leadership capacity may fail to access deeper emotional experiences that can better facilitate profound inner transformation (van Buskirk, London, & Plump, 2015). We propose that poetry and dialogue can be employed as tools for productive and reproductive reflection, as well as for research in developing ethical leadership capacity. Building on interdisciplinary approaches of poetic inquiry (McCuliss, 2013), reflexivity (Cunliffe, 2009; Hibbert & Cunliffe, 2013), and the framework of spiritual anchors (Karakas, 2010) we present a dialogic, phenomenological exploration of leadership reflexive learning through the production and narration of poetry.
    Period7 Sep 2018
    Event titlePoetics of Leadership: Creativity, Art and Story in Enabling Meaningful Change
    Event typeConference
    LocationLancaster, United KingdomShow on map
    Degree of RecognitionInternational