The "Worldly Leadership" Project
- uncovering ancient leadership wisdoms for a more sustainable world
As western leadership traditions struggle to find answers to major global problems of poverty, sustainability, economic stability and health, at The Leadership Trust we have launched a project which aims to review leadership wisdom and ask the questions, ‘Have we got it right? and ‘What are we missing?'
The majority of leaders across the globe today have been conditioned in some way by western and US-centric leadership theories and methodologies. This thinking has been driven through our global business schools and business cultures, often to the exclusion of non-western traditions and cultures and the valuable insights and wisdom these may have to offer.
Together with colleagues from around the world, we have launched a leadership research project which seeks to deepen understanding of leadership wisdom from different cultures and societies around the world. This leadership wisdom lies hidden in ancient, indigenous societies and cultures and is a highly dispersed body of knowledge, which, we argue, has hitherto been under-researched. We believe that a ‘worldly leader' today needs more than western / US centric leadership theories, and have set out to uncover these alternative wisdoms.
Our definition of ‘worldly' is shaped by Mintzberg and Gosling's Harvard Business Review article ‘The Five Mindsets of a Manager' (2003) which argues for a shift from a global to a ‘worldly' mindset. Instead of looking at the world from a distance, they propose a focus from close-up on the many different worlds within worlds that make up our globe.
Our project builds on this idea, by adding to leadership wisdom through insights into knowledge, ethics and action practised in different ways by different cultures, and in societies both ancient and modern around the world. This project seeks to uncover and disseminate radically different ways of thinking about the process of leadership that may help to address the complex challenges of today's world.
The project is led by Dr Sharon Turnbull, Director, Centre for Applied Leadership Research, The Leadership Trust Foundation, Ross-on Wye, UK, Sharon is also Visiting Professor at the Universities of Gloucestershire and Worcester, and at the International Research Institute for Sustainability at The University of Gloucestershire, as well as a Fellow of the CIPD. Our first Worldly Leadership symposium in partnership with the University of West of England will be held on 6-7 May, 2009 at The Leadership Trust, Ross-on-Wye, UK.
