By: Mary Mims on October 26, 2019
Often students studying for their college entrance exams (SAT), review words they believe will have a likelihood of appearing on their exams. Many schools write the SAT Word of the Day on white boards for students to learn in preparation for the test. Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries uses the word “obsequiousness” frequently, like…
By: Joe Castillo on October 26, 2019
Remember Sokal scandal? The particularity of Sokal is that it focuses its attacks on scientific impositions produced by humanities specialists and not on communities of natural scientists; it does not announce any news about the ethical behavior of scientific production. However, it has the merit of triggering the update of the debate on the scientific…
By: Wallace Kamau on October 26, 2019
Manfred F. R. Kets De Vries[1], a distinguished Professor of Leadership and Development and organizational change, an economist, management expert and a psychoanalyst, takes us through the pathology of the everyday life of a leader and illustrates it so well using the analogy of the rabbit hole. It’s the journey that takes an unexpected fall…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on October 25, 2019
This post is late as I was leading a retreat that was the completion of an eighteen-month mentoring process with 45 high capacity leaders and I am reflecting as I write. Through experiencing these four days together, I was especially struck by my comrades’ vulnerable stories of adversity they had been encountering. As I listened…
By: Simon Bulimo on October 25, 2019
RESEARCH ON LEADERSHIP FOR INSTITUTIONAL PERFORMANCE Leadership is a challenging issue in most institutions, organizations, Government offices, and Churches. Most institutions have come up with structures to be observed in leadership but the performance has not been achieved. For example, in churches membership is decreasing due to uncaring leadership. Many questions and cries have been…
By: Rhonda Davis on October 25, 2019
Growing up, I was always pretty unsettled by the story of Alice in Wonderland. My friends enjoyed reading the story and watching the movies about Alice’s unexpected trip into a strange land. They would talk about how fun it would be to fall down a rabbit hole. I thought it sounded terrible, and the story…
By: Sean Dean on October 25, 2019
I sat at the table across from the guidance counselor debating how to ask the question that was bouncing around my head. My friend Jessica was going through a rough time and I felt really sad. Not sad for her, but sad like she was sad – as if it were happening to me. This…
By: Digby Wilkinson on October 25, 2019
Why did I love Alice in Wonderland as a child and then as an adult? Well, if you want to know, then you must want to understand what it means to disappear down a rabbit hole. If you are so interested, then search Google for the metaphorical messages found in the book, Alice’s Adventures in…
By: Karen Rouggly on October 24, 2019
I’m not an official pastor. I’ve never been ordained or licensed, nor had “Pastor” in any aspect of any title I’ve held. I have worked for a church, and I was the children’s director, a long time ago. There are lots of places that I function in a pastoral role, however. I do it in…
By: Harry Edwards on October 24, 2019
Reading Manfred F.R. Kets De Vries’ Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership was like embarking on a backpacking trip. One had to slog through the initial rough terrain, enduring steep switchbacks before reaching breathtaking mountain-top vistas. Except I thought this book’s trailhead started in the dumps. I was almost tempted to use my newly acquired…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on October 24, 2019
Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries is the Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD (Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires based in Fontainebleau, France). He also was the first fly fisherman in Outer Magnolia (I am not sure how this was verified, but this declaration is critical to de Vries’ notable…
By: Jenn Burnett on October 24, 2019
Monday was a significant day for Canadians. Our federal elections revealed a considerable shift in party support across the nation over the last four years and deep differences determined by region. We elected a liberal minority government, maintaining a liberal prime minister, but have two provinces without a single liberal representative. The Bloc Québécois, a…
By: Andrea Lathrop on October 24, 2019
Kets de Vries has put together a variety of cautionary essays in Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership. It was helpful to remember his admission that he has been greatly affected by dystopian literature.[1] He writes about the dark side of leadership and yet still maintains a sense of hope. Perhaps his goal is that…
By: Nancy Blackman on October 24, 2019
Thinking about leadership and what kind of a leader I have been and am currently today, and what has been modeled to me is causing me to take pause. There seems to be a theme for the awareness of globalization and how it affects leadership – good and bad. This is true for our business.…
By: Shermika Harvey on October 24, 2019
In reading Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership: Leadership Pathology in Everyday Life by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, one can not help but contemplate the realities and effects of Christian leadership and influence in our great nation. It seems as, in our efforts to become enlightened, to find truth, to understand what’s happening…
By: Mario Hood on October 24, 2019
Kets de Vries is a Dutch management scholar and psychoanalyst, Professor of leadership development and organizational change at INSEAD, and consultant.[1]He takes all his various spheres of knowledge. Then he examines how people in positions of leadership project their personal neuroses[2] in his book Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership, Pathology in Everyday Life. The book is divided into two parts.…
By: Greg Reich on October 23, 2019
I am a connoisseur of leadership materials and have been for almost 30 years. It started in my late 20’s when I went to a pastors conference to listen to John Maxwell who at the time was the lead pastor of a large Methodist Church in San Diego, California. During that period, he was one…
By: Steve Wingate on October 23, 2019
I focused my reading on section three of our text, “The Variability of Leadership: What’s Core and Contingent” because in the pastorate the variables are many, the need to exegete the community and situations are critical, and the need to discern what is core for a life-giving community are very similar to sustainable businesses. Therefore,…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on October 23, 2019
Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries happens to be one of the worlds “leading thinkers on leadership, coaching, and the application of clinical psychology to individual and organizational change”[1] and his recent collection Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership is both highly readable and easily applicable. In fact, most of the chapters were “originally written as…
By: Jer Swigart on October 21, 2019
Leadership is a complex endeavor. With myriad definitions and various forms of practice, it’s a concept that conjures over 5.5 billion references on Google. Many of the books written on the topic help the individual identify what kind of leader she is, offer input into how she can overcome leadership obstacles, or advise on the…
