{"id":10325,"date":"2016-11-16T16:12:58","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T00:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=10325"},"modified":"2016-11-16T16:12:58","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T00:12:58","slug":"well-know-it-when-we-see-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/well-know-it-when-we-see-it\/","title":{"rendered":"We’ll Know It When We See It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Good<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0This week I was prepared to read yet another book on how to be a leader. The first line of Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice<\/em>, edited by Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana made it clear that this was not one of THOSE books. \u201cThis edited volume has one primary purpose \u2013 to stimulate serious scholarly research on leadership\u201d (3). I set the book aside and looked through the volumes of leadership literature in my bookcase and realized that what I have been reading are books about the way to DO leadership, rather than books that present scholarly research about leadership. I was intrigued (though not enough to read all 787 pages in detail, to be honest).<\/p>\n

This book is a collection of 26 essays about different types of leadership settings, theories, and practices. In each essay, a solid case is made for why we need more scholarly research in that particular area. In the first essay, the editors note that there are \u201cvirtually no doctoral courses on leadership\u201d (5). I\u2019m thrilled to be a part of an entire program that focuses on leadership, but the point is well taken that just six years ago (when this book was published), doctoral level courses were scarce, making it incredibly difficult to find solid research on leadership theories, practices, and models. As I worked my way through these essays, grabbing some of the most powerful thoughts and tagging the essays I want to go back and carefully digest later, I came to recognize that, as Glyyn and DeJordy put it, \u201cleadership is one of the world\u2019s oldest preoccupations\u201d (119), no one is really able to define it. Zupan references Supreme Court Justice Steward\u2019s struggle to define pornography (\u201cI\u2019ll know it when I see it\u201d) when explaining that scholars even struggle to develop a consistent model of leadership (265). HUH. No wonder we have so many \u201chow-to\u2019s\u201d and not so much in the way of overall leadership research.<\/p>\n

I do think this book is a great start toward changing that. Leadership is just way too big a concept to distill down to one, simple model or definition, in my opinion. I do think leadership is something we all know when we see, but defining it is a lot like explaining how you know you\u2019re really in love, it\u2019s just not that simple. What this book does well, though, is showing the vast spectrum of challenges and contexts in which leadership must be studied. In the chapter on Women and Leadership, Ely and Rhode provide in depth research into the challenges women face in leadership. The authors focus specifically on women in business and law, but I was able to recognize myself in their research from my time working in state government, education, and in the church. Besides the obvious allusions to what we just saw in the presidential election, Ely and Rhode painted a sort of dismal picture of the double binds and catch-22\u2019s women find ourselves in when leading. I can\u2019t tell you how many of my evaluations said that I needed to be careful not to appear too assertive in one section and not to worry so much about being liked in another section. One female executive taught me the mantra, \u201cI\u2019m not here to be liked, I\u2019m here to be respected and run this place efficiently.\u201d I took this to heart with my fellow managers and people up the line, but could never bring myself to do it with the people I supervised (which explains the \u201cbeing liked\u201d comment, I suppose). In that world, being called the \u201cdragon lady\u201d or \u201cb*tch on wheels\u201d was a badge of honor, but I really struggle to maintain my inner strength when I transitioned to church leadership. What started as toning down my assertiveness turned into a new uncertainty about my leadership abilities. It took me years to recapture the essence of my inner strength without allowing the pendulum to swing too far the other way. It still always feels like such a delicate balance.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I found the essay by Ely and Rhode to be as refreshing as it is depressing. Last week we read that we are all theologians (Grenz & Olson). The week before that we read that we are all leaders (Lowney). Frankly those books, while some of my favorites, left me feeling frustrated because they came from a uniquely male perspective. How can women claim we are all theologians if a large group is unwilling to be taught by women? How can women claim we are all leaders if a large group is unwilling to follow women? According to Ely and Rhode, they can\u2019t until real change begins to happen in organizations and in women themselves.<\/p>\n

\"rough<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0What I would love to see is the churches who do support women in ministry taking a lead in supporting culture innovations such as paid parental leave and child care, instituting them as culture leaders, and encouraging other organizations to do the same. \u00a0If churches do the work work to remove the psychological (internalized stereotypes) and logistical barriers that are holding our leaders back from living into their calling and potential, we can influence business and culture to do the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0This week I was prepared to read yet another book on how to be a leader. The first line of Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, edited by Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana made it clear that this was not one of THOSE books. \u201cThis edited volume has one primary purpose \u2013 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[414,35,195],"class_list":["post-10325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-khurana","tag-leadership","tag-nohria","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}