Week 7: Leadership as product

Introduction

Leaders and leadership are both produced and sold to the world. The idea of leadership is sold commercially. This is most evident in the lucrative industry of leadership training programmes and the many books out there purporting to teach you how to be a fantastic leader.

However, leadership is also a product in a deeper, more ideological way. It is an idea of what a leader should look like and what they should be doing. Such ideas are shaped through decades of practice and production within workplaces and societies, but also in literature and film. Most commonly, leaders tend to be presented as white and male (Liu, 2021), with typical leadership behaviours resembling stereotypically masculine characteristics – ‘strength’, ‘decisiveness’, dispassionate, disembodied, and so on. It is important that you learn how to identify these productions of leaders and leadership so that you are better able to challenge them. Doing so opens up the possibility of alternative forms of leadership that are more energising and inclusive.

This week, you will begin by considering the value of critical race theory (CRT). This theory helps us see the often-hidden ways in which the privileging of whiteness and the diminishing of being Black operate, in the contexts of public institutions, businesses, and culture. You will learn how to utilise CRT as a way of dialling healthy conflict up or down. From this point you will explore the idea and practice of intersectionality. This is a theory that helps illuminate the various ways in which people experience oppression, but that also acts as a mindset for helping to expand the transformative possibilities of leadership.

Figure 1 Leadership is sometimes envisaged as a product shaped by predetermined ideas about what leaders should look and be like

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Figure 1 Leadership is sometimes envisaged as a product shaped by predetermined ideas about what leaders should look and be like

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• describe and critically assess leadership as something that is produced in society, culture and organisations
• understand and apply critical race theory to highlight ways in which whiteness is commonly privileged while Black leadership is diminished
• explore and apply a ‘conflict dial’ to enhance everyday practice
• understand and apply intersectionality to create more inclusive and empowering leadership.