Worldly Leadership: alternative wisdoms for a complex world

Citation

Murphy, A. (2012), "Worldly Leadership: alternative wisdoms for a complex world", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 33 No. 8, pp. 797-798. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437731211280848

This 2012 publication is essentially a collection of chapters based on presentations made at the 2010 Worldly Leadership Symposium organised by the Leadership Trust UK and Bristol Centre for Leadership and Organisational Ethics at the University of the West of England, with 26 contributors from the UK, Australia, India, Turkey, USA, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Iran. The symposium working language was presumably English, which might account for the lack of papers from Europe other than the UK, even if European countries are “western” in the geographic sense and thus not recommended, perhaps even dismissed, as models to be followed!

The foreword usefully explains what the book defines as “worldly” in leadership and differentiates the term from “global” thus:

[…] worldliness is, as much an anything else, a mindset, a turn of mind or way of thinking about the world “out there”, and about one's relations with it […] and there is a subtle difference to ‘global’ which implies something more uniform.

The backgrounds of the selected authors are broadly organisational psychology, management and community development, giving a reasonable indication of what to expect across the 15 chapters. The short description of the book on the back cover, and the opening sentence of Chapter 1, claim that the book brings together “non‐western, indigenous and eastern perspectives” in search of leadership models that are not “global” – or not perhaps explicitly political! It claims very early on that “the majority of leaders around the globe to‐day have been contaminated in some way by western and US‐centric leadership theories and methodologies”. The rest of the first chapter goes on to argue for the positionalities of the symposium organisers and chapter authors – a very clear setting out of a particular stall which orients the reader towards the frames and arguments of the book as a whole. Fair enough!

Chapter two considers the importance of national languages in worldly leadership and argues that an individual's national language acts as a cultural and historic influence on the individual's thoughts and ideas about the world in general and about leadership in particular. It uses analysis of meaning for the term “leadership” in both English and German as a methodology to illustrate cultural influences and preferences about leadership qualities. While this is an interesting hypothesis the author rightly acknowledges the limitations of the exercise – which could be quite risky in areas of conflict where language is regarded as paralleling ethnic or cultural identity.

The subsequent chapter considers the nature of leadership at community level and the processes by which leaders imbibe the values and mores of the community. The authors took an ethnographic and oral accounts approach to data gathering for this interesting paper, the content of which could be usefully introduced into leadership training exercises.

The next chapter raises deep questions about the effectiveness, and indeed ethics, of introducing western‐style ideas and paradigms of leadership into African communities. It rightly questions if situated practice in international development is sufficiently culturally aware and open to considering local wisdoms. This, of course, is not a new area of scholarship, but it is one which could be usefully sustained in any context where external developers insinuate themselves into local contexts.

And so the chapters unfold, each with its own well‐selected gems of local wisdom and provocative challenges. The reader could comfortably move from chapter to chapter and read the entire book that way. Likewise each chapter is sufficiently discrete to be a satisfying read in itself. A reader might be looking for locally and culturally specific leadership tools, theories and insights. In this case there are useful chapters. Like me, a reader may be interested in both the research methodology in each chapter and in considering the findings against one's own personal frames of reference. Either way this book is a very useful, interesting and enjoyable read which will make a considerable impact on leadership training in the immediate future. The writing style is light‐touch but does not mask the serious intent. The chapter length is just sufficient to communicate the key message succinctly.

Well done to the symposium convenors and book editors! I certainly commend the book to university libraries, voluntary organisations and development agencies.