Leadership and Literature – a conflict?

I am a skeptical consumer of astrology. A Gemini by birth, and therefore naturally dualistic, I find myself believing star signs if it provides a schema for thinking about ideas. In this case, I am pondering the edginess between leadership and the pursuit of literature.  As a leader, I value voice, opinion and influence in balance with listening and observing, believing that listening is an essential aspect of provoking others to think and lead, as well as a vital pathway to learning.  Yet as a researcher (inquirer), observing, listening, and inferring must occasionally quiet my leadership voice.

This has long been a dilemma for me. In studying schools, I found that when strong patterns emerged, I would place those patterns of behaviors into archetypes and schemas and deduce meanings, such as my understandings of “leadership capacity.” Once developed, I began to influence educators to think in terms of enhancing the leadership capacity of their schools and systems. I shifted from inquirer to activist.

Yet the challenge is to never let go of the inquiring self, the yearning to create knowledge as an essential aspect of leading. I am persuaded that the primary stance of a leader is to inquire and derive meanings from a setting or experience.  These two compose a dynamic constellation called learning.

The challenge of research here in Taos is to listen and observe and seek to understand the richly variant cultures, each respectful of each other, buoyant with their own interpretations of history and spirituality.  In introducing my purpose and myself. I report that I am here to research the third in a trilogy of historical novels. The first, Cairo Diary, can be found at the local bookstore, Moby Dickens. The second, Etruscan Evenings, is complete in its first draft. Found letters from D.H. Lawrence in Italy in the second novel have led me to Taos.  That is enough to open the gates of local knowledge.

Remember, Linda, to keep your voice soft and subtle.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 3rd, 2010 at 6:57 am and is filed under Education, Fiction, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.