The Ontological Foundations of Leadership and Performance: Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership

This course in developmental production is a collaborative work between Werner Erhard, Dr. Michael Jensen, Steve Zaffron and Kari Granger.

The course is a leadership laboratory where instructors work with the participants to create direct access to the ways of being, thinking, planning, and action required to be a leader and to exercise leadership effectively – in any situation, and no matter the circumstances.

This course has been taught since 2005 at the University of Rochester Simon School of Business to MBA, PhD, and Executive Development Program students, faculty, administrators, alumni and outside corporate executives. It is currently in the curriculum for undergraduates and faculty at the United States Air Force Academy.  In August 2008, the course was also taught to some 250 senior management consultants from 66 separate firms.

The content and the learning/teaching method employed in this course is based on a new ontological model of leader and leadership. Rather than studying and trying to emulate the characteristics, styles, and actions of noteworthy leaders or to communicate knowledge about leader and leadership, this new model of leadership has been specifically designed to provide participants with direct access to being a leader and to the effective exercise of leadership.  An epistemological mastery of a subject leaves you knowing.  An ontological mastery of a subject leaves you being.

The course employs a unique contextual framework (structure for analysis) that distinguishes what leader and leadership are, and does so in a way that creates direct access to being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership.  This specification of what leader and leadership actually are is also intended to contribute to the foundation for a true science of leadership. As a consequence of this contextual framework, the central role that the future plays in being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership are made clear, and how one kind of future constrains one and the people one is leading, and another kind of future frees one and the people one is leading for breakthrough results. 

Course participants are provided with a new and powerful model of integrity; it is demonstrated that integrity as it exists in this new model is the foundation on which leadership is built.  Participants discover that integrity, as it exists, in this new model is a necessary condition for maximum individual, group, and organizational performance.  

The course makes clear the difference between management and leadership, the difference between the exercise of authority or decision rights and the exercise of leadership, and the difference between being in a “leadership position” and actually being a leader. It highlights the fact that being a leader and exercising leadership effectively does not require one to have authority or even to be in a “leadership position”.

The pedagogical method employed is “transformative learning”.  The course draws on Jack Mezirow and Associates Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress (chs. 1-3).  In transformative learning we seek to become aware of our context of interpretations and beliefs, and to be critically reflective of our underlying assumptions.  In transformative learning, our prevailing worldview and frames of reference (which are almost always invisible to ourselves) are uncovered thereby enabling us to reconstruct them such that more clarity and power is available to us. 

Quoting Warren Bennis (2002) and Joseph Rost (1993) who conclude respectively:

“It is almost a cliché of the leadership literature that a single definition of leadership is lacking.” (Bennis,p.2)
and
“The scholars do not know what it is they are studying, and the practitioners do not know what it is they are practicing.” (Rost, p.8) “…authors have tended to confuse their readers with contradictory conceptual frameworks, their theories and models have not added up to any meaningful conclusion about the nature of leadership.” (Rost, p.180)

Links:

Course Materials for: The Ontological Foundations of Leadership and Performance: Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership - A New Model

Course Introduction: The Ontological Constraints Limiting Access to Leadership: What You Must Take Away to Create Access to Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership

Simon School Offers Leadership Seminar Series with Finance Pioneer Michael C. Jensen

Jensen - Vanto Group Leadership Course, Simon School of Business, University of Rochester

Fourth Annual Leadership Seminar Led by Professors Michael Jensen, Werner Erhard, Steve Zaffron, and Allan Scherr

Harvard Business School Working Papers Collection

References:
Warren Bennis, 2007, Introduction to the Special Issue “The Challenges of Leadership in the Modern World”, American Psychologist
Rost, Joseph C., 1993, Leadership for the Twenty-First Century. Westport, CT: Praeger. 
Jack Mezirow and Associates, 2000, Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress: Jossey-Bass Inc.