Creating Leaders: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model

THE HANDBOOK FOR TEACHING LEADERSHIP, Chapter 16, Scott Snook, Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, Dean of Harvard College, eds., Sage Publications, 2011

Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper 11-037

Barbados Group Working Paper No. 10-10

Simon School Working Paper Series No. FR 10-30

72 Pages Posted: 27 Oct 2010 Last revised: 11 Nov 2020

See all articles by Werner Erhard

Werner Erhard

Independent

Michael C. Jensen

Harvard Business School; SSRN; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI); Harvard University - Accounting & Control Unit

Kari L. Granger

Kari Granger, LLC

Date Written: May 10, 2013

Abstract

The Editors of the “Handbook for Teaching Leadership” (where this paper appears as Chapter 16) ask the following in their introductory chapter: “How does one teach leadership in a way that not only informs [students] about leadership but also transforms them into actually being leaders?” (p. XXIV).

The sole objective of our ontological/phenomenological model for creating leaders is to leave students actually being leaders and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression. By “natural self-expression” we mean a way of being and acting in any leadership situation that is a spontaneous, intuitive and effective response to what one is dealing with.

In creating leaders we employ the ontological discipline (from the Latin ontologia “science of being”). The ontological model of leader and leadership opens up and reveals the actual nature of being when one is being a leader and opens up and reveals the source of one’s actions when exercising leadership. And, ontology’s associated phenomenological methodology (explained in 2 below) provides actionable access to what has been opened up.

The being of being a leader and the actions of the effective exercise of leadership can be accessed, researched, and taught either:

1) as being and action are observed and commented on “from the stands”, specifically as these are observed by someone, and then described, interpreted and explained (third-person concept of), or

2) as being and action are actually lived and experienced real time “on the court”, specifically the way being and action are actually present for the player herself (first-person experience of). As a formal discipline, the “on the court” method of accessing being and action (that is, accessing being and action as they are actually lived) is named phenomenology.

In short, an epistemological mastery (a from-the-stands mastery) of a subject leaves one knowing.

An ontological mastery (an on-the-court mastery) of a subject leaves one being.

Of course the students themselves do not need to study ontology; they only require the access to being and the source of action that is provided by the ontological perspective. And, they don’t need to study phenomenology; they only need to be provided with the actionable pathway to the being of being a leader and the actions of the effective exercise of leadership made available by the phenomenological methodology.

For the Slide-Deck Textbook for the course and the entire 1290 pages of the course materials as the course was taught in Cancun, Mexico in October 2019. see: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1263835.

The body of this paper is 26 pages long. It is followed by appendices which present the participant course evaluations of each of the courses delivered by the authors in various university and public venues.

Keywords: Leader, Leadership, Ontology, Phenomenology, Context, Occur, Correlate, Natural Self Expression

JEL Classification: M1

Suggested Citation

Erhard, Werner and Jensen, Michael C. and Granger, Kari L., Creating Leaders: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model (May 10, 2013). THE HANDBOOK FOR TEACHING LEADERSHIP, Chapter 16, Scott Snook, Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Khurana, Dean of Harvard College, eds., Sage Publications, 2011, Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper 11-037, Barbados Group Working Paper No. 10-10, Simon School Working Paper Series No. FR 10-30, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1681682

Michael C. Jensen (Contact Author)

Harvard Business School ( email )

Soldiers Field
Negotiations, Organizations & Markets
Boston, MA 02163
United States

HOME PAGE: http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=ovr&facId=6484

SSRN ( email )

United States

HOME PAGE: http://ssrn.com/author=9

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
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European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

Harvard University - Accounting & Control Unit ( email )

Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
United States

Kari L. Granger

Kari Granger, LLC ( email )

1364 Hyland Drive
Evergreen, CO CO 80439
United States

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