Not Knowing and Leadership

       While I believe it's inherently wrong, perhaps even harmful, to reduce education to a single overarching objective, I'm going to do so here for the sake of my argument, albeit with a caveat. That is, the objective I'm going to assert can play out in endless ways. It's the notion that a meaningful, purposeful education prepares one to lead. To lead by being who one is in whatever roles one plays. And just as we rethink what it means to be a leader, we need to rethink what it means to be educated and ready for that role.
       Last month I sent out the following Tweet:

Love this from @tomfriedman Thanks for Being Late: leadership now about multiplying credit. #isedchat pic.twitter.com/EFnbJwSEIL

— Mark Crotty (@crottymark) December 22, 2016

When I saw it, I found myself recalling The idea of level 5 Leadership from Jim Collins' work in Good to Great, particularly the notions of modesty, looking out the window to apportion credit, and setting up successors for even greater success. Then a couple of days ago, I ran across a Fast Company blog post titled "Why Real Leaders Have Strong Egos and That's a Good Thing." The author, S. Chris Edmonds, writes, "In practice, 'having an ego' simply means understanding the worldview through which you act--in order to get your own needs met as well as the needs of others. And that, of course, is in every leader's job description." He contends this "takes discovering how you--uniquely--can support both yourself and other people to go through the same process, to 'self-actualize' in reaction to all the messiness of business and life."
       It's not the time-honored definition of a leader. I also suspect it's not one overtly taught in most schools, although we talk about developing leaders. I think that's because of what our culture--and, by extension, schools--defines as being educated. We use terms such as smart and knowledgeable, as if there is a clear and easily defined threshold, and one must present it with surety and gusto, even bravado. Many people draw a certain security from that, wanting to believe our leaders know just where we are going and how to get us there.
       But in such volatile times--the age of accelerations, as Friedman calls it--is that really what we need? Just as Edmonds points out many of misunderstand the concept of the ego and should reconsider its role in healthy human development, let's reconsider knowledge/education and its link to leadership. The second most important knowledge may be the continual realization of just what we don't know, individually or collectively. And the leaders we need may have the first most important--a sense of how to help us all figure things out together.