The Contribution of Leaderful Practice To Leadership-as-Practice

Speaker: Joe Raelin (Northeastern University, Boston)

Introduction

In this presentation, Joe Raelin, the Asa Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education at Northeastern University in Boston, USA, will begin with a potentially controversial assertion – that to find leadership, we must look to the practice within which it is occurring. 

Accordingly, he joins forces with those who seek to deconstruct leadership from its identity as an individual trait and bolster its view as a lived process and product of those contributing to an endeavour of import who together decide on their responsibilities. Joe contributes to this practice perspective of leadership, now referred to as “leadership-aspractice” (L-A-P), by developing his own democratic ideological version, known as “leaderful practice.” Leaderful calls for the co-creation of community by all who are involved interdependently in its development. In the talk, after introducing both approaches, he will try to show how one – leaderful practice – contributes to the other – L-A-P! 

In recent times, a number of researchers have picked up the mantle to develop the emerging practice perspective, though their constructions are based on a diverse set of historical, disciplinary, and cultural traditions. Joe will point to some of these and will offer some of the research opportunities these models afford. From this point, there should be time to dedicate to questions of leadership development (when practice is at stake), as per the interest of the seminar participants.

About the speaker

Joe Raelin is an internationally-recognized scholar in the fields of work-based learning and leadership. He holds the Asa S. Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business in Boston where he is also professor of management and organizational development. He is the author of nine books, among which are: Creating Leaderful Organizations, Work-Based Learning, and The Leaderful Fieldbook.