It’s the question with which I introduced my volume consisting of classics of leadership literature.* It’s also the question that, framed more broadly, has been top of educators’ mind for at least the last decade. What should anyone learn?
Our institutions of higher education have drifted away from teaching the liberal arts in favor of the hard sciences and the professions. Hence the constant concerns about depriving American students of what once was thought the heart of a first-rate undergraduate education.
Yesterday’s column by David Brooks in the New York Times was typical. He wrote that the way to save a “sad, lonely, angry and mean” America was to “to rediscover the humanist code.” To return to the idea that great books, poems, paintings, and pieces of music will nurture the better angels of our nature. Will nudge us toward clarity, empathy, decency and, yes, “wisdom.”
For years I have argued somewhat similarly. I have argued that the way leaders ought to learn is first to get a good education; then to be properly trained; and finally to be developed lifelong – to engage in continuous learning.**
What might a good leadership education consist of? Ideally, it would require at least a year steeped in the humanities – in, for example, history, philosophy, and literature. But… here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be a year. It can be a month or even a week. For a leadership learner having some exposure to the humanities is much, much better than having none! Every single leadership course and curriculum, no matter how short or long, no matter how general or specific, should have some exposure to what Brooks calls “the humanist code.”
How’s this to start?
- Short readings from Confucious, Machiavelli, and Arendt.
- Short viewings of David’s “Napoleon Crossing the Alps’ and Picasso’s “Guernica.”
- Short discussions about Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments,” King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and Mandela’s “I Am Prepared to Die.”
- Short hearings of “Le Marseillaise” and “We Shall Overcome.”
How’s that to start? Great!
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*Barbara Kellerman, ed., Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence, McGraw-Hill, 2010.
** Barbara Kellerman, Professionalizing Leadership, Oxford University Press, 2018.