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Chapter 1 The Essence of Learning Leadership

Think of the word leader. Dont spend more than five seconds letting images flit through
your consciousness. What pictures does this word conjure up? Do you see a man? Is
that man adopting a posture that seems strong, confident, bold, assertive? And what do
those attributes look like in your mind? Is the person youre thinking of White? Is she or
he wearing a suit or uniform? Stephen Preskill grew up in the United States and the
leader who most quickly jumps to mind for him is Franklin Delano Roosevelt declaring
to the American public that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Stephen
Brookfield grew up in England and a picture of the cigar-chomping Winston Churchill
bedecked in military regalia jumps into his head. If you are a White person (as each of us
is) the chances are you have been so successfully socialized by patriarchy and White
supremacy that these are the sorts of people you will think of. If you are a Union
member or Socialist you may also think of other people Eugene Debs, or Aneurin
Bevin for example. If you are African American, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, Paul
Robeson, Ella Baker, Marcus Garvey, Septima Clark, W.E. B. Du Bois, Angela Davis or
Martin Luther King may be the names that pop up. Or perhaps women such as Eleanor
Roosevelt, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, or Margaret Thatcher suggest themselves.
Interestingly, on the basis of a wholly unscientific polling one of us did of his women
friends and colleagues (all of whom had graduate degrees, knew of the insidious nature of
patriarchy and considered themselves feminists) not a single woman was mentioned in
the first three names of leaders each of these women gave. Churchill, Kennedy and
Stalin were the most frequent.

Our contention in this book is that the images of leadership, indeed the very words
leader and leadership, have been culturally framed to equate effective leadership with
authoritarian control imposed by those at the apex of a hierarchy. A very smooth and
seamless ideological manipulation has ensured that those we automatically think of as
leaders are precisely the people who represent the interests of the status quo males from
upper class families who function as protectors of wealth and privilege. One need only
think of the Bush dynasty in the United States that in the last 20 years has produced two
Presidents and the governor of a swing state that ensured the election of his brother to the
Presidency in the face of allegations of serious electoral fraud. The Kennedy dynasty had
the project of combating Jim Crow practices forced on them by events, but they too were
drawn from the same narrow spectrum.

Churchill, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush, Stalin these figures represent a distressingly
narrow view of how people in organizations and communities get things done. According
to this view leaders are highly directive people who relay commands to their
subordinates, expecting them to be carried out with dispatch and efficiency. Typically,
leaders are also the people who have titles - CEO, President, Chairman of the Board, and
Principal being some of the familiar designations. In this perspective leaders are thought
to be ahead of their followers and in some important way distant from them. It is no
accident that the Kennedys were portrayed as living within a magical bubble (Camelot) in
much the same way as monarchies have been portrayed throughout history. Leaders are
presented as being somehow higher, smarter, and more advanced than their followers
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with a breadth of experience and depth of wisdom they use to help followers see the light
of the leaders more progressive vision. Yet, ironically, leaders are also very often
associated with maintaining the status quo, with creating environments where stability
and harmony are the highest values.

The conventional concept of leadership comprises the four elements critiqued by Raelin
(2003) in his analysis of a culture that prizes and practices directive, top-down leadership.
In Raelins view people automatically assume effective leadership to be serial (exercised
by one person at a time who passes the baton on to the next generational leader),
individual (only ever exercised by a single individual), controlling (fiercely pursuing the
leaders vision of how others should live and how a community or organization should
function) and dispassionate (viewing as necessary collateral damage the wrecked lives
of those individuals, cultures or communities that are uprooted, excluded or
disenfranchised in the pursuit of a set of desired goals). Conventionally defined
leadership is practiced by a single, distinct figure positioned at the top of a hierarchy,
what Foucault (1980) called sovereign power. That person directs the organization or
movements operations, relying minimally on subordinates, and imposing his or her
vision on others. He or she is determined to be perceived as unemotional, confident,
unwaveringly commanding, and bordering on arrogant. Separate and mysterious,
conventional leaders avoid getting too close to their constituents so as to keep them
subordinate. Our contention is not only that leadership doesnt have to be this way, but
that it cant be sustained this way if meaningful and lasting changes for the common good
are going to occur. In an era in which people routinely expect to be lied to by those in
power we need leaders who strive to place learning at the center of their work. Such
leaders know in their bones that they have much to learn and that the people likely to be
their best teachers are the co-workers they see and collaborate with everyday. They also
see encouraging the learning of others as the central responsibility of leadership.

Our assumptions about leadership are (as you will no doubt have gathered by now)
radically different from the conventional model. Our chief claim is that leadership can be
practiced by anyone in any kind of movement, community, organization or institution. It
is part anarchist, part collective, part democratic, and constantly rotating. Leadership is
not necessarily a function of a hierarchy or bureaucracy, nor does a single person in a
position of authority have to exercise it. It is, rather, a relational and collective process in
which collaboration and shared understanding are deemed axiomatic to getting things
done. Leadership has little to do with formal authority or where one is in the chain of
command, and a great deal to do with forming and sustaining relationships that lead to
results that are in the common interest. Furthermore, leaders are not necessarily the most
prominent or vocal members of a group; they are often quite deferential, leaving space
for others to voice their concerns and contribute their ideas.

Leadership as it is explored here encourages change, even pushes for it, especially when
the status quo demeans people or fails to provide opportunities for them to employ fully
their experience and talents. The leaders the two of us prize most (once weve done some
ideological detoxification on the automatic images that come to our minds) are critically
aware of our failures as a society to serve all people well. For Stephen Preskill a prime
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example would be Ella Baker because in her quest to make American society more just
and equal she never drew attention to herself, acknowledged the thousands of others who
contributed to this ongoing struggle, and demanded that power be centered in the group,
not the individual. For Stephen Brookfield it would be Paul Robeson or Nelson Mandela
because of the strength they displayed in their unwavering commitment to combating
White supremacy and global capitalism (in Robesons case) and White Supremacy and
the complete economic and political disenfranchisement of his countrys majority
population (in Mandelas case). Both men paid a heavy price for their commitment. For
Robeson it was the loss of livelihood, public vilification for much of his adult life and
increasing debilitating depression (which his son argues was the result of the CIA and
FBIs administration of drugs and covert encouragement of treatment by electro-shock
therapy). For Mandela the price was spending most of his adult life in prison unable to
see his children and then grandchildren growing up, and unable to grow old with his wife.

The leaders we are interested in know that a vision for more humane and just
communities is desperately needed and that leadership entails people coming forward
who are able and eager to work with others to create such communities. They also know
that leadership is often facilitative rather than directive and that good leaders learn to
create environments conducive to peoples growth and inviting of everyones
participation in the fashioning of change to promote the public interest. But, more than
anything else, the leaders we are interested in are learners. They revere learning, they
learn from their experience and from their co-workers, and they are constantly sharing
with others the fruits of what they have learned. They also regard as paramount the
responsibility to encourage the learning of others.

Because leaders who learn know how beneficial and broadening learning is for everyone
they work to create mechanisms, structures, strategies and opportunities to support
individual and communal learning. Although they express a variety of motives for
wanting to lead, these learning leaders communicate clearly and often that learning isnt
only a means to some end; sometimes it is an important end in itself. Co-workers who are
leaders can be threatening to entrenched administrators since they often use cogent, well-
prepared arguments to challenge things as they are. They have an excellent grasp of the
relevant facts and they know how to use them to make the best possible case for how
things might be different. Under the best of circumstances, such leaders are invaluable to
organizations and institutions. Yet, because they seek to question and even overthrow the
status quo, those who resist change view them with suspicion, particularly the
unrepresentative minority whose interests are threatened. On the other hand, those who
lead by virtue of learning encourage and support such co-workers and find multiple ways
for them to have an impact on the direction of their shared enterprise.

What are some of the ways learning leaders demonstrate their commitment? Well, they
listen with close attention, observe with discerning eyes, and read texts of all kinds -
including the texts of peoples experiences - with critical acumen. They are constantly on
the alert for new information, novel insights, deepened understanding. For these learning
leaders, everything learned is potentially grist for the leadership mill. They try constantly
to make connections between what they have learned, the issues that matter to them most,
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and the goals they are trying to achieve as leaders. Nothing is too trivial or insignificant,
at least at first, to be taken into account and used in some way to lead more effectively or
to bring about change more proactively. Such leaders do not hide their enthusiasm for
what they are learning either. They eagerly and overtly share their reflections on
experience, what they are reading, what new ideas they are coming up with, what
interesting connections they are making and how they are revising earlier ideas and
practice because of new learning. They do this, in part, because they are unabashed lovers
of learning. But they also do so for strategic effect, to stir up their co-workers excitement
about their own learning and its potential for stimulating creativity and furthering change.

The raison detre for modeling a public commitment to learning is to induce co-workers
to launch their own learning projects. Everything that learning leaders do should be
linked in some way to supporting other peoples learning. This includes providing
resources, bringing compatible collaborators together, connecting learning to purposeful
and meaningful work (paid and unpaid), and offering ongoing incentives for that learning
to continue. These actions are intended to induce some change deemed important by the
community, movement or organization. This kind of intrinsic reinforcement should never
be underestimated by learning leaders, particularly when it is linked to proof that an act
of learning is contributing to something that matters to the community as a whole. Most
significant of all outcomes perhaps are the long-term relationships that occur as a result
of working together on learning projects. Such relationships not only increase ones
willingness to learn and lessen ones vulnerability about admitting ignorance, they also
fuel future projects and public work. As relationships deepen, the distinction between
leader and follower blur, with so-called positional leaders and followers freely
exchanging roles as leader-follower, teacher-student, and speaker-listener. In this way
shared, openly displayed learning is beneficial to the whole community.

Foundations of Learning Leadership

The idea that leaders should place learning at the center of their practice is not new or
original. Learning as a defining component of leadership has been practiced and
conceptualized in all kinds of social movements, revolutions and organizations. In this
section we review five of the most frequently cited models of leadership that we feel
contribute to this idea; transformational, symbiotic, developmental, servant and organic
leadership.


Transformational Leadership
The relational emphasis we outline above is central to James MacGregor Burnss (1978)
original formulation of transforming leadership. In contrast to transactional leadership
(which he characterized as an exchange that is temporary, instrumental, and non-
binding), transforming leadership signifies a long-term relationship between leaders and
followers that produces significant change, raises leaders and followers to higher levels
of motivation and morality, and encourages followers to assume leadership roles
themselves. Transactional leadership leaves the power relations between leaders and
followers unchanged. Transforming leadership produces a climate in which followers are
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constantly becoming leaders by virtue of the ideas they put forward, the actions they take,
and the learning they engage in. Burns indicates that one of the markers of
transformational leaders is their capacity to learn from their followers, to be willing
students to their followers teachings. Such leaders have developed the seemingly
paradoxical ability to lead by being led (117) as they unite with followers to pursue
goals that transcend self-interest and that seek to further some notion of the common
good.

Symbiotic Leadership
Building on this reciprocal conception of leadership Matusak (1997) contends that the
relationship of leader and follower is symbiotic; that each role benefits greatly the
interdependent nature of the relationship; that the leader today may be the follower
tomorrow (p.27). For her leadership is at its best when leader and led feel inspired and
energized to do great things together, to scale new heights of collective accomplishment,
and to share roles of responsibility that reflect much more positively on the group as a
whole than on any one individual. Leaders who learn carefully cultivate a dynamic in
which everyone enjoys the opportunity to be a leader at least some of the time. This
dynamic is collective and requires a partial submerging of the self inside the group, a
losing of oneself for the sake of the whole. It means that anyone can contribute at any
time as leader, follower, innovator, protg, mentor, guide, witness, or scribe. All of
these roles are necessary and valued, and who does what is irrelevant as the group
becomes a collective unit. In a collective dynamic individual interests are fused with a
sense of the common good and identity is derived from participation in a shared,
mutually satisfying endeavor.

Developmental Leadership
Belenky, Bond and Weinstock (1997) augment these notions of reciprocity and
collectivity in their book A Tradition That Has No Name. Here they explore the
implications of what they label developmental leadership, a tradition that focuses on
quietly and self-effacingly developing the leadership potential in others. Developmental
leadership targets the silenced and overlooked members of communities, to help them
find their voice and take a more active role in shaping their individual and collective
destinies. Enthusiastically open to the contributions of others, especially those who have
repeatedly been displaced and ignored by the majority, developmental leaders are
disciplined learners, eager to reexamine old assumptions and reconsider ingrained
practices. They take the lead in questioning, reevaluating as they try to see things from
new vantage points and working tirelessly to get others to do the same. They are such
good listeners, because they see themselves learning from everyone, no matter how
young, inexperienced or silenced a person might be (Belenky, Bond and Weinstock,
p.272). Developmental leaders value constructed knowing, the process by which groups
of people come to new understandings about themselves and the larger world through the
give and take of spirited dialogue. Such leaders are drawn from both genders, with Myles
Horton (founder and creator of the Highlander Folk School) an exemplar of the process.

Servant Leadership
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Still another leadership practice that underscores learning leadership is Servant
Leadership. The servant leader stands in sharp contrast to the conventional leader. The
conventional leader aspires to lead because of a need for power or material wealth or for
some other extrinsic desire. Such a leader is a leader-first. The test of such leadership
may be found in such things as productivity figures, movement up school league tables,
or the volume of legislation signed into law. The servant leader is a servant-first and
reluctantly accepts a leadership role in order to support and assist those who remain
unserved. The test of the servant leaders effectiveness is the extent to which followers
actual needs (which may differ markedly from official definitions of what these needs
are) are realized. Greenleaf (1977), one of the leading articulators of this theory, says that
the key question for the servant leader is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they,
while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely
themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the least privileged in society;
will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived? (13-14).

With regard to servant leadership we caution against an overemphasis on autonomy since
it can undercut the collective dynamic referred to earlier, but we affirm the importance
placed on furthering the interests of those most disregarded by the majority. We are also
aware that there are situations in which meeting peoples felt and expressed needs is the
last thing we should be doing. In a consumer society in which people judge their own,
and others, worth by the amount of goods they possess, we need to challenge the need to
engage in the pursuit of ever more expensive designer possessions. In a racist society the
last thing we need to do is affirm White supremacy by supporting the needs of those who
wish to overturn affirmative action which they view as discriminating against White
males.

One of the defining qualities of servant leaders is their inclination to listen first.
Listening, according to Greenleaf, is a discipline that must be steadfastly practiced and,
despite lack of immediate results, consistently employed. It is the central practice of
servant leaders because true listening builds strength in other people (17). On a related
note, servant leaders use words sparingly. They have learned how inadequate speech can
be, how feebly it captures the richness of lived experience. Their art is learning how to
say just enough, without excess or embellishment, to help the listener connect the words
that are spoken to her or his own experience. OToole (1996) argues that even some
leaders typically viewed as distant and charismatic were noted for their listening abilities
and for their willingness to take dissent seriously. He makes this case for such
Rushmorean figures as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and, to a lesser extent, Theodore
Roosevelt. OToole observes that these presidents listened to their followers and
encouraged dissenting opinion among their advisors. Accordingly, they all chose their
cabinets carefully to reflect a broad range of opinion and used them to test ideas, explore
all sides of issues, and to air the full range of opinion (p. 29).

Matusak (1997, pp. 87-88) adds that leaders who listen must do so fully and genuinely.
When leaders are authentic listeners, they remain open to new and different ideas. They
convey that they believe what another person has to say is important, that they are
interested in it even if they disagree with what is said. They strive to understand this
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persons rationale and realize that it is valid within the speakers frame of reference. This
is a leadership implementation of the critical theorist, Jurgen Habermas ideas regarding
the four validity claims that must be met for communication to be authentic (Habermas,
1973). Habermas believes to communicate authentically speakers strive to use language
that stands the best chance of being understood by hearers; this is the claim of
comprehensibility. Authentic speakers also do their best to give the fullest possible
information about the matter under consideration; this is the claim of truth. The extent to
which speakers follow the rules of talk that prevail in a discussion community is a third
feature of authentic speech; this is the claim of rightness. Rightness is crucial since
communication is impossible without people observing the intuitively understood norms
and rules governing speech, the sort of broadly accepted road map of talk. Finally, we
need to know that the people speaking to us are sincerely interested in making themselves
understandable and in understanding us in return; this is the claim of authenticity. To
Habermas and Matusak, meeting these claims is crucial to establishing and sustaining
trust.

Embedded in the practice of servant leadership is a criterion by which societies are
judged. For Greenleaf, caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each
other, is the rock upon which a good society is built (49). The test of the servant leader
is the extent to which that person is generous and giving, so that her effect is an
enlargement of kindness and joy. At the center of such leadership are the intertwined
notions of collectivity and compassion. Compassion is, after all, a collective
phenomenon, rooted in the sense that others flourishing and ones own happiness are
inseparable. But caring and compassion are not to be sprayed indiscriminately; rather,
they are to be directed specifically at the most marginalized, underserved and despised
sector of the populace.

Servant leaders view diversity as a strength to be savored and appreciated, not a problem
to be overcome. For De Pree (1989) an understanding of the diversity of peoples gifts,
talents, and skills underlies every interaction and decision. Understanding diversity
includes knowing how diminished we all are when voices go unheard and how important
it is, to begin to think about being abandoned to the strengths of others (p. 9). A
thoughtful approach to diversity calls on us to celebrate the talents and gifts that each
person brings to the community, and challenges leaders, in particular, to learn that the
art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling (p. 10) those talents and
gifts for the benefit of all. Again, in servant leadership the importance to genuine
diversity of the least heard voices is paramount.

Organic Leadership
The idea that all have something to contribute to leadership is at the heart of the thought
of the Italian political activist, Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was a founder member of the
Italian Communist Party, a journalist for socialist newspapers, and a strategist for the
factory council movement in 1920s Turin, which advocated direct workers control of
industries such as the Fiat motor company. In 1926, while a Communist deputy in the
Italian parliament, he was arrested by the fascist government (Mussolini had come to
power in 1922) and placed under police supervision. In May 1928 he was tried as a
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political prisoner, with the prosecutor reportedly declaring for twenty years we must
stop this brain from working. He spent the rest of his life in prison, interspersed with
brief spells in hospital, until dying in 1937 in a sanitarium days after his full release
finally became legal. There could hardly be a more dramatic illustration of Zinns (1990)
observation that how we think is a matter of life and death (p. 2).

Gramsci developed the concept of the organic intellectual to describe the kind of people
we profile in this book. Where he talks about organic intellectuals we talk of organic
leaders leaders who are drawn from a movement or community, who remain tied to it
even though their work may take them out of it, and who spend their life fighting a war of
position (as Gramsci called it) on their groups behalf. Organic intellectuals were elites
of a new type, which arise directly out of the masses, but remain in contact with them (p.
340). These leaders are able to formulate and communicate a strategy for political
revolution in terms that the working class or racial minorities can understand, since they
are themselves formed by working class culture or their racial membership. The end
result of this effort is the establishment of a new hegemony reflective of working class
interests.

Building on Marx, Gramsci contends that unless a cadre of organic leaders emerges to act
as catalysts for revolutionary change, a group, class or race will remain one in itself (one
tied together by virtue of habit and culture) rather than one for itself (with a self-
conscious awareness of its interests that is held by the majority of the group). Organic
intellectuals provide the necessary leadership to help people realize their true situation of
oppression and to prompt them to decide to change this through organized, mass political
action; in other words to become groups for themselves. The existence of organic leaders
is crucial to the awakening of revolutionary fervor. In Gramscis view the dynamics of a
large scale political movement are such that innovation cannot come from the mass, or
at least at the beginning, except through the mediation of an elite (p. 335). Organic
intellectuals have the responsibility to help people understand the existence of ruling
class hegemony and the need to replace this with a hegemony that reflects the wishes of
the majority. This is precisely how Nelson Mandela framed his lifes work to ensure
that the majority of South Africans comprised a government reflecting their interests.

In order to lead effectively, organic intellectuals need the capacity to empathize with the
condition of the oppressed. They must be capable of feeling the elementary passions of
the people, understanding them and therefore explaining and justifying them (Gramsci,
1971, p. 418). This is why it is so difficult for well-meaning middle class radicals to
become organic leaders. Despite Paulo Freires oft quoted injunction for middle class
activists to commit class suicide so they can work in an authentic way with the peasantry
and other oppressed groups (Freire, 1973), this transition is highly problematic. And what
of attempts to commit racial, rather than class, suicide? How can White adult activists
ever experience the systemic racism visited daily on people of color? As Holst (2002)
points out, discussions of organic leaders in the Civil Rights struggle that focus on Martin
Luther King (the emblematic organic intellectual in Cornel Wests view) tend to ignore
the way the civil rights movement produced organic intellectuals from the Black share-
croppers and working class throughout the South (p. 85). Also, from an Africentric adult
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education perspective (Colin, 1988, 2002; Colin and Guy, 1998) racial suicide by Whites
is a meaningless idea. The central definitional component of Africentrism (Asante,
1998a,b) is that its proponents exhibit racial membership of the African Diaspora, a
membership that ties them together by culture, tradition and the experience of racism. Of
course Whites can be supporters and allies of struggles of people of color, and may
sometimes be invited to participate in them, but they cannot be movement organic leaders
in Gramscis terms.

As we think of leaders embedded within social movements Gramscis adumbration of the
leader as organic intellectual has been helpful to us. To him the job of a leader who is an
organic intellectual is to organize human masses and create the terrain on which men
[sic] move, acquire consciousness of their position, struggle etc. (p. 377). There is no
pretense at neutrality or objectivity here, no compulsion to see the oppressors point of
view. The intellectual as organic leader works to galvanize working class opposition and
translate this into the formation of an effective revolutionary party. In this analysis
education is a site for political practice in which organic intellectuals can assist the
working class in its revolutionary struggle.

Our emphasis in this book is on leadership that places learning at its centre and this
certainly encompasses many of the ideals and practices encompassed in the preceding
five models. For example, learning leadership involves placing ones own agenda and
persona in the background and the goals of the movement, community or organization in
the foreground. The first priority of learning leaders when allocating resources is to the
development of their staff and they themselves will willingly forego personal
opportunities to make sure others get what they need to meet new challenges. Studying
the lives of such leaders as Ella Baker and Jessie De La Cruz, Ellen Cantarow (1980)
summarized well what sets these leaders apart: They have been influential wherever
they have worked, revered by those who have worked with them and by the people
among whom they have organized. But they arent superstars, nor have they tried to be.
They have been behind-the-scenes leaders who have worked to build strength, self-
confidence, skills, and commitment in others. [They] believe that while organizers and
leaders may inspire people, help them think through problems and shape goals, it is
finally the people themselves, at the grassroots, who must bring a future that is still only
in our imaginings (p. xli). This provides a clue to how middle class, White radicals can
work as leaders. They can use their privilege explicitly and purposefully for the good of
groups other than those they are drawn from, and they can work to place ego-gratification
aside as they pursue these purposes.

What is distinctive about learning leadership is that it highlights in bold relief a
commitment to, and a practice of, learning. A capacity to learn from experience, a desire
to explore new areas of knowledge and practice, a readiness to critique, revise and
sometimes even abandon past assumptions in the light of new events or insights, and a
concern for the learning of members as the most important purpose of an organization,
community or movement these things are what make learning a way of leading. In our
view the most important practice of learning leaders is consistently and publicly to model
their own commitment to and practice of learning. Some elements of this are difficult
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you cant really invite colleagues over to your house to watch you read, or to see you
come to fresh insights as you take a shower. However, you can speak in meetings or
informal conversations about this reading or these insights and how they have affected
your thinking and therefore your practice. In organization newsletters or movement
rallies you can reveal how your learning has challenged or confirmed assumptions you
have about the way your community, organization or movement can achieve its goals.

Perhaps the most important element of learning leadership, however, is being open to
learning from the people around you and letting them see how crucial this is for your own
practice and development. This last point cannot be overemphasized. Leaders love to
learn from the people to whom they are responsible. They would rather learn than teach,
rather listen than speak, rather absorb new ideas than unfurl the latest innovation. Such
leaders are committed to collective group leadership, to leading by virtue of bringing to
the forefront the multiple talents found throughout the community, not through the
brilliance of the authority figure at the top. It is not easy to lead in this way, accustomed
as so many are to a culture that says the leader is the one who takes charge and tells
everyone else what to do. But it does not take long, if the leader is consistent, to lead by
drawing on the groups strengths and by taking seriously their pent-up ideas for making
change.

The Nine Learning Tasks of Leadership
In this book, we tell the stories of many actual community and organizational leaders
who share a commitment to leading through learning. We have found that their success as
learning leaders is dependent upon a number of dispositions, capacities, and public
practices. We have described these using the language of learning as the nine learning
tasks of leadership as we conceive it. The first of these tasks, the one that is foundational
for all others, is learning how to be open to the contributions of others. Once one is able
to practice this habit then the second learning leadership task - learning how to reflect
critically on ones practice becomes possible. Our contention is that critical reflection
is intrinsically a social learning process in which the perceptions and interpretations of
others are crucial. Only if one is open to the contributions of others can one gather the
perspectives needed to practice critical reflection. A third leadership task is learning how
to support the growth of others. In terms of what we wish for those whom we serve, the
enhanced capacity for them to learn is paramount. From this perspective, the focus of
traditional performance appraisals becomes not how well did you do your job this year?
but what and how did you learn this year?

Connected to supporting the learning of others is the fourth task, that of learning how to
develop collective leadership. Collective leadership flows from a culture in which an
engagement in, and sharing of, learning is an expectation and a priority. As people learn
new skills, dispositions and epistemologies they inevitably become aware of how
individual learning is both premised on, and contributes to, the learning of others. We
cannot learn to be critically reflective, to analyze experience, to question ourselves, to
practice democracy, to sustain hope or to create community without the necessary
involvement of others. Once we start to see that the collective is the source of so much of
our learning, our strength and our identity, it is but a short step to realizing that leadership
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also resides in the collective. When our perception of learning as an individual
phenomenon changes to one of learning as a group process, then the idea that leadership
is like learning something that moves around the community and is dependent on the
involvement of others becomes commonplace.

Task five - learning how to analyze experience is a leadership practice that all the
leaders profiled in this book practiced to a high degree. One of the most difficult
dimensions of this task is when its practice leads us to challenge old assumptions and
then to reconfigure accepted practices. In the conventional notion of leadership, a leader
is not supposed to change her mind too much. She should create a vision, commit to it,
then relentlessly pursue it through hell and high water. Changing your mind is not an
option in this model because to do so is perceived as a sign of weakness, an indication
that you dont have the guts to push your agenda or that you must have misdiagnosed the
situation to begin with. We are particularly intrigued with those activist leaders who
manage to engage publicly in reflection on experience especially when their analysis
led to radical shifts in direction without weakening peoples confidence in them.

Learning how to question oneself and others is the sixth task and, once again, we contend
that it is impossible to practice this alone. First, one learns questioning by seeing how
others do it. This is where an organization like the Highlander Folk School was so
influential on generations of activists. In Highlander workshops practically the only
actions that facilitators took was to ask an occasional question. Ella Baker and Septima
Clark and other women activists (Lewis, 2001) lived this task throughout their lives,
though, as McDermott (2007) cautions, Highlander itself was not immune from internal
sexism. Baker was never satisfied with her efforts to promote a bottom-up approach to
learning and social change and continuously questioned how she could involve ordinary
people in making important organizational decisions for the NAACP and SCLC. The
environmentalist Aldo Leopold was also driven constantly to question his own ideas and
to get his students to reconsider how their assumptions about the natural environment
often had multiple unforeseen consequences. The questions learning leaders pose
challenge their followers to see complexities and interrelationships in major social issues
and to launch inquiries that stretch the bounds of their worldviews. Moreover this work
is never done. What is learned one day is used the next as a bridge to considering a new
set of understandings and challenges.

Learning democracy is the seventh task of learning leadership and one that, like learning
to question, never ends. Learning democracy requires, in the opinion of the adult
educator Eduard Lindeman, studying a number of democratic disciplines. To live
democratically one must learn to honor diversity, to live with the partial functioning of
the democratic ideal, to avoid the trap of false antithesis (where we are always forced to
choose between either/or, mutually exclusive options), to accept the compatibility of ends
and means (where we avoid the temptation to bypass the democratic process in the
interests of reaching speedily a decision regarded as obviously right and necessary), to
correlate the functioning of social institutions (health, education and social services) with
democratic purposes, to develop collective forms of social and economic planning, to live
with contrary decisions, and to appreciate the comedy inherent in democracys
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contradictions. For Lindeman, learning democracy was not just a leadership imperative,
it was the central task of adult life.

When efforts to live democratically never reach full fruition (as is inevitable) then the
eighth task - learning to sustain hope in the face of struggle comes in to play. One of
the dangers of learning leadership is that the longer one learns about leadership practice
the more one becomes aware of just how deep and strong are the structural forces that
oppose attempts to change the status quo. The development of radical pessimism (where
realizing the forces ranged against us causes us to lose hope) is a danger facing all those
who think and act critically. Prime examples for us of leaders who sustained hope in the
face of unbearable animosity and political isolation are Paul Robeson and Nelson
Mandela. As a result of being pilloried in the public press for his support of the Soviet
Union and his commitment to anti-colonial struggles across the globe (as well as fighting
White supremacy in the US) Robeson was deprived of his passport and livelihood, forced
to defend himself in front of the House on Un-American Activities Committee, and
labeled a traitor. Yet, despite all these pressures he remained steadfast in the certainty of
his belief his radical hope that the dawn of a non-racist, democratic Socialist society
was just around the corner. Mandelas imprisonment was not sought as an act of
martyrdom, in fact he went to great lengths to hide his identity so as to avoid capture.
But when the government repeatedly promised him freedom as long as he refrained from
political organizing, he consistently refused. Throughout his autobiography Long Walk
to Freedom (Mandela, 1994) he writes again and again of how his hope his faith even
that the dawn of a properly democratic South Africa was inevitable never wavered. Che
Guevara is another who, whilst mired in the Cuban jungle, hopelessly outnumbered,
plagued by illness, working with a few comrades and hopelessly outdated weapons, never
lost his conviction that his guerilla army would win the support of the mass populace and
lead to the inevitable overthrow of the Batista regime.

Our ninth and final learning task is learning to create community. The leaders we profile
in this book all seek to build community and to teach the value of community-based
decision making and leadership. Each of them has an intense interest in building
communities where peoples experience and knowledge are honored and where
opportunities for members to develop their talents and capacities are limitless. When
Aldo Leopold spoke of the biotic community, he meant an environment in which each
organism contributes an irreplaceable element and in which the loss of any part somehow
diminishes the whole. This is how Myles Horton, Ella Baker, Mary Parker Follett and
Eleanor Roosevelt regarded communities of human beings. They set out to create
conditions for every person to add something invaluable to the community of learners. In
so doing the groups success became dependent on each individuals contribution.
Building communities in which the members of those communities are authentically
empowered to make important decisions for themselves and their neighbors remains a
chief object of the work of leaders who learn.

In the first half of this book we share at some length our understanding of what each of
these learning tasks involves and how leaders practice them. Our object is to show as
clearly and straightforwardly as we can how leaders, particularly those pursuing social
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justice, place learning at the center of practice. We explore in specific, concrete terms
how learning leaders continue to engage, challenge, and appreciate their collaborators, as
well as stimulate them to meaningful action. Our belief is that when leaders make
learning the most salient habit in any community, movement or organization, the
members are much more likely to claim their own empowerment and change the world.
A small part of this first section entails introducing remarkable learning leaders, nearby
and distant, well known and anonymous, who have been highly successful in keeping
their own learning going while also doing everything possible to sustain the learning of
their comrades.

In the second half of this book, we explore at much greater length the stories of particular
learning leaders who exemplify many of the learning tasks we delineate in section one.
Our object is not to offer full-scale biographies of these leaders and activists, but to
include highly focused vignettes or portraits of those who saw learning as a central part
of their quest to create a more just and equitable society. For these leaders learning was
not a byproduct of the social justice struggle, nor primarily a personal characteristic
worth cultivating. Learning was central to that struggle both in moving it forward and as
evidence that it was making a difference for those committed to it. These learning leaders
constantly brought attention to their own learning when recounting their efforts to foment
change. Furthermore, they saw their leadership as including a strong teaching component.
Yet the most important parts of their teaching were learning how to ask stimulating
questions and being open to the teachings of their students, members and followers. Such
an attitude, incidentally, aligns perfectly with Burns contention that transforming leaders
always remain open to being led by their followers.

The leaders we profile in this second section all stand out as thinkers and activists in
pursuit of some kind of social transformation. For Ella Baker, the goal was to end racism
and to ensure that African Americans and oppressed peoples everywhere enjoyed all the
rights and privileges to which they were entitled. For Septima Clark it was to allow Black
people the freedom to educate themselves and to be full, active members of a democratic
society. Jane Addams wanted everyone to have the basic necessities which would allow
them to take full advantage of all available educational opportunities and learn to work
together in communities of learning. Paul Robeson, like Ella Baker, sought to end racism
and to ensure that people of all colors and classes identified their common interest in
creating a democratic Socialist society. Aldo Leopolds objective was help people learn
to conserve and appreciate the natural environment and to develop the critical skills
needed to oppose those bent on its destruction. Mary Parker Follett saw participatory
democracy as the only sensible response to societys problems and wanted everyone to
understand fully its many advantages. Cesar Chavez sought economic and social justice
for farm workers and never wavered in his belief that with work and persistence that day
of justice would eventually arrive. Nelson Mandela wanted nothing less than to
overthrow White supremacy in South Africa and to make it possible for Blacks to
participate without restriction in the life of his country. Myles Horton sought to use
progressive adult learning methods to help poor people from all over the south gain
greater control over the economic, social and political dilemmas facing their
communities.
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As we have said, all of these leaders put learning at the center of their efforts. They
gauged their progress by the degree to which their constituents, collaborators, and
colleagues continued to learn how to analyze and act on the problems facing them. These
leaders, without exception, also maintained a broad outlook on their work, seeing it
always as a struggle for their comrades shared humanity and creating the political
conditions most likely to bring about each persons flourishing. Even if they did not say
so explicitly, they agreed with Myles Horton that anything they wanted for themselves,
anything that might help them grow and thrive, they must also want for everyone else
without exception. That is the kind of community they all believed in. That is the kind of
society they all attempted to build. The learning tasks these remarkable leaders executed
as they pursued this goal are the focus of this book.