I was grazing through our local blogs at the college and came acoss this posting that described a 2 day leadership seminar that our college (US Army Command & General Staff College) hosted for leaders and members of the local community. Among other insights, there was a fruitful dialogue on the challenges, insights and techniques of both civlian and military leadershgip styles and techniques.
Iwas reminded by the posting that we don’t have to frame “leadership” as something that we “do” to people as if they are objects at a distance to act upon. It can be a quality that emerges out of a relationship between autonomous conscious beings that respect each other and listen to each other, and create meaning from the union of their experiences and points of view, and togther craft an agreement about what to value and what to do next in pursuit of worthy goals.
I am coming around to see that education can be like that as well, although it is not natural for me to be a good listener, since I am quite sure I always am near to the correct answer in any given problem setting. I am appreciating more than ever how education, especially in our CGSC classrooms, can be an emergent quality of people who are jointly inquiring into matters of consequence.