Leadership Matters in the 21st Century:
Practicing Leaders on Leadership
"Making people do what you think they ought to do does not lead toward clarity and consciousness. While they may do what you tell them to do at the time, they will cringe inwardly, grow confused, and plot revenge." —from The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Te Ching Adapted for a New Age by John Heider, 1985.
The "Leadership Matters" Lecture Series at Birmingham-Southern is designed to engage the campus and broader communities in a dialogue on leadership.
The inaugural Leadership Matters lecture series was a great success. The series will continue during the 2012-13 academic year with more fine speakers.
Past Speakers:
Colin Coyne, Managing principal of The Coyne Group
David Magellan Horth, Senior fellow at the Center for Creative Leadership and co-author of TheLeader's Edge
Andrew H.Card, White House Chief of Staff under G.W. Bush—September 15, 2011
Elisa Massimino, President and CEO of
Human Rights First
Purpose of the Lecture Series:
Practicing leaders will address the Birmingham-Southern College and local communities on issues of leadership. The overall aim is to engage the communities in a dialogue on leadership. Leadership occurs in a variety of contexts: corporate boardrooms, entrepreneurial start-ups, the halls of Congress, churches and synagogues, classrooms, and organized political resistance on the street. All of these are instances of leadership. All of us stand to learn when we attend to what practicing leaders have to say about leadership.
How do practicing leaders describe and engage in effective, ethical, and results-oriented leadership? How have practicing leaders learned to perform, facilitate, and do leadership? On what resources—ideas, people, tools—do they draw in order to fulfill their obligations as leaders? How do practicing leaders navigate the competing interests of different constituencies, both inside and outside their organizations? What underlying principles guide a leader's practice? Towards what goal or in what direction should a leader strive?
With these questions in mind, we have invited practicing leaders to step back and reflect with the community on the meaning, purposes, and strategies of leadership.
Some initial themes of our talks include: Entrepreneurial Leadership, Human Rights and Leadership, Sustainability and Leadership, Creative Organizational Leadership, Politics and Leadership, Leadership in Crisis.
