Many thanks to all those who have offered (and continue to offer)
suggestions in my quest for "leadership models".
Steve Bowles wrote:
>If you wish to find a more "organic" approach and discourse-practice
>attached to the outdoors and the adventure and to various forms of
>educational work then I think you should explore new arenas. They are
>there.
I will offer another explanation of what I am looking for in an attempt
to bring forth a somewhat different harvest from those other new arenas.
>Leadership and so on tends to live within a specific discourse (and
> practice) that is not "ORGANIC". (S. Bowles)
While this may be true "within a specific discourse" - I tend to view
leadership (as it is a facet of outdoor/adventure education) as something
of an "emergent property" - and very much organic.
By emergent property I mean one which is characterised not so much by
it's "components" (what it is made of), but rather by the relationships
among those "components". For example, sugar is sweet, yet none of the
constituent elements of suger - carbon, hydrogen or oxygen - possess the
quality of sweetness. The sweetness emerges from the relationships among
those components. (paraphrased from Fritjof Capra)
My search for a more "organic" model of "leadership" (sorry Steve, I do
have another word for it) comes from a sense that there are a lot of
"skills", "competencies", "components", etc. lists compiled (with a great
deal of effort) and yet for me they seem to be incomplete in representing
inspirational outdoor educators - who I believe to be leaders. It is
like vivisecting a bird to try to understand the beauty of its song and
then trying to put it back together to hear it again. If we try to teach
someone all the necessary components - they may still lack the ability to
lead. (Even after studying Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership
matrix and reading John Heider's The Tao of Leadership along with a
hundred other books ...)
I do not know if this is of any help in "exploring new arenas" - I hope
so. If not, any suggestions would be helpful.
Once again, thanks to all those who have provided suggestions.
Peace,
Steve
Steve Crosby
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P.O. Box 4480
Shortland St. Auckland
025-622-6356
"The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently
an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless
conflict and confusion." -David Bohm
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