Connell Fanning
‘Leadership’ is conceptualised in The Leadership Mind[1] as “insight into people, their situation, and their prospects”, with the accompanying definitions of ‘people’ as encompassing the self and others – that is, self-awareness and awareness of others; the ‘situation’ as encompassing the full complicated reality; and the ‘prospects’ as encompassing the complex of diverse expectations among the plurality of people to whom the insight relates.[2]
Any concept like this will have implications and raise questions that may not have been adverted when first presented. As Suzanne Langer put it, “A key concept solves more problems than it was designed for”.[3] One question that several readers of the book have raised is whether something about ‘action’ should have been explicitly stated in our conceptualisation of ‘leadership’.
Although we did not explicitly refer to ‘action’ in our definition, we believe that our conceptualisation as it stands deals with the question in a satisfactory way: that the notion of ‘action’ is already inherently embedded in our definition. Our purpose here is to show how that is the case.
There is, at least, an implicit concept of the type of ‘person’ who is of interest in any theorising concerned with human affairs. Implicit to our argument accordingly is a concept of the person in whom an insight may rise. Although insight comes about in an unbidden way and cannot be summoned up at will, it is still not something that occurs in a vacuum. Instead, the person with the potential of having an insight about a situation will be grounded in the knowledge, experience, and the practice of solving problems in the applicable field.
Scientific insight, for example, will likely come only to those with a profound understanding of the problem they are tackling and usually after a struggle in search of a breakthrough, just as artistic insight comes only to those who have a thorough familiarity with the media they work with, whether words, sound, or physical materials. Likewise, in the field of human affairs, where the phenomenon of leadership lies, insight is only likely to find fertile ground in a ‘prepared mind’. As Pasteur put it: “In the field of observation, chance favours the prepared mind”.[4] That is, our interest is in someone who would have been concerned with people, their situations, and their prospects and who therefore would be intrinsically inclined to move towards finding a solution or bringing about a new set of circumstances, depending on the nature of the situation.
Insight into people, as we have pointed out, includes insight into the self. From this we can infer that the insight will encompass, in the person’s mind, their own role and place in relation to others and the situation and, therefore, their potentiality for action.[5]
That potential is present because the kind of person one would posit in theorising about ‘leadership’ would be one who has developed their capability for insight commensurate with the degree of complexity of the situation, and who believes they can influence events to bring about a desired result. [6] In general, insight includes an immanent orientation towards doing which naturally gives rise to the activities we term the ‘working out’ of the insight by the ‘prepared mind’. They are immersed in the situation, they are thinking purposefully about it, and they are inclined towards doing something about it, towards making a difference, if possible. That is, they are ‘The Leadership Mind’ at work.[7]
The person with the insight, in other words, will have an intimate and clear idea of about how they stand in relation to the problem or situation, allowing them to judge whether they should be or are in a position ‘to begin, to set something in motion or to take the initiative’, that is, for ‘action’, as defined by Arendt in its most general sense.[8]
‘Action’, thus defined, being an aspect of insight, is not visible to the outsider. It only becomes manifest when the intention, or decision, to do something is instituted materially in the ‘working out’ phase.
Nature of Leadership
‘Leadership’, as defined in The Leadership Mind, is by its nature an emergent order phenomenon – a phenomenon that emerges from a process whose outcome cannot be predicted and not a designed order outcome subject to cause-and-effect and mostly predictable.[9] This means that an instance of ‘leadership’ is there to be possibly explained, and indeed even to be observed, only after it has appeared in the world.[10] Such an appearance will come only through the working out of an insight and its results. This working out is where ‘The Management Mind’ comes into play.[11]
It must be emphasised that our definition is not a prescriptive formula for future action. It is a conceptual tool to help us understand how an observed example of what may be considered ‘leadership’ may have come about by drawing our attention to features we might otherwise miss or ignore.
One immediate implication of this understanding is that ‘leadership’ as insight cannot be taught or learned. No one can tell us how to provide ‘leadership’ in any particular circumstances in an unknowable future because no one can tell us how to have insight on cue. Insight cannot be planned or ordered up.
This approach can be challenging because it is different from the conventional point of view on ‘leadership’ as something teachable and learnable as a skill and the enormous resources devoted to ‘leadership’ development in those terms.[12]
The only sense in which this approach can be prescriptive is in terms of the injunction to develop ourselves so we may have the potential for having insight commensurate with the complexity of a situation when and if the need arises. Thus, while ‘leadership-as-insight’ cannot be taught or learnt, the consciousness or awareness that may bring such insight can be developed through personal developmental experiences.[13]
[1] Connell Fanning and Assumpta O’Kane. The Leadership Mind. The Keynes Centre, UCC, Cork, 2022.
[2] Fanning and O’Kane, 2022, page 84.
[3] Suzanne Langer. Problems of Art: Ten Philosophical Lectures. Charles Scribner, New York, 1957, page 3. Any concept constructed has implications and raises questions. Some of these will have been raised when the initial theorising was being explained while others may not have been adverted to at that stage but come to attention later on. Working with a concept brings new discoveries. This is standard and is an indication of the fertility of a concept.
[4] In a lecture at the University of Lille in 1854, Louis Pasteur reportedly said that “In the field of observation, chance favours only the prepared minds”. (There are varying accounts and translations.) We here emphasise the word ‘only’ because it is very often omitted in versions of Pasteur’s observation; but is important and adds weight to what would otherwise be a commonplace saying. Also significant is the application of this idea to the ‘field of observation’ – Pasteur was not referring to anything and everything. Finally, note the qualification of minds as being ‘prepared’, which of course points to how a mind becomes prepared.
[5] Insight is integrative. It brings together the variety of ‘messages’ from the complexity of a situation into an overall ‘sense’ of the situation from which the mind works to bring about a result. It is a creative, mental activity and as such is invisible and an observable. Fanning and O’Kane, 2022, pages 99, 111.
[6] Theorising and conceptualising about people is conducted on the basis of reasonable assumptions about them for the issue at hand and not, for example, on the basis of any pathology.
[7] A person as ‘the leadership mind’ is an order of mind that is “potentially capable of operating naturally through their faculty of imagination at the uncertainty arising from the degree of complexity of the situation in order to sense a new beginning through insight into people, their situation and their prospects.” Fanning and O’Kane, 2022, pages 114, 145-146.
[8] Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition. Second Edition. Introduction by Margaret Canovan. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998, page 177. ‘Action’ and ‘activities’ are distinct matters and are not to be confused.
[9] Fanning and O’Kane, 2022, page 69.
[10] Fanning and O’Kane, 2022, page 71. That is, a ‘leadership moment’ is only identifiable when it has happened and in terms of the presumed working out and result of an insight, the existence of which is inferred from the results and the working out themselves. We can only speculate that there has been an insight which has followed by its working out and result and, working backwards, trace its sources. These sources, being unique to the particular situation, cannot be prescriptive.
[11] “An order of mind that is potentially capable of using concepts and theories as an apparatus of mind to help it think independently and can take responsibility for the selection and use of concepts and theories”. Fanning and O’Kane, 2022, pages 115, 141.
[12] Fanning and O’Kane, 2022, Chapter 2.
[13] Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1994, page 128.
