Dr. Joe Raelin - Finding Leadership in Practice

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Dr. Joe Raelin is an internationally-recognized scholar in collective leadership, learning, and practice.  He is the Donald Gordon Visiting Professor of Leadership at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and the Asa S. Knowles Chair Emeritus at Northeastern University in Boston, USA.  He was formerly a Professor of Management at the Wallace E. Carroll School of Management at Boston College.  He received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo.  Joe is a prominent inventor of new theory in leadership and management studies, to wit, his path-breaking work in diagnosing and managing the clash of cultures between managers and professionals, his re-affirmation of work-based and action learning as bridging knowledge and action in the workplace, his creation and application of the work self-efficacy inventory, his designation and application of “leaderful” practice to bring out leadership in everyone, and now, his co-construction of leadership-as-practice, which looks to leadership, not in individual personality but in everyday practice, and in particular, in emergent dynamic social and material interactions. 

Toward a Methodology for Studying Leadership-as-Practice 

The underlying belief of the leadership-as-practice (L-A-P) approach is that leadership occurs as a practice rather than resides in the traits or behaviors of individuals. A practice is a coordinative effort among participants who choose through their own rules to achieve a distinctive outcome. Leadership-as-practice has a markedly collective orientation because it is less about what one person thinks or does and more about what people may accomplish together. It is thus concerned with how leadership emerges and unfolds through day-to-day experience. The material-discursive processes emergent from multiple actors sometimes change the trajectory of the flow of practices. In those instances, leadership is taking place. To find leadership, then, we must look to the practice within which it is occurring (Raelin, 2017).

Learn more at www.leaderfulconsultancy.com and explore his research at Google Scholar & ResearchGate

Books

• Leadership-as-Practice  
• Creating Leaderful Organizations  

Articles

• Leadership-as-Practice:  An Editor’s Reflection 
• Imagine There Are No Leaders   
• Update of leadership-as-practice “practice theory” 
•  Interview via  ILA Intersections   

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Orpheus
• Theo Dawson and Lectica

 About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in the study, practice, and teaching of leadership. 

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are important views to be aware of. Nothing can replace your own research and exploration.

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