102 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY it as a universe of disparate, competitive elements.5 By reading others such as Julie Reuben, Dallas Willard, and Margarita Mooney, you might come to also see how education has been reduced to mastering subjects, possessing knowledge, and using and applying information rather than seeking and loving truth.6 But I want to shift the focus away from the reduction we have experienced in culture at large and in the field of leadership specifically, and aim instead at expanding our vision of leadership through considering the wisdom of Tolkien. Even as I do so, however, in the first step forwards there is a reductionist irony that I must highlight. It relates to the work of Howard Gardner and Emma Laskin in their book Leading Minds. The book’s major leadership idea is to point out the difference between direct leaders, or those who have positional authority or power, and what Gardner and Laskin term “indirect” leaders, those who exert influence and leadership through the works they create.7 Central to both is the importance of the leader as a storyteller: “Whether direct or indirect, leaders fashion stories— principally stories of identity. It is important that a leader be a good storyteller but equally crucial that the leader embody that story in his or her life.”8 Now, you do not need to be an expert in leadership theory to guess that storytelling does not often appear as a major characteristic in the lists of influential leaders, so Gardner and Laskin should be praised for highlighting the significance of stories for the realm of leadership. However, the more you read through the first few chapters of Leading Minds, the more you realize that the focus is almost entirely on the way leaders tell and embody stories rather than on how leaders are shaped and influenced themselves by stories. The difference is worth pointing out, because it illustrates the larger reductionism that plagues the overly pragmatic-focused field of leadership studies. It is as if a reader of the book might realize, “aha! So becoming a better storyteller will make me a better leader, giving me more influence with my followers. I must learn the mechanics of how a good story works.” Stories then get cordoned off as objects of analysis, which of course fits the scientific epistemology of the day, and in the process the deeper value of stories evaporates for leaders.
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