1 July 2006

The title of my first book was Training for Leadership (1968). Nowadays the training sounds a bit dated. We tend to use more general terms such as development or learning. In the same vein the word facilitator has taken over from trainer. I confess I have been influenced unconsciously by this fashion.

On second thoughts, however, I think that training for leadership was and is the right term for what we should be up to. The celebrated Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle once wrestled with the question of how, in logic, can anyone be taught to do untaught things - that is, sooner or later, to become able and apt at arriving at their own solutions to problems when, strictly speaking, they had not been taught those solutions. In a paper entitled 'Teaching and Training' (Collected Papers, 1971). Ryle argued that such teaching is really training: it is teaching people methods or modus operandi, ways of operating, that they can use for themselves. It is inseparable from practise in doing what one is learning to do. So training implies both the imparting of general principles or methods and practise in their use.

Apart from my work, there is now no effective leadership training worth the name. Last week, for example, I attended a 'leadership development' programme. The 'presenter' gave a powerpoint presentation of 16 different 'theories' of leadership in vogue at the moment. There was no practise, because he taught them no methods or modus operandi. Maybe he thought he was hydraulically injecting knowledge into people's heads. What nonsense! What a waste of money! We should be 'teaching how to', not 'teaching to'.

Quotable Quotes
Kindness is in our power; fondness not.
Dr. Johnson

The word knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof and conviction.
Archbishop Richard Whately

Let the abbot aim to be loved rather than feared. He must not be worried or anxious, nor too exacting and harsh, nor jealous, nor over-suspicious, for then he will never be at rest. He must temper everything so that the strong may not be held back and the weak not frightened off.
Rule of St Benedict