A Leadership Development Program as Agent of Social Change

Karen Dawson is a leadership development consultant and executive coach working with a variety of organizations committed to growing their leadership capacity. Karen helps design and deliver programs that support people from all levels of organizations to become better leaders.

After attending Ken and Mary Gergen’s Introduction to Social Construction Workshop in May of 2006, Karen became aware of how social constructionist thoughts, theories, and ideas appeal to her – she had never even heard the phrase “social constructionist” before, but quickly realized that the stance of social constructionist researchers and teachers was closely aligned with her own perspective. Upon hearing and reading phrases such as, “we construct the world” (Gergen & Gergen, 2004), “it is through relationships that rationality is created, goals become important, and one feels worthy or not” (Anderson et al., 2006), and “nothing is real unless people agree that it is” (Gergen & Gergen, 2004), Karen realized she had been teaching, working, and parenting from a social constructionist position without having language for it.

For Karen, working within organizations over the past seven years has been fulfilling, and it also pays the bills. Many people spend a lot of their lives working within organizations, and Karen has always hoped that by contributing her ideas in organizational contexts she is helping make her small part of the planet a better place. She really wonders if she is. Her enrollment in the Taos Institute PhD program is motivated by the question, “What difference is my work making in the world?” It is this question that motivated application to the Taos program, and now Karen is working towards refining and clarifying a research question to guide her dissertation. She is curious about possible social change that connects with and stretches beyond the organizational context in which leadership development programs take place.

In Karen’s experience, many leadership development program participants connect their learning to their personal lives. Informally, through email and follow up conversations, stories of personal life transformation come back to Karen. She is fascinated by one specific program in particular, in which she has been facilitating for five years. With humble beginnings as a “grassroots initiative” run on a shoestring budget within a large public service organization, this leadership development program (subtitled “Leadership from the File Room to the Board Room”) has included hundreds of employees from all levels of the organizational hierarchy. Karen’s dissertation will invite the sharing of participants’ experiences and explore what differences (in thoughts, questions, and ideas) are evoked by their participation in this program.

With the support of her academic supervisor, Sally St. George, Karen will create a research design that is both grounded in established method and tailored to the purpose and context of this study, adding value to both the organization and its members. Supporting Karen’s design is a passage from The Appreciative Organization (Anderson et al.), “In appreciating others’ words and actions, so do we increase value within our relationships, the organization, and the world” (2006, p. 11).