This paper was co-authored by a team of leadership experts who attended a 2024 Inaugural Leadership Summit in Australia: Toby Newstead, Nathan Bibby, Carolina Bouten Pinto, Saul Brown, Giles Hirst, Scott Ko, Michelle Ryan, Andrea Thompson, Aiden M. A. Thornton, Amber CY Tsai, Werner Vogels, and Sam Wilson.
See below for added context on this white paper, from fellow event attendee and Tamarack Institute Co-CEO Liz Weaver:
In March 2024, I (Liz Weaver) had the good fortune to participate in the Inaugural Leadership Summit in Launceston, Tasmania. The Leadership Summit brought together academics, leadership program leaders from across Australia, leadership consultants and funders. Over two days, the group explored the diverse perspectives about leadership that participants brought to the conversation.
A small group of participants developed a White Paper which reflects the multiple conversations. From Divergence to Convergence: Integrating Research and Practice in Australian Leadership Development is an interesting reflection on the different approaches and dimensions of the leadership conversation.
Many of the practitioners are in the thick of it; on the ground working through messy, blurry, contested, polarized, complex, issues-driven realities of developing leadership capacity within people so that they may be better able to tackle the challenges that they, their organizations and their communities face. (From Divergence to Convergence, page 2)
Contrasted with this messiness are the precision, accuracy and theoretical approaches which dominate academic discourse. There is a divergence in both world views between academics and practitioners. There is also a divergence in resources, which see community-based leadership programs sourcing funding from multiple sources, whereas academic programs often benefit from research, government and philanthropic investment.
Is this chasm between academia and community too great to navigate? The authors of the paper provide academic and practitioner specific strategies and recommendations for bridging this divide.
- Create collaborative partnerships
- Facilitate action-research and peer-to-peer coaching
- Integrate complexity and systems thinking
- Promote inclusive diversity in leadership
- Establish knowledge exchange centres
The paper provides thoughtful insights about leveraging the knowledge and practice dimensions of leadership development.
Deepen Your Learning
- Explore some of the articles in Liz Weaver's Collaborative Leadership and Governance Series
