Collective Leadership with Dr. Richard Bolden

Episode Transcript
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Scott Allen (00:00):
Okay, everybody, welcome to Practical Wisdom for
Leaders.
Thank you so much for checkingin, wherever you are in the
world.
Today I have a new friend andwe shared space at the
International StudyingLeadership Conference.
Last fall it was, and we werein Birmingham in the UK, and the
conference in the coming yearis going to be in St Andrews in
Scotland.

(00:20):
So super excited for that.
That is on my radar.
Richard is also heavilyinvolved in the ILA and that
conference is coming up thisyear in Prague, so we will be
together then.
Richard, I'll buy you a pint asa thank you for being on the
show today.
I appreciate it very, very muchso, and since 2013, richard has
been a professor of leadershipand management and director of

(00:41):
Bristol Leadership and ChangeCenter at Bristol Business
School University of WestEngland, and he is just an
expert in a number of nooks andcrannies of this conversation,
publishes in the best journalsin the world.
His full bio is in the shownotes, but I was in a session at
the International StudyingLeadership Conference and once

(01:02):
again kind of bumped into thistopic that I had not spent a lot
of time exploring and it's thistopic of collective leadership
and so I had asked Richard, tocome on the show and just
provide you, the listener, witha little bit of understanding of
how we think about this conceptof collective leadership.
So, richard, thank you so muchfor being with me today.

(01:23):
I'm looking forward to thisconversation, and maybe we start
with just a little bit of anoverview of how we're thinking
about this concept of collectiveleadership.

Dr. Richard Bolden (01:32):
Great.
Well, thank you, scott, and apleasure to be with you today as
well and to discuss this topic.
So, yeah, I really enjoyed theconversation we had at the ISLC
and that was part of the co-leadnetwork that I and a range of
other scholars who many of whomhave been on your podcast are
part of.
So collective leadership as faras I see it's a bit of a sort
of catch-all phrase for lots ofdifferent approaches, so you

(01:52):
might be familiar with ideasaround shared leadership,
distributed leadership,collaborative leadership, etc.
And they're all reallyapproaches that really shift the
focus away from just focusingon individual leaders we might
call it a kind of leader-centricfocus to thinking about
leadership as a broader socialprocess to which many people
contribute, and a wider range ofother factors have a part in

(02:17):
kind of what gets achieved.
What gets accomplished.

Okay, so that's a great beginning and just
foundational little bit of adefinition.
So what are some things I meanas we intrigue listeners with
this topic, let's kind of takeit down a little bit deeper of
what are some core concepts thatfolks should be aware of.
When we're talking about thisnotion of collective leadership,
we might come across it severaldifferent names, it could be

(02:40):
shared or distributed, we mighthave some different ways of kind
of naming this, but ultimately,collective leadership means
that it is not necessarily aleader-centric, just one
individual, but there are manyactors, many players.
So what are some core conceptsor other foundational things
that people should know aboutthis?

So I guess you know one of the points would
be to say that leadership isnot just done by people who are
in formal positions of authority, and it also isn't something
that just happens inorganizations.
It happens within and beyondand across organizations.
One of the challenges I thinkthat people often talk about
you've been significant, theCenter for Creative Leadership
talk about this.
One of the key challengesfacing even people in formal

(03:24):
positions of authorities how doyou lead without authority?
How do you mobilize groups ofpeople?
And collective leadership, Ithink is really about often that
question around sort ofexploring, in a way, kind of
different ways in which powermight be taken up, so rather
than as an individual propertythat particular people have by
virtue of their personality ortheir position, and really

(03:45):
thinking around how we mightdevelop a more collective,
inclusive, collaborativeapproaches to getting stuff done
.
So I guess one of the things isit kind of shifts our focus of
our attention beyond justindividual role holders, and so
often we do that.
And also, whilst we know andI'm sure you've had other
speakers on this talking aboutthe idea of followership as well

(04:06):
as a bit of an under-focusedand under-explored aspect of
leadership, collectiveleadership kind of to some
extent problematizes aspects ofthat too, of going well.
Very formal positional leadersare also needing to follow, and

(04:27):
there are also times whenfollowers people who we might
see more typically infollowership roles are able or
required or need to sort of stepforward and take the lead.
So I think it's kind of howleadership is accomplished as a
collective process.

Ron Riggio.
I think it might have been likeepisode five of this podcast
and he had a statement thatalways has just stuck with me.
He said leaders don't doleadership.
Leadership is co-created byleaders and followers working
together.
This product, whatever theresult, is that there's a
co-creative nature to this and Ithink also in that, at least
how I interpret that statement,is some of that dynamic nature

(05:06):
of to dance.
It's not necessarily clear andalways the person in position of
authority is making progress.
This is a co-creation that'soccurring.
Does that kind of in some waysalign with how you're?

thinking.
I think absolutely so.
That kind of captures it inmany ways.
Of course, this is the waythings have always been done and
always talked about.
But really I think if you lookat the, particularly the
academic leadership andscholarship around leadership,
it's really since the turn ofthe millennium, since the early
2000s, that we've seen moreintentional approaches to

(05:40):
thinking about leadership as acollective social process.
Of course, you can go backearlier than that so the work of
Mary Parker Follett and othersmuch earlier but it's really
since then there's been moreexplicit attempts to kind of
theorize and conceptualize that.
One of the challenges I guessthat's come with that is a bit
of a proliferation of terms andconcepts.
I mean it happens in leadershipstudies in general.

(06:00):
You know we have an awful lotof adjectives of just about
every kind of flavor or type ofleadership you can imagine, and
this applies also to this fieldas well.
So there's a very good specialissue of the journal Human
Relations, published in 2020,with Sonia Ospina, gail
Fairhurst, brad Jackson andothers, who helps kind of unpick

(06:21):
, in a way, some of the variousways in which collective
leadership is conceptualized.
And I guess, in relation to theleader follower conversation,
the thing you've described.
They give this two by two gridreally around seeing collective
leadership at residing atdifferent levels.
So whether it's more of theteam level or more of it's a
systemic property and that's twoelements of the two by two.
And then the other side is,wherever we see it as a type of

(06:42):
leadership, much liketransformational leadership,
servant servant leadership andall of the others, or really a
lens, a way of looking atleadership, and I guess you know
where they do quite a nicemapping in that article there I
can share the details with youfor that to share with the
audience.
But good mapping of differentapproaches to it.
And I guess my approach is morefrom the lens perspective.
I see distributed leadership.

(07:03):
If we come and look at whatevercontext we're trying to look at
leadership, we come at it as alens.
It's a way of looking at theworld.
We begin to notice thecontributions of maybe less
visible actors, but alsonon-human aspects, you know so,
aspects of the physicalenvironment, the wider
socio-culture environment, theway in which they impact on what

(07:25):
is accomplished and what'sachievable, what's even kind of
thinkable and doable in thosecontexts.
So I'm more on that kind oflens side than the type side
where lots of people say, youknow, distributed leadership or
systems leadership is aparticular style of leadership
which can be differentiated fromothers.

Well, you'd mentioned something a little bit
ago and so again, I just wantto make sure that I'm kind of
tracking with you.
But you'd use the wordmobilizing and so would one way,
richard, kind of exploring whatyou just said.
If I have a lens thatcollective leadership is an
option and is a really, reallygood option, if I'm interested

(08:04):
in mobilizing, then I am notnecessarily focused on me as
leader, I'm focused on outwardand trying to really explore who
can we mobilize, who can weactivate, who can we tap, and
the more individuals that we'vemobilized, that we've tapped
that energy that we've unleashedagain in that co-creation, that

(08:25):
we'll probably get further,faster, or it's just another way
to do the work.
Respond to that if you would.
Am I in the ballpark or not?

Yeah, absolutely so.
The one thing I think I'd sortof add to that is really saying,
in a way, the mobilization isthe outcome.
So a lot of the time when we'refocusing on leaders and
followers and so on, we'relooking at kind of individuals
and of course that affects thepay that you're given and the
recognition and acknowledgementfor what you've achieved.
But if you turn your attentionto the outcomes, again, this is

(08:54):
part of the work.
The Center for CreativeLeadership has done a lot of
work on these sorts of topicsand they talk around sort of
shifting our attention from, Imean, what they said Warren
Bennett called the tripod ofleadership, so leaders,
followers and the shared task.
And if we shift our attentionfrom saying, okay, that might
explain how leadership occurs incertain situations.
But there are many cases wherewe mobilize large groups of

(09:16):
people where it's less easy,less tangible, to kind of
identify those.
We look at some of the socialmovements Black Lives Matters, I
guess, is a sort of more recentone, or the Arab Spring Occupy
Movement, extinction Rebellionwhere it's less easy to identify
specific individuals inspecific roles or even sometimes
a shared, agreed sense of whatwe're trying to accomplish.

(09:38):
You know what the task is.
So they say you know.
What we're better to do then islook at the outcomes of
leadership.
So their suggestion is whereyou find groups of people that
share a sense of commondirection, they're going in the
same sort of way, a degree ofalignment, so a kind of they're
not all firing off in differentdirections and commitment to a
common set of kind of goals orvalues or purpose, and that's

(10:00):
kind of where leadership hasbeen going on whatever it is,
kind of where leadership hasbeen going on whatever it is.
So, again, I think leadershipas a lens helps us look at the
mobilization, what's happening,and maybe makes us less hung up
on who's doing what, who claims,you know, the credit, the
rewards for how we got there.

And yes, I mean the DAC model from CCL is really so
that's super useful for me andsuper helpful for me to kind of
think about it that way.
What are some other baselineconcepts you would want
listeners to at least have ontheir radar?
I mean, I love and you can getinto Brad Jackson's work around
place right, and so I love thefact that you've kind of brought

(10:41):
some of that into theconversation.
Are there other pieces that youwant listeners to be aware of
when it comes to this topic ofcollective leadership?

Yeah.
So I think, well, if I maybereflect on part of my journey
sort of through that literaturereally over the last 20 years,
25 years I guess.
Now we're 2025, now aren't we?
So some of the earlier workthat I was engaging with was
around ideas about distributedleadership.
So the work of people likePeter G gron and also spillane

(11:12):
and harris and others.
Much of that came from thefield of education and schools
in particular, and kind of goingwhat gets achieved and who
needs to have a say in what getsachieved, in how schools are
run, goes beyond just your headteacher or even you know other
senior teachers.
So that that was, I think, forme, some of the earlier
conceptualization.
Now, as I said, often the riskis that concepts get developed

(11:33):
and they can kind of getco-opted for other purposes
along the way, and I thinkthere's been elements of that
within the field of distributedleadership and in some ways that
becomes described in somecontexts as a style, as a way of
leading, like a typeperspective, and sometimes it
doesn't go as far as it perhapscould or should in really kind
of questioning, underpinningassumptions around power and

(11:56):
authority, in particular inhierarchical organizations.
So that was kind of part of it.
And then I think, otherconcepts people may be familiar
with and have engaged stuffaround shared leadership, sort
of work with Congo and Pierceand others around this idea of
they talk about vertical andhorizontal forms of leadership.
So vertical is kind of thehierarchy, but the horizontal we

(12:17):
don't always pay so muchattention to and that's back to
that leading without authorityoften.
How do you influence andencourage people to do, when you
don't have formal authorityover or control of resources or
anything else, that kind ofmatters for them?
So those would be kind of acouple of key bodies of work
that we would draw on.
There's other work aroundcollaborative leadership, but
more recently my work has kindof moved towards exploring

(12:40):
something called systemleadership, which again has been
picked up and operationalizedin a variety of ways.
For me I'd see that as part ofthat wider kind of body of work
around seeing leadership as acollective phenomenon.
And for me systems leadershipis of interest because it kind
of begins to break us outside ofthe constraints of single
organizations.

(13:01):
So again, much of our theory,much of our work, much of our
education remains focused onpeople leading within a single
organization.
But if you think about tacklingthe largest challenges that we
face in society.
Those span across multipleorganizations and multiple sets
of stakeholders, often with verydifferent sets of agendas,
assumptions, ways of doingthings, views of what works.

(13:24):
So For me, the idea to thinkabout how we might work within
systems so quite a lot of thework I do is in the health care
system and health and socialcare.
So if you think of them assystems, they are incredibly
complex.
They're not just about a singleorganization or a single
perspective.
Again, problematically,sometimes that stuff gets picked

(13:44):
up in practice and consultancyand policy in a way that says
what we need now in a systemsenvironment, lots of systems
leaders and they become the newbig superheroic leader who can
step in and not only do allthese other things but now lead
the whole healthcare systemchange, which is not really the
perspective that I would want totake.
So I would tend to come at itmore from a complexity.

(14:05):
So this is the other space thattakes you to around work about
complexity and to think about.
So if we are part of complexsystems, you know there is
nobody at the top or at thebottom in this.
You know if you're part of asystem, you are both able to
sort of nudge and influence thatsystem from where you are
within it, but you're alsocompletely shaped.
We can never see the whole ofthe system and the parts are

(14:28):
outside where we can never seethe whole of the system and the
parts are outside.
So one other sort of thing toadd, and then I'll pause, but
it's really around.
Also then I think associatedwith that are ideas around the
importance of inclusiveness andinclusion, diversity of voice
and perspective, which, again,has been very actively picked up
in certain organisations,certain sectors and so on, but
it's not always featured asclearly within some of the

(14:50):
leadership theory and conceptsas we might expect.
So ultimately, I think part ofthe agenda of that is saying how
do we create more inclusiveorganizations, more inclusive
societies and more compassionateones as well?
That's the big question.
Answers on a postcard yeahexactly.

So maybe here on maybe here on the Practical
Wisdom for Leaders podcast youcan give us the answer, I'd be a
very rich man.
It's a really, reallyinteresting conversation.
I mean even, richard, what Ilove about how you're
communicating right now and Ifeel overwhelmed too.

(15:28):
I mean, as soon as we starttalking about complexity, as
soon as we start talking aboutsystems, as soon as we start
speaking about a collectivephenomenon, what you're
grappling with here, it's 50,000feet, it's big, it's complex.
I find it incredibly intriguing.
I mean, you must as well.

I do, but of course it's also incredibly
difficult.
I mean there are so many, verymany significant societal and
kind of planetary challenges andissues going on that I think
really, as leadership scholarsand practitioners and so on, I
think we need to have aninterest in those questions and
a kind of question of say what,in small way, might we do that?

(16:05):
But I guess, in the face, oneof the challenges and why I
guess people resort back to themore simplistic sort of theories
and binaries around how we workis because, as you said, it can
be overwhelming, it can be justtoo much.
So again, the question, I think, as educators alongside
scholars, is to say so how doyou roll that back to saying so
what does that mean about theways we go about trying to

(16:26):
support and develop leaders andjust good, active citizens and
the idea of kind of leadershipat all levels?
So some of that.
So, for example, I have anumber of colleagues of mine at
the University of WesternEngland.
So Charlotte Von Buelow andPeter Simpson have been doing
fantastic work around ideascalled negative capability, and
so negative capability ideashave been around for a long time

(16:46):
.
Actually came originally from aletter by the poet John Keats
has been around for a long timeactually came originally from a
letter by the poet john keatswho was reflecting on what were
the kind of the characteristicsthat made kind of great great
thinkers, great people ofhistory, and I think he was
reflecting particularly aroundwilliam shakespeare at that
point and he said you know, oneof the one of the great
qualities they have is thisability of being comfortable

(17:07):
without in positions ofunknowing, without this
irritable reaching for kind ofreason or solution in the face.
So often I guess ourorganizations expect of our
leaders to come up with the idea, make the decision, have a plan
, all of these sorts of things.
The argument now of negativecapability is actually sometimes
there's a need for that.
Of course there are pointswhere that's required, but much

(17:29):
of the time our leaders mightintervene and kind of force a
solution before it's the righttime or before we've had the
right levels of engagement,develop a capacity for people to
be able to sit in positions ofunknowing, maybe, or to support

(17:51):
their organizations and thosearound them to be comfortable
with that as well.
Because we know I guess we'veall had leaders or been in
positions where we've seenpeople who are expected to be
leaders who seemed indecisive orundecided and that's not
massively inspiring sometimes.
But if we have an appreciationof that, how do we hold that
space, but unknowing, and thenlet stuff emerge.

(18:13):
So that's the other thing aboutcomplexity.
See, then, what emerges throughthat, and a key aspect of the
work that they're doing and thatthey bring into our, some of
our programs and teaching aswell, is around the practice of
attention.
So yeah, in the face of all ofthat complexity, the things we
describe, all of the differentthings that are going on you
could go.
I just don't know where tobegin.
So the main capacity we canhelp people maybe develop or

(18:37):
bring is a different quality ofattention to what they're
noticing.
And I guess you know thatbrings me back to the lens
perspective on collectiveleadership.
We say it's a lens, it helps usnotice and see examples of
things.
We say it's a lens, it helps usnotice and see examples of
things.
If I describe sort of my, one ofthe examples I sometimes use
when I'm trying to explain therole of the less visible actors
in our organization, I describea wonderful lady came and

(18:59):
cleaned the offices where Iworked in a previous role in a
previous university was anitalian lady called carmela and
she'd go around each morningaround all our separate offices
and we're sat there in thisbuilding in our separate rooms,
you know, not speaking orinteracting, and she was the one
person who went around andspoke to everybody every morning
and she'd have a chat and she'dask you what you were up to the
weekend, what your kids weredoing, and so on, and then she'd

(19:22):
go to the next room and thenshe'd kind of make the
connections between people andsay, oh yeah, so and so's just
been on holiday or they've justgot a birthday, and I go, I
didn't know, I just came in todo my teaching and my marking,
and now I go back home again,and so it was really that glue,
that kind of held peopletogether in terms of that sort
of that social connection andconnectedness, and that's a

(19:43):
contribution that so many peopleplay in our organizations who
are largely invisible.
Now, of course, what did theorganization do about that?
So the organization, in itswisdom, was going Carmela
doesn't seem to be cleaningoffices as quite as quickly as
she might be.
How can we make her moreefficient?
And so a consequence was thatthey then said well, let's A

(20:04):
make her come in at times wherenobody else is in for her to
talk to and B randomly allocatepeople to different buildings it
wasn't always the same personcoming in.
So all of a sudden, as part of akind of efficiency kind of move
within the organization, weremoved a key part of the social
glue that held people togetherand I think we lost something

(20:24):
very significant there.
That is very hard to know howyou get that back again, how,
how you bring that back again.
So I think from a lens, from anattention perspective, we may
begin to notice the people, thethings I mean.
Another example of a colleagueof mine Harriet Short has done
lots of work around theimportance of food and drink in
the workplace and she's donestuff around.

(20:45):
You know, cake in the office.
Again, we may not notice orthink it might feel like an
irrelevancy that people bring ina cake at birthdays or whatever
, but actually it's a keyorganizing.
People organize and havedifferent kinds of conversations
with one another when it's overa bit of cake or a bit of food
or a drink or whatever.
Trying to.

I don't think she's been promoting the merit to
bringing alcohol into theworkplace, but having a cup of
tea or a different kind ofconversations is really
absolutely key in an, anorganization I worked in, just
the Keurig machine brought allkinds of people to a central
location to get a cup of coffeethat probably would have had no
other reason to have aconversation.
So I get it.
I see that for sure.

Yeah, again with efficiency moves.
So in my current building wehave these and a lovely new
building with these hot wateryou know, the boiling water on
tap kind of machines, which isbrilliant, but it means then
that you're not standing aroundwaiting for the kettle to boil
or whatever, which is that areabsolutely key to a sense of
belonging, a sense of place, asense of community that I think
are kind of at the heart ofmeaning in organizations and

(21:45):
beyond.

Well, as we begin to wind down our time, anything
else that you want to highlightfor listeners on this topic, or
it could even be a resource thatyou would want to turn
listeners onto?
I will put a link to thespecial issue.
For sure That'll be in the shownotes.
Is there anything else that youwould want to turn listeners
onto?

So I guess there's a you know there's lots
of things and a shortage ofthings.
I mean other things that I kindof have an interest in which
are linked to these.
So we're currently editing abook around the idea of ghost
leadership, which has been quiteinteresting in bringing
together.
We were really struck by thenumber of different
contributions we got.
We're kind of overwhelmed bythem.
But again, it's a way of tryingto think slightly differently.

(22:41):
So ghost leadership is basedreally on the idea of those, you
know, the hidden aspects of howstuff gets done, and that might
involve human agents, but italso might involve kind of new
non-human aspects, so theincreasing significance of
artificial intelligence andother forces on the ways in
which things get done or don'tget done in our organization.

(23:01):
So that was interesting.
We had a bit of fun with myco-editors on that, with an ILA
blog around Halloween we talkedabout lessons from ghosts and
vampires and zombies and so on.
So I can certainly share thatwith an ILA blog around
Halloween where he talked aboutlessons from ghosts and vampires
and zombies and so on.
So I can certainly share thatwith you.
The other one is back to thatsort of thinking differently
about leadership in relation toenvironmental sustainability
challenges.
So currently also doing anedited collection around

(23:23):
leadership beyond the SDGssustainable development goals,
drawing together a range ofdifferent perspectives and what
we find is, as ever, there's allthese different communities
doing great work that aren'talways connected yes so there's
lots of people who do stuff onleadership, lots of people who
do stuff on the sdgs, not somany people doing stuff on the
interconnections between them,and I think that's a really

(23:44):
interesting space and one of thethings I'm beginning to see
through some of that and some ofthe other work is around the
kind of post-human perspectiveon leadership.
So, say you know, if collectiveleadership was beginning to get
us away from individual leadersand our obsession with being
leader centric, post-human, iskind of going, let's not have
the human being necessarily atthe center of all our concerns.

(24:05):
So what would it be if wethought about the role of
non-human actors so aspects ofthe environment, the natural
world and so on as agents in theleadership process?
I'm on a steep learning curvemyself there around it,
currently supervising afantastic PhD study with one of
my students who's kind oflooking at some of those aspects
in indigenous communities inPeru.
But those are, you know, Ithink there's lots of really

(24:27):
interesting stuff to learn andexplore in that field.

Well, as you were speaking, I just had an insight
and this will not tie everythingup in a nice bow, but it might
and again push back, if youdisagree, please.
I'm even thinking of my owncommunity, and in my community,
let's say, we have six reallysignificant organizations that
are doing important work, butdifferent types of work.

(24:51):
So one could be the mayor'soffice, let's just say that
that's one.
Then there's a leadershipcenter that does incredible work
.
Let's say that there's four orfive other organizations.
And what's unfortunate is thatbecause those five entities
aren't themselves movinglockstep, because if we looked

(25:13):
at them as a system, one mightbe the heart, one might be the
brain, one might be the muscleand the bones, because each of
them have a little bit of adifferent function, but they
aren't functioning in some waysas one.
And if they were the power andthe energy that could be
unleashed in the community.
But unfortunately, whatoftentimes happens is that

(25:34):
they're just individuallyworking.
So to your point just a fewmoments ago these people are
doing good work and these peopleare doing good work.
Sometimes it's the same,Sometimes it's not connected.
And so I had made a comment toa friend in the community.
I said what could beaccomplished if they were
marching in the same directionand toward the same end and
giving a little bit ofthemselves in some ways, because

(25:55):
they can't be everything toeveryone, but that to me
direction, alignment, commitment.
If they were directed andaligned and committed, our
community could leap forward insome ways.

Does that make sense?
Absolutely?
And that brings us back to theother thing you'vehuman physical
aspects.
A module, a program that Bradand also Eric Guffey, his close
collaborator, used to run isaround the idea of the geography
of leadership.
I think Brad's actually workingon more ideas around that.
So the idea of kind of thephysical aspects in place, kind

(26:35):
of shaping and constraining whatwe can do and certainly we've
looked at some of that in thecity of Bristol, where I'm based
and work with people like RobinHambleton, who worked with our
city mayor to develop a kind ofcitywide approach where we say
all of these are absolutelyinstrumental domains of
leadership space and how do wefind ways to bring them together
?
And well, the then mayor kind ofwas a very active kind of

(26:58):
ambassador and champion for that.
Back to that space, I think thesort of the Meg Wheatley idea
of kind of leader is a kind ofhost of bringing, of holding, of
creating a space for differentvoices to come together.
As ever, in most times, peoplealways want something different
from what they've already got,though.
So you know, subsequently ourcity ended up voting to remove
the mayor.
We've gone back to some otherstructure which is a bit

(27:18):
different, but there are stillelements of that kind of
citywide civic approach topromoting leadership which I
think is absolutely kind of keyand again, I would see it as an
integral aspect of collectiveleadership which gets us beyond
the individual organizationalfocus.
Again, so much of our theory,our research, our teaching
remains very much bounded withinindividual organizations.

Well, richard, I'm so thankful for your time today.
I'm thankful for the good workthat you do as a scholar.
You're thinking at multiplelevels when it comes to this
conversation of leadership andso, listeners, I hope you're
intrigued by how he's thinkingabout this work.
And I also want to say thankyou, because I know that you're
heavily involved in helping toplan the ILA conference in

(28:01):
Prague.
So thank you so much for thathelping to plan the ILA
conference in Prague.
So thank you so much for that.
Listeners, you can go into theshow notes and you can find
links about how to learn moreabout that conference.
And, of course, you are alwaysinvolved in the International
Studying Leadership Conference,which will be in St Andrews this
fall, and I'll put a link tothat as well in the show notes.
So I always conclude theconversation by asking guests

(28:21):
what you've been listening tostreaming, what you've been
consuming, what's caught yourattention in recent times.
It does not have to be academic, it doesn't have to have
anything to do with what we justdiscussed.
What might interest listeners?
That's caught your attention?

Well, thanks , scott, it's been a great
conversation.
I mean, I was thinking aboutthat sort of question.
So I listened to a fair amountof podcasts when largely when
I'm out walking the dog, and Ithink mainly some of the ones on
the BBC Sounds app because ofwhere I'm based in the UK, and
there's some really excellentseries.
Things like Tim Hartford'sseries called Cautionary Tales
is really nice little kind ofinsights into, kind of inquiring

(28:56):
into things that people wouldbe familiar with, but they're
really quite interesting.
Kind of takes on thinkingdifferently about how stuff
happens.
Some really good other sort ofmini series.
So the Great Post Office Trialwas a series that was run
recently about kind of thecrisis in the post office in the
UK which, again, people in theUK will be familiar of.
I'm less familiar outside, butcertainly I think this kind of

(29:19):
one's unpick, again, thecomplexity and the roles of lots
of different people, so they'rereally good illustrations of
some of those issues.
So I guess podcasts, as we weretalking at the beginning,
listen to lots of differentkinds of music as well, some old
, some new, and that kind ofkeeps me going.
In terms of reading, I justfinished a book that had been on
my list for a very long time toread.
I finally just finished reading,which was Things Fall Apart by

(29:41):
Chinua Achebe, and it's verykind of powerful take, really
kind of a from a perspectivewith an African community, of
the impact of colonialism andcolonization, and I'd kind of
been waiting to read, looking toread that, largely because of
some work that Jonathan Gosling,who you're familiar with and
have written and worked with alot as well, who'd sort of used

(30:02):
that as a platform for thinkingabout.
You know, what does it tell usabout leadership and developing
leaders and supporting them inthe face of some aspects of
societal collapse, you know, theaspects of what we've held on
to or what we think of asstandards that are fixed in
place, that take away ordisappear that we weren't really
expecting and that's reallypowerful.
I'm still kind of processingthat, but I think that's part of

(30:28):
my ongoing education from myyoungest daughter, who's been
studying English literature andis making me broaden my horizons
to read lots of books that I'vebeen meaning to read for many
years, and encouragement, Iguess, for your readers whether
they listen, whether they readthose or whether they just sort
of seek to pick up and readthose books that they've been
meaning to read for a long time.
That would be an invitation.

That's great.
That's great.
Well, sir, I am excited to seeyou.
I'll probably see you next inPrague, so I'll be excited to
see you then.
And again, thank you so muchfor your good work.
Thanks so much for stopping bytoday, thanks a lot.

It's wonderful.
Thanks for the time.
Thanks for the invitation.

I just have great respect for Richard, for his
wisdom, his knowledge and thankhim for helping me better
understand this landscape, thisspace, a nook and cranny of the
conversation about leadershipthat I really had not explored
Again.
We're almost 290, some episodesinto this endeavor, 190-some
episodes into this endeavor, andI am still learning each and
every week and for that, Richard, I'm so very thankful.

(31:29):
Can't wait to see you in StAndrews later this fall, in
Prague later this fall.
And to all of you listening,thanks so much.
Appreciate you, Take care, Bewell.

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