The Lost Art of Leading
6 minute read
Our culture is obsessed with leadership. From best-selling biographies and podcasts to conferences, coaches and consultants, the quest to unlock the secrets of great leadership is everywhere. The belief that better leadership is the key to individual progress and organisational success has fuelled a multibillion-dollar industry.1
But for all the theory and all the investment, we seem no closer to the kind of leadership we actually need. If anything, the opposite is true. Across sectors, public trust has been eroded by ethical lapses, a lack of vision and ineffective delivery. In 2013, against a backdrop of high-profile leadership scandals, the Edelman Trust Barometer declared a global “crisis in leadership” as its central finding.2 More than a decade later, the alarm continues to sound. In 2023, Richard Edelman diagnosed “a failure of leadership” as a key driver of a “deeply and dangerously polarised” world.3
This article appears in Issue 06 of The Beautiful Truth magazine. Get your copy here.
Few executives believe their own leadership development efforts are making a meaningful difference, let alone restoring trust. The stakes could hardly be higher. Against a backdrop of social division, ecological breakdown and economic uncertainty, the pressure on leadership has never been more intense. But so far, the results have rarely matched the rhetoric.
In the face of ongoing challenges and failures, what’s needed is not another quick-fix solution, but a different kind of question. What if we reimagined leadership – and how we teach it – through the lens of the arts and humanities?
If repeated crises have shown us anything, it’s that leadership cannot be judged by efficiency and effectiveness alone. It must also be rooted in ethical purpose and a more human understanding of power, responsibility and influence. And for that, disciplines like literature, history, philosophy, art and music may offer more than we think. These traditions don’t just tell us how to lead; they ask us why. They remind us that leadership isn’t just about doing, it’s about being.
“In ancient Greece and Rome, the ‘liberal arts’ were the disciplines that freed people – not just from ignorance, but for citizenship … they prepared them to be independent thinkers, active citizens and virtuous friends.”
Edward Brooks and Michael Lamb
Social sciences have dominated the field of leadership studies, especially in business. This work has been immensely valuable: adding scientific rigour, uncovering replicable skills, and exposing the limits of hierarchical command-and-control models. But despite the volume of research and the rise of management-focused development programmes, the disconnect persists. Confidence in leadership is not improving. And the appetite for something more values-based, more human, is growing.
As Mark Carney puts it, the focus must shift from what leaders do to who they are.4 And yet even this shift can feel, at times, like a bolt-on to the prevailing model. A touch of humanity added to an otherwise instrumental approach. But what if it’s not enough to add the arts to leadership studies? What if we brought leadership back into the arts?
The idea isn’t new. In ancient Greece and Rome, the ‘liberal arts’ were the disciplines that freed people – not just from ignorance, but for citizenship. By fostering knowledge and critical inquiry, these ‘liberating arts’ served to liberate human beings from subjugation, oppression and domination, and prepare them to be independent thinkers, active citizens and virtuous friends.5
Never Miss A Story
“What if we reimagined leadership – and how we teach it – through the lens of the arts and humanities?”
History gives us countless examples of leaders who use power to dominate rather than serve. Yet some approaches in political science have tended to downplay and displace attention to leadership by focusing helpfully but sometimes too narrowly on the institutions and structures of government.6 But as political theorist Jo Freeman pointed out, removing formal leadership doesn’t necessarily remove power – it just makes it harder to see, and less accountable. Without clear structures and responsibilities, influence tends to gather around the privileged, the loudest or the already powerful. The result isn’t freedom but exclusion.7
To avoid that, we need leaders at every level who are not only capable, but visibly accountable. Not only strategic, but self-aware. Institutional checks and balances matter, of course. But no system, however well-designed, can substitute for character. If leadership is to serve the common good, it must be held not just by rules, but by integrity.
“As political theorist Jo Freeman pointed out, removing formal leadership doesn’t necessarily remove power – it just makes it harder to see, and less accountable.”
This is where the liberal arts still matter. These disciplines help shape people who can think critically, act ethically and imagine differently. They make space for uncertainty, for ambiguity, for the complexity of human life. They don’t promise easy answers, but they do ask better questions.
In the end, perhaps that is what leadership requires most: not certainty, but courage. Not perfection, but perspective. A willingness to stay with the tensions, to listen carefully, and to act in ways that are principled – even when they are not simple.
The arts and humanities don’t offer a system. They offer something more radical: a way of seeing. They remind us that good leadership is always, first and foremost, human.
This is an adapted excerpt from The Arts of Leading, edited by Edward Brooks (University of Oxford) and Michael Lamb (Wake Forest University). Full citations and suggested reading are provided in the footnotes below.
1. “Leadership Development Program Market,” Future Market Insights, May 2022, https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/leadership-development-program-market; Barbara Kellerman, “Introduction: Learning Leading—Lame Undertaking,” Professionalizing Leadership (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 3, citing Gillian Pillans, “Leadership Development—Is It Fit for Purpose?,” Corporate Research Forum, May 2015, 8.
2. Richard Edelman, 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer: Executive Summary, 1, https://www.scribd.com/doc/121501475/Executive-Summary-2013-Edelman-Trust-Barometer.
3. Richard Edelman, 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, https://www.edelman.com/trust/2023/trust-barometer.
4. Mark Carney, Value(s): Building a Better World for All (New York: HarperCollins, 2021).
5. For the Latin meaning of liberalis, see Charlton T. Lewis, An Elementary Latin Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 469. For an influential history of the “liberal arts” in ancient Greece and Rome (and beyond), see Bruce A. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education, expanded ed. (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995), esp. 13–42, at 13–16.
6. See Jeffrey Bilbro, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and David Henreckson, eds., The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education (Walden, NY: Plough, 2023).
7. Jo Freeman, “The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 41, no. 3/4 (2013): 231–46.
If leadership is a human practice, shaped as much by questions of character, ethics and imagination, then the stories we tell about leadership will define how we cultivate it – and how organisations thrive. This livestream is for communications, corporate affairs, and culture professionals who believe in the power of storytelling to make strategy stick, help culture flourish, and bring meaning to change. Join The Beautiful Truth on 10th December.
