Research and Media

Tag: leadership (Page 1 of 2)

Human-centered leadership development

Anders, A. (2021). Human-centered leadership development: A communication-based approach for promoting authentic and transformational leadership. International Journal of Business Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884211056558 

Abstract: Leadership development (LD) has been shown to deliver significant value in both professional and academic settings. However, scholars of leadership communication and LD have argued for a need to recognize LD as a highly social, co-creative, and communicative process in which followership and larger organizational and social contexts play a significant role. Recent research has also argued for self-directed and experiential learning approaches to promote learning mindsets and psychological resources for long-term growth. The present study addresses these challenges by developing a holistic theoretical model and an applied design for LD comprised of evidence-based communication interventions that address intrapersonal, interpersonal, and strategic communication contexts in order to promote both authentic leadership and transformational leadership capacities. The model employs human-centered design methods to complement established experiential learning models and facilitate co-creative engagement with situated organizational challenges.

A Communication Model for Leadership Development

Creating Innovation Strategy using Narrative-Based Methods

Innovate at Iowa State Presents Abram Anders

October 2nd, 4-5 p.m. On-line for Faculty, Staff, Graduate Students

Innovation Leadership and Mindset Workshop

This session will introduce narrative-based design methods developed to support a human-centered approach to creating an innovation strategy and communicating it through mindsets and practices that can impact behavior and performance. After a brief overview, participants will engage in a co-creative workshop based on these methods to explore opportunities and to envision innovation strategies for adaptive leadership at ISU.

Why narrative-based methods?

Recent studies of creativity, innovation, and adaptability have found that a fundamental challenge for organizations is to become ambidextrous in order to both exploit existing capabilities and explore new capacities. Put more simply, organizations must be able to efficiently execute on a strategy in order to perform, while also investing in research and development to innovate. At a basic level, organizational innovation requires a process that supports choosing ideas to pursue, organizing teams to implement these ideas, and completing projects in a way that leads to progress and learning.

A less frequently recognized aspect of effective innovation is the role of abductive reasoning. Recent studies show that highly innovation organizations, teams, and individuals find ways to engage noisy information, search for alternative and intermediary models, and engage in holistic and recursive processes. A key component of abductive reasoning is that deals with developing and evaluating explanations for poorly understood aspects of a problem space.

In order to support adductive reasoning, innovation strategy can be linked to practices of storytelling and narrative creation. We are, perhaps, already familiar with the ways that stories can support strategy through communication and dissemination. A story links a strategy to the reasons it matters in the form of concrete benefits for specific human beings: partners, clients, customers, users, consumers. However, stories can play an equally crucial role in discovering worthwhile problems and opportunities for innovation. Furthermore, storytelling can be crucial to creating the types of unanticipated connections that facilitate novel idea generation and development of effective solutions.

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