Leadership Development-Learning from Monastic Formation

Simon Western
7 min readFeb 16, 2021

Dr Simon Western

Leadership development has problems; many problems infact. Yet inspite of many research studies questioning its efficacy and many subjective accounts of how it fails to deliver, it grows exponentially. This short essay critiques contemporary leadership development and then offers new ways to think about how leadership development can learn from a counter-cultural space, the monastery. The essay has three parts, each section is taken from chapter 14 of Leadership a critical text which provides a fuller account for those interested.

First Section A critique of mainstream leadership development

Second Section, contemporary leadership developmental approaches drawing on the four discourses of leadership

Thirdly Eco-Leadership Formation approach inspired by Monastic formation

To cite: Western S. (2019)Leadership a critical text Sage pgs 335–339

Section 1.

Critique of Mainstream Leadership Development Practices

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Simon Western

Executive coach, academic, author, psychotherapist. Thought leader: Eco-leadership, eco-coaching & social change. Informed by psychoanalysis & critical theory