Tuesday, July 12, 2022

Transformative and Transformational Leadership

 My colleague and classmate Margie wrote about leadership the other day and we had a chance to chat about it. There were two things that came to mind when I read her post. The first is that transformative learning and how it "fosters a critical change in an individual's meaning structures."

We have been hosting leadership training for many years and across the board the students wrote reviews that expressed how fundamentally eye-opening and life-changing the training course was to them.

It was only after learning more about Mezirow's theories on transformative learning that I realized we had without trying to create the framework and structure needed to support a transformative learning moment for the learners. How many other courses are like this or how many other leaders do this without really knowing that they are?

Additionally, the second thing I think about is what you wrote about reflective journaling. In a recent class I took on Adult Learning and Adult Development with Dr. Fishback we were introduced to an Army Tradoc class by one of the developers. 

A class called Red Teaming. In this instance, it is a class that is in some ways designed as a series of exercises designed to help military leaders move closer toward self-authorship in their adult development journey. One of the first exercises is to start a "Red Team Journal" dedicated to self-authorship. I've been keeping this journal for months now and as a reflective learning practice can't be beaten. 

As with the above, where I plan to update our leadership training to include more on social capital, I am also going to be promoting more journaling. 

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