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I read a (Swedish-language) essay/article almost two years ago (March 2023) about a "leadership course from hell". It referred to an experiment that was conducted 15 years ago when managers who applied to a leadership course were randomly divided into two different groups. One group attended a traditional leadership course, while the other group were exposed to strong aesthetic experiences that made demands on them and that were hard to understand and take in; texts that were shocking and that clashed with each other, musical performances that complemented or enhanced the texts that that stirred up strong feelings in the audience. The performances were followed by space for discussions between the participants, but with very little guidance and leadership. Some people were disgusted, others were angry and many were confused. The performances forced these managers (who were anonymous to each other) to confront difficult feelings in themselves, like what does it mean to be a leader and what does it mean to be a human being? What would I have done had I been in that situation (as, say, a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp - or one of the guards in that camp)? What guides me in my everyday life, and what is my purpose in life?
As it turned out, the people who took the traditional leadership course had their pre-existing beliefs reinforced; felt selected and special and distanced themselves from the employees they were meant to lead. They in fact became worse leaders by disengaging and caring less for their employees compared to before they took the course, while those who took the alternate course and experienced the "Shibboleth" performances instead became better leaders. How do we know they became better or worse leaders? We know that because the medial researcher who led the experiment, Julia Romanowska, made before-and-after measurements of a hormone, DHEA-S, that protects people from stress. Her research established that stress levels of both leaders and their employees dropped when the leaders had taken the Shibboleth "leadership course from hell", while they instad rose among employees whose leaders had taken the traditional leadership course.
All of this happened not because, but despite the participants own experiences of taking these two courses. Those who had taken the traditional leadership course believed they had become more self-confident, as well as humbler and better listeners, while the Shibboleth group became more self-critical, more aware of their responsibility and more unsure about their ability to live up to what their conscience demanded of them.
All of this was extremely intriguing and I therefore bought the book, "Schibbolet-effekten: Ledarskap, konsten och människans ansvar" (2021) ["The Shibboleth effect: Leadership, art and human responsibility"] and read it half a year ago. I had met Julia Romanowska a year earlier and I got in touch with her to invite her to give a guest talk at KTH during the autumn, but it didn't work out for various reasons, and not the least because she has become very busy as of lately (after her book was published). She did mention that she would give a Shibboleth course during the first half of 2024 and that it had become fully booked only two hours after she had announced it on LinkedIn. Fortunately there was a selection process based on a personal application letter, and I felt that I had a good opportunity to write a good letter after I had read her book (and worked with related leadership concepts through Art of Hosting). The course started this past week and I attend it together with a colleague of mine from KTH, Anders Rosén (who also incidentally is responsible for teaching the pedagogical course I started this past week - the topic of my previous blog post!). I have thus been to the first of six meet-ups during the spring and look forward to attend the remainder at the pace of about one per month.
One difference between taking the course now (compared to the experiments she writes about in the book) is that people back then had no idea what they had signed up for. People were very confused and wondered when the course would start, who had put together this disconcerting performance and what the heck this performance was about? It is different now, I don't think it's possible to attend the course I'm taking without knowing pretty well what you have signed up for in advance.
All in all, the first day was characterised by three main activities; a Shibboleth performance, repeated solo reflections/journaling, and whole-group discussions (sitting in a large circle). The performance we experienced led to wide-ranging discussions about good and evil, efficiency and dehumanisation, responsibility and moral preparedness, complexity and control, means and ends, perpetrators and victims, forgiveness and reconciliation, life and death, love and hate, friends and enemies, cooperation and competition, collaborators and objectors, secularisation and faith, facts and feelings, body and soul, right and wrong. I look forward to the next time we meet in the course!
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