Leadership and the Lens of a Profession

Abstract

In the Call for Book Chapters for this volume, the editor specifies that this book “is not the place for chapters on dominant social-psychology approaches to leadership….We very much respect those approaches, but we are looking for things that are radically different”. In a more generic sense, such a statement implies that we appreciate that a scientific approach to leadership has merit, but we also appreciate that non-scientific approaches (e.g., literature, humanities, history) have merit as well. Is there a vantage point from which to integrate scientific and nonscientific approaches to seeing the domain of leadership? In the phrasing of Vladimir Nabokov (2000), “Does there not exist a high ridge where the mountainside of ‘scientific knowledge’ joins the opposite slope of ‘artistic imagination’?” The purpose of this essay is to suggest that one potential vantage point to view leadership is through the lens of a “profession”. Many professionals draw upon both codified science and tacit knowledge in their work. For example, medical doctors draw upon sciences such as anatomy and pharmacology while also drawing upon more abstract, subjective knowledge. Can we consider “leaders” as professionals in order to join conceptually these two sides of the “ridge”?