POST FORMAL LEADERSHIP - what is it I hear you ask. This short document outlines the work being done by SpeakMark Leadership populist Earl de Blonville. 

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‘Is this the Dawn of Postformal Leadership?’
By Earl de Blonville, FRGS Doctoral Candidate School of Global, Urban and Social Studies RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
In her latest book ‘The End of Leadership’, Founding Executive Director of the Harvard- Kennedy School’s Centre for Public Leadership, Professor Barbara Kellerman throws down a massive challenge to the world’s multi-billion dollar MBA ‘leadership industry’. In doing so she crystallizes for many other academics and practitioners a problem that was, like the elephant in the room, too big to ignore yet too scary to confront. If Kellerman and others are right about the need for root and branch change to our current global leadership paradigm, what does this mean for an all-pervasive leadership model that now affects government, healthcare and higher education, and is there anything better we can replace it with? This paper asks: ‘Is this really the end of leadership, or is it the dawn of postformal leadership?’
As background, I will introduce three looming and unavoidable global challenges that will not only unravel our view of leadership, but also the current corporate model with its pervasive influence that may not survive beyond this decade. After briefly discussing the old paradigm leadership model that grew out of the American military industrial complex and was underpinned by radical behaviourism, I will introduce a new humanistic approach to leadership that I call “postformal leadership.”
Postformal leadership draws on the 40-year-old field of US-based adult developmental psychology research on postformal reasoning. In recent years there has been a flurry of new-paradigm approaches to leadership, such as creative leadership, empathic leadership and integral leadership, to name but a few. Yet, to my knowledge there has not been to date a systematic examination of the implications of the adult developmental psychology research on postformal qualities and their relationship to leadership. It is this relationship that is the primary focus of my research as presented in this paper.
Keywords: Postformal, leadership, behaviourism, corporate model, adult developmental psychology, leadership industry.
Bio
Earl de Blonville FRGS is Australia’s pre-eminent Arctic explorer, a critically acclaimed author and filmmaker. He led Australia’s first Arctic expedition, with patron HRH The Prince of Wales, and has been a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society since 1984. Earl holds the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Award and the rarely awarded Olegas Truchanas Expedition Award. His current doctoral research draws on lessons from 25 years of field expedition leadership, 12 years in C-Suite leadership coaching and recent ground research into Europe’s leadership future. His primary research into Postformal Leadership draws together balanced, nuanced and yet confronting insights for change that could revolutionize and liberate leadership globally.