Bakhtin meets Whitehead: A process view of leadership

Abstract

Much of our prevailing knowledge of leadership is generally predicated on traits (substance) and styles, rather than the on-going experience of the act of leading. Leadership still sees 'being' of the person, whether leader or follower, as stable and enduring. All this seems to have led to an overmastering conception of leadership, so much so that the prospect for 'becomingness' to inhere the act of leading is inhibited. This is troubling - for it impedes leadership from conceptions of life and becoming. With a view of advancing leadership as dependent on becoming, this paper works out its position by searching for some possible likeness, or affinity, that might exist between Whitehead's notion of process (1956) and Bakhtin's work on dialogue (1990). The search is not about dovetailing the work of Bakhtin and that of Whitehead. Rather, it is more about finding an interface that would implicate leadership. A meeting between Bakhtin and Whitehead can be useful. Process can be better construed and lived through dialogue. Hence, there appears to be something potentially useful in seeing the act of leading from a process perspective achieved through dialogue.