Resource Title / Leadership development using the poetic voice of care ethics
This is aimed at those who need to develop an alternative paradigm for Leadership Development programmes and want provide the opportunity for open reflexive dialogue with their dealings with leadership practice.
Authors / Andrew Armitage, Lord Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, Essex, UK
Key Words / Care ethics, reflexive dialogue, poetry
Context / The use of poetry to explore the ethics of care in leadership development programmes is an approach that introduces participants to an alternative way of engaging with, and exploring organisational issues, conflicts, and decision making processes. It uses an ethical perspective that is founded within relationships between people, both proximate and distant, something that is often overlooked in leadership development programmes. Reflexive dialogic groups are used where leaders can express themselves through the poetic voice within a “safe place” to enable participants gain a more “connective sense” of self with their working environment and the everyday realities of their organizations.
Purpose / The resource was designed for HR professionals and educators to allow learners to explore their relationships with their organisations through the voice of poetry in order to consider their responses to leadership development.
How it works / Milton Mayeroff in his classic On Caring, argued that caring is where an individual “the other” to grow; you are not using that person to satisfy your own needs, you are helping them to progress in some way. Caring is a process and a way of relating to another person. In a caring relationship, the carer focuses attention on the person being cared for in a selfless way, whereby the carer also grows and gets closer to realising their own potential and to “self-actualise”. Caring consists of several ingredients, these being: knowing, where we understand the other’s needs and to respond properly; alternating rhythms that entails focusing on the detail, at others on the wider picture, watching and seeking feedback on actions/inactions; patience, whereby the other is allowed to grow in their own time and in their own way; honesty where you are being open to oneself’ and to others, seeing others as they really are and myself as I really am; trust involves trusting the other to grow in their own time and in their own way; humility where we learn from others and from our mistakes; hope should be based on present and realistic possibilities; courage, as any relationship is a journey into the unknown - we need to others their world in order to sense from the inside what life is like for them, what they are striving to be, and what they require to grow, for example, empathy.
Mayeroff’s ideas of care have been developed by care ethicists, who have also emphasised the centrality that relationships have an emotional import (see, for example, Jagger, 2004 and 2014). As such, they foreground responsibilities first and foremost in ethical decision making rather than justice and rights as do traditional ethical theories, the latter being as they claim being based with a contractual relationship between people rather than personal relationships. Carol Gilligan who is regarded as a main proponent in the development of the ethics of care, posits the notion that the self is the main object of concern; the second is to establish connections and participate in social life i.e. directing one’s thoughts to others; whereby one recognises their own needs and those with whom they have relationships, thus engendering responsibilities to the self as well to other others in deciding as to what is the right action. Gilligan does not suggest that care ethics and responsibility are to be regarded as replacing impartiality, rather she advocates that the mature responsible person involves them in a complex interaction of reflexive dialogue between the concerns of impartiality and those of the personal relationships of carer (see, for example, Blum, 1988). She is adamant that ethics is concerned with being “good” not about what “good” is, thus ethics is not concerned with individuals, but rather relationships. NelNoddingsalso takes the position that traditional moral theories are not the correct place to commence from, these been to legalistic in nature when they call for right and justice based resolutions to ethical dilemmas. Self-interest is not denied by Noddings – we affirm our own interest by affirming other’s needs, whereby moral dilemmas are relational, not a monologue. Noddings does not want conflict to drive moral decisions making, and advocates the use of reflexive dialogue to promote a responsible attitude when engaging with others in order to converse about situations, feelings, and outcomes. Heller (1990) also supports this view, offering what she terms orientative principles of care that reject principled based ethics as not having a proper regard for another person’s vulnerability or having a regard for another person’s autonomy, morality or suffering.
Framing the Activity
This workshop exercise uses reflexive dialogue to explore how leaders cope, react, and resolve their everyday experiences as David Whyte (1996:115) notes ‘The voice emerges from the body as a representation of our inner word. It carries our experiences from the past, our hopes and fears for the future’. These characteristics are essential for a workshop that uses poetry as its mode of engagement, given also that this is not an exercise of how to write “good” poetry, or an evaluation of what makes good poetry; rather its focus is what poetry can bring to and inform those who have leadership roles within their organisations.. This exercise also is interactive, whereby those attending the workshop are encouraged to bring personal artefacts as a means to locate and contextualise their poetic storytelling; the intention is to make this “real” and meaningful to those sharing their poems with other participants.
Pre-workshop planning activities
Participants are briefed in advance of the workshop, whereby they are provided with pre-information that asks them to think about ethical leadership using poems. Four options are offered to particiantsto choose from, thus those who are new to poetry can gain the confidence to engage in this form or organisational storytelling.
Option 1: Participants are given suggested leadership poems by the facilitator, which they bring to the workshop to deconstruct with participants in their reflexive dialogue group. The following are examples of leadership poems that can be used.
The first poem is “All True Vows” by David Whyte. This poem speaks directly to those who make promises – arguably the very core of human relationships. This poem also talks about truth, and friendship, which are central to an ethics of care. As a facilitator the following questions can be posed: What responsibility do we have to others to uphold our vows and promises to others do we have as leaders? Have we a moral responsibility to ourselves to uphold vows and promises? What damage might tit do to ourselves – will it dehumanize ourselves? How can we gain a better understanding of others and truth?
All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.
There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.
Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.
Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.
Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen
nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.
Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you
and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,
that way you’ll find
what is real and what is not.
I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.
Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years
in my own voice,
before it was too late
to turn my face again.
The second poem is one of my own called “To Bear the Soul”. This poem speaks directly at those who are in leadership positions, dealing with a personal crisis of one of their members of their team. This is what I call a “listening” poem – it addresses the issue of compassion, empathy and sympathy. Again like the previous two poems, questions raised could be: How do you deal with personal crisis in the workplace? How do you manage work and personal relationships? Should the leader put to one side their status of power in situations of those undergoing personal trauma? How can you as a leader help a colleagues undergoing times of stress? How can we improve and enhance our relationships in the workplace?
He was unravelling,
bearing his soul,
Trembling like a child,
out of control,
He sat bended back to confess,
Ready to pray for my forgiveness,
Listless slumped in front of me,
Me his mentor, me his leader,
His life unfolding – pleading,
Waiting for me to react,
To gather the facts,
Did he have personal issues?
Some trauma out of the blue,
It’s true I could rant and rave,
Drive him to an early grave,
Pour on scorn to shower,
Or exert my petty power,
See only an object in front of me,
Show distain - choose not to see,
Dehumanize his humanity,
To appease my vanity,
Take revenge - rage,
Take centre stage,
But no!
I had to find out more,
To connect,
To empathize, grow wise
to reprise my curiosity,
Bring calm and luminosity,
Shine a light on this dark place,
To seek truth and not debase,
Stretch out my hand of hope,
Not pre-judge or reproach,
Search for truth in conversation,
The generation of mutual trust,
Like a parent to their sons and daughters,
I must be a bridge over troubled waters,
To see him for who he is,
To see him for what he is,
Not as a means to an end,
Touch his broken spirit to mend,
I must look in the mirror and reflect,
And from my eyes remove the fleck,
That blinds and imprisons my humility -
For I was once he in need of my sympathy.
Option 2: Some participants might be prepared to “have a go” to write their own leadership poetry. They are asked to think of a situation of their own where they as perhaps should have been more conscious of taking account of relationships in their leadership roles. They are then asked to create a 200-300 word account of some suggested situations as follows (or one’s of their choosing):
The ethical leader: What are the requirements for an ethical leader? Who or what do they have responsibilities towards? Have you or a leader you knowdisplayed toxic leadership behaviour, for example, bullying, underhand point scoring, and organisational politicking? What are your feelings about this? How do they react to you? How do you react to them? What is your relationship with them?
Ethicalvision and mission: Do you have an organisational vision or value statement based on the ethics of care? What are the points it tries to get across to those who work in the organisation? Does it ring true in practice, or is it a fantasy? If you have access to your vision or mission statement can you re-write this as an ethics of care poem? If you don’t have access to your vision or mission statement can you write your own as you perceive it being practiced in your own organisation?
Leadership and power: Thisis often determined by positional authority; the higher in the hierarchy the more power and authority people have. What are the reporting structures? Can describe this within a poem that focuses upon the ethics of care?
Leadership and organisational crisis: Have you experienced crisis in your organisation or one that you have worked for? How did you cope? How did you and/or your colleagues feel? What caused it? How did the organisation respond to it? Who took the flack? How were relationships handled? Were people inside and outside the organisation taken care of?
Leadership and organisational conflict: Organisational conflict can take place out of sight behind the closed doors of the boardroom, but its consequences invariably impact those who work in the organisation. How could you handle this using an ethics of care? What relationships have to be taken account of? Do you only have responsibility to your immediate colleagues or does this extend to distant relationships either inside or outside the organisation?
They are then asked them to pick out the verbs, adverbs, and adjectives they have used from their 200-300 word accounts. Having done this “staged” poetic writing process I then ask them to construct a poem of 100-150 words of their chosen situation.
Option 3: Participants can select their own leadership poem, which they bring to the workshop to deconstruct with their participants in their reflexive dialogue group. The following are some useful web sources to take inspiration from:
- Leadership Tools at
- Everyman Edict at
- Tweetspeak Poetry at
Workshop activity
The workshop is split into groups of no more than four people. It is advisable that these are peer-to-peer reflexive dialogue groups. If they are a mix of senior and junior participants this introduces power relationships between “the boss” and “us. The intention is to share organisational stories in a safe environment, and to open up further questions for discussion, self-reflection, and learning, for example:
- What does the poem you have written read mean to you?
- Does it take account of other people’s vulnerability mentioned in the poem?
- Does it respond to another person’s needs?
- Does it manipulate others mentioned in the poem?
- How can we deal with our own and others’ unspoken needs and relationships, whether real or imagined?
- Can poetry be used means to change our own leadership approaches and styles?
Evaluation/Feedback / When care ethics “comes onto the scene” this can be seen as a threat and challenge to the “hard” veneer of contemporary organisations. This is further exacerbated by the use of poetry as the vehicle for people to express their inner concerns and emotions within (even) the private space of reflexive dialogue groups. Notwithstanding, some are still reticent to use this mode of engagement, often citing “when the chips are down” that they cannot write poetry, or perhaps hide behind a “veil of resistance” whereby they will try to justify to themselves that “poetry (after all) is not for me”. I have found that by doing the pre-workshop activity in advance of the workshop can provide a good gauge or filter to determine who might be receptive to this mode of organisational engagement – it is important that those who attend the workshop do so voluntarily and with an open mind. I would advise that one hour should be allocated for this. Facilitators need to “plan ahead” in order to head off any potential issues of sensitivity and/or situations where participants might “go too far”. This is central for the evelopment of trust between facilitator and participants‘in order to guarantee the production of positive benefits for the organisation, artists and business people have to shape a mutual trustful relationship’ (Schiuma, 2008:245). One of the issues that sometimes arises is the subject matter of the ethics of care; this is where the pre-workshop activity can prove useful so the facilitator can take the cultural temperature of the organisation.
Appendices / Armitage, A. (2010), ‘From sentimentalism towards a critical HRD pedagogy’, Journal of European Industrial Training,34 (8/9), 735-52.
Blum, L. (1988), ‘Gilligan and Kohlberg: Implications for Moral Theory’, Ethics,98 (3), 472-91.
Borgerson, J.L. (2007), ‘On the harmony of feminist ethics and business ethics’, Business and Society Review,112 (4), 477-509.
Burton, K. and Dunn, P. (1996), ‘Feminist Ethics as Moral Grounding for Stakeholder Theory’, Business Ethics Quarterly, (2), 133-47.
Burton, K. and Dunn, P. (2005), ‘The Caring Approach and Social Issues in Management Education’, Journal of Management Education,29(3), 453-74.
Carson, J.B., Tesluk, P.E., and Marrone, J.A. (2007), ‘Shared leadership in team: An investigation of antecedent conditions and performance’, Academy of Management Journal,(50), 1217-34.