Poetry and Humanistic Leadership
One of my main learnings from undertaking my PhD has been the importance of finding, participating and contributing to (academic) communities. This has actually been a major activity of my PhD journey, and at some moments quite tricky to navigate (I think compounded by the fact that I am in a transdisciplinary school). Consequently, for me, one of the highlights of 2024 was finding and connecting with the International Humanistic Management Association (IHMA). I was introduced to IHMA via Dr. Donna Hicks, whose work on Dignity and Leadership I have been drawing on in my own PhD which considers what dignity-centred AI development could look like. After following their activities for some time, I was really pleased to meet some of the IHMA community in-person at the Academy of Management Conference (AoM) in Chicago last year.
I am now a Fellow with the IHMA and have recently completed their Humanistic Leadership Academy course which has been another way to build community with scholars and practitioners committed to humanistic leadership.
What is humanistic leadership?
At its core, humanistic leadership recognises the intrinsic value and worth of human dignity in organising practices. It rejects management practices that see humans merely as resources, assets, stakeholders or capital and embraces a much wider view of humans, putting human flourishing as the ultimate purpose of management.
The Humanistic Leadership Academy course that I recently completed focused on the following:
· Listening, Recognition and Gratitude
· Care & Accountability
· Dignity and Human Flourishing
· Authenticity
· Knowing our motivations and creating allies
We met online to discuss these topics and more.
Why do I care about humanistic leadership?
My care about humanistic leadership is longstanding. I think it has been fostered from my experience as an Acumen Fellow, where dignity was at the centre of Acumen’s operating and investing principles, and also from working in an Indigenous Consulting business where much more holistic views regarding leading an organization were at the core of how we operated. These sorts of deeply human ideas are also very present in Theory U which talks about leading from the emerging future and leans in to different ways of knowing, being and doing in the process. Doing the Theory U online certification in 2022 has also been an integral part of my journey, and the coaching circle formed through that experience is still an active community where I continue to explore many of these ideas.
These experiences are all infused in my PhD — themes around humanistic leadership are core to what I consider to be needed to enact responsibility when building AI-enabled products.
Putting words to these ideas has been an interesting journey and humanistic leadership provides one framing for this.
Poetry and Humanistic Leadership
I have an active interest in ways of knowing, doing and being that activate ‘the human’ within. Observing so many entrepreneurs (mainly, but not solely) working within structures that encourage a separation of their human-ness in order to produce, it strikes me as understandable that decisions made may not always have a wider responsibility in mind. So a question I’ve been carrying is how might we re-activate, re-integrate, encourage and incentivise the human in these organisations?
One avenue of interest has been using poetry. As part of the Humanistic Leadership Academy we were invited to consider how we may foster humanistic leadership and ULab coaching circle I have been meeting with since 2022 had decided to bring poetry into our circle for a session late last year; this provided a great opportunity for me to reflect on the value of poetry in relation to humanistic leadership principles.
Each member of the circle brought a poem that they wanted to share with the group. For one member, it was her own poetry and for the others, it was poems from favourite poets. We took turns reading out our poems of choice. We paused after each one for a silent reflection moment and then we each shared what moved us from hearing the poem.
Some reflections on the experience:
- Listening to a person read poetry (as opposed to reading it yourself) sparked a sense of authenticity.
This circle is one where I have experienced a high level of authenticity generally. However, I did notice that hearing each person read a poem did bring a different sense of understanding of eachother. Especially for one member who read her own poem; it was a moment of deeply seeing her in a new light. I thought afterwards about the oral quality of reading things out aloud that brought a different dimension to the interaction. How often do we really do this? We may internally read pre-prepared text to ourselves, or we may speak to another in a free-flowing manner, but there is something very different about words chosen so specifically in a poem and reading them out aloud.
2. The rhythmic quality of poetry and the visual language used heightened my sense of listening
Generally speaking, I’m not a great oral listener. I often find I really need to concentrate and to make sure I write a lot of notes in order to follow what’s going on. But in this instance, there was a different sensibility being offered; I felt I could let the words wash over me in a different way, allowing myself to open to other understandings beyond comprehension of the words, to feeling the emotions and making meaning from this place. I felt I was listening on many levels at once. There was also a unique aspect of listening to your own voice while reading a poem aloud that you’ve read many time in your head. It made me wonder a lot about the power of reading thoughts out aloud so you can listen for new meaning.
3. There was a serendipitous quality to what was brought into the circle and how it met the very human needs of who was there.
This group meets roughly every two months and people do come in and out and we have little interaction between the sessions. Upon arrival into the session, one member in particular was going through some very painful life events. The poems that the other members chose spoke very clearly to this member and provided beautiful moments of shared humanity. It was emotional at times and there was a deep sense of care and dignity to the interaction. The sense of serendipity that these poems found each person and met them where they were also heightened the sense of humanity in the interaction.
We decided to do it again for the next session, as some members were not there this time around. There was a deep sense of gratitude for what sharing poetry had brought each of us. I look forward to seeing how this exploration continues to unfold.
Lorenn is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics, a Responsible Tech Collaborator at Centre for Public Impact and undertakes freelance consulting on responsible AI, governance, stakeholder engagement and strategy. Previously, Lorenn was a Director at PwC’s Indigenous Consulting (now Yamagigu Consulting) and a Director of Marketing & Innovation at a Ugandan Solar Energy Company whilst a Global Fellow with Impact Investor, Acumen. She also co-founded a social enterprise leveraging sensor technology for community-led landmine detection whilst a part of Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program. Her research investigates conditions for dignity-centred AI development, with a particular focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems.
