A presentation and discussion on modern leadership and the question of character, with a particular focus on President Barack Obama and his exercise of leadership in the context of contemporary race relations.

 

Director of Psychology Training at the Cambridge Health Alliance; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School; Faculty Affiliate, Harvard Law School; Faculty, Psychoanalytic Institute of New England
 

1:00 -3:00 p.m.

Boston University-George Sherman Union

775 Commonwealth Avenue; Boston, MA 02215

Conference Rooms 320-321

The most critical challenges leaders face are novel ones: the leader must innovate in real-time, and in contexts in which even extensive preparation may prove inadequate. Modern leadership scholars suggest that some portion of the capacity to learn, and some part of the leader's ability to create a learning climate for followers, rest on the leader's character. Leaders prosper or falter on the basis of their knowledge of themselves, their understanding of the context in which they find themselves, and their ability to accurately articulate shared goals.

 

In this paper, Dr. Leary will use public speeches, journalistic reports, and a published memoir to explore President Obama's exercise of leadership, particularly in the sphere of race and race relations. Using a psychoanalytic lens, Dr. Leary will suggest lessons future leaders and followers might draw from Obama's leadership story, including the lessons that clinicians and others may draw about how to think through the meaning of race in psychic experience.

 

1. To delineate the difference between leadership as a technical activity and leadership as adaptive challenge

2. To formulate the process by which racial constructs in America can become a context in which adaptive leadership is forged

3. To develop lessons that inform psychoanalytic perspectives on race and culture

 

Suggested donation: $10; Students: Free

For further information, contact Lyn Yonack @ 413-528-5833 or lyn.yonack@verizon.net