This book demonstrates Dialogical Leadership which is the workplace application of the Dialogical Self Theory, first developed by Dutch psychologist Hubert Hermans in the 1990s. It encourages scientists and science-practitioners interested in leadership issues to discuss the power of dialogue in solving workplace culture problems. Van Loon’s work extends the concept of Dialogical Self Theory to the leadership of organizations, drawing on social constructionism by the American psychologist Ken Gergen and the leadership framework of British academic Keith Grint. This book explicitly links the health of organizations to the psychological and emotional health of those who lead them, concluding with the factors of teamwork and motivation. Dialogical Leadership jettisons the idea that organizations are run by ‘superheroes’, presenting a more realistic picture of the workplace. This is the first book to isolate ‘generative dialogue’ as the key mechanism for successful change and transformation programs in organizations. It rejects the idea that successful organizations are ‘rational systems’ conforming to scripts laid down by leaders, and it places dialogue and co-creation – ‘reciprocal exchange’ – at the heart of successful change programs. It starts from the kinds of questions leaders ask themselves – their ‘interior dialogue’ – and the quality of their interactions with others – their external dialogues – which can as shown in this book, be the difference between success and failure.
Rens van Loon is a professor and a consultant specialized in leadership and organizational change and transformation. He graduated from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands with a degree in philosophy in 1986 and completed a PhD in social sciences and psychology in 1996. In 2015 he was appointed the world’s first Professor of Dialogical Leadership in the School of Humanities at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. A consultant for more than 25 years, he has developed worldwide leadership programs and worked closely with leaders in both the private and public sectors.
A trained psychologist, he began, over 15 years ago, to combine Dialogical Self Theory with his own practical experience as a consultant. The result was Dialogical Leadership, a new approach to leadership, teams, and organizations explored in this book.
Van Loon is the author of three previous books, published in Dutch, and of numerous academic papers on leadership, dialogue and change. He
has been a director with Deloitte Consulting since 2009. He serves as a Board Member of the International Leadership Association (ILA), is active in the International Society for Dialogical Science (ISDS), and the Dialogical Self Academy (DSA).
