Integral Strategy 123
Leading Minds
This example of story as a vehicle for leadership can be multiplied many times
over and has been made the subject of studies from many perspectives. George
Goethals (2005) finds strong echoes of the theme in Freud’s comments on the
power of ideas over leaders. In his important book on leadership, Leading Minds:
An Anatomy of Leadership, Howard Gardner (1995) offers a cognitive theory of
leadership, emphasizing the leader’s ability to discern and articulate the group’s
story. The notion of leading by knowing, of course, supports our thesis that there is
a disciplinary component to leadership. Yet the cognition in question is complex,
for it involves strong elements of emotion as well as reason (H. Gardner 1995).
Perhaps put more aptly, it is a form of cognition that is enacted in the choice of
authentic values, and that must provide evidence of their authenticity.
Gardner (1995) pursues his thesis through a series of brief monographs of
eleven prominent leaders, including both direct and indirect leaders. Among
others, he studies Margaret Thatcher, Robert Maynard Hutchins, George C. Mar-
shall, Pope John XXIII, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and Mahatma
Gandhi. In doing so, he uses a broader characterization of story than we do here,
calling them “invented accounts in any symbol system,” yet he focuses primarily on
the way these leaders used narratives of identity in their exercise of leadership
(H. Gardner 1995, 42).
A Narrative of Freedom and Justice: Eleanor Roosevelt
Several of Gardner’s studies focus on leaders who exercised extraordinary influ-
ence on society although they did not occupy formal positions of high authority,
for example, Gandhi, King, and Eleanor Roosevelt, each of whom also crossed
racial, cultural, or gender boundaries. A patrician by birth and by marriage to one
of the commanding figures of the twentieth century, Eleanor Roosevelt began
to find her own independent voice and influence in her middle years. She and
other female leaders demonstrate that narrative leadership is not bound by gen-
der, especially since it emphasizes elements of personal experience and relational
knowledge in which many women find their voice (Gilligan 1982). As Roosevelt
started to participate actively in political organizations and causes, she developed
and communicated simply and clearly the message that women should assume
independent roles of leadership in public life. Her story came to include the call
for greater social justice for all citizens, and she wrote, argued, and spoke tirelessly
in public and private forums for civil rights for blacks and for women. Although
her ideas were often controversial, she found ways to differentiate her role to
avoid political problems for her husband while constantly trying to influence
him. She was for years one of the most influential women in the world in her
own right. In time her story became a global one as she championed human rights
for the dispossessed in her role as a member of the American delegation to the
United Nations. Many of the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s and after