I will be in Australia from February to April 2003. As always I am looking forward to being in that beautiful and complex country!

It is an age-old question: are leaders born or are they made? Although we recognize that some people appear to be born leaders, it is commonly accepted that the values, knowledge, and skills of leadership develop with experience. To learn – formally or informally – begins with the organic nature of our lived experience. Much of our knowledge about leading is tacit, buried in our experiences. To reflect on the experiences that shape our leadership and to claim them as unique, is crucial to the work of leading. This reflective process opens up the world of intuition, and we become more aware of the complexity of leading our lives and living with others.

How to do this? In seminars, I often asked participants to think about what they learned at the kitchen table about leadership. Reflecting on their role models, stories and images, they realise that these unnamed experiences are still there – shaping their understanding of leadership. They discover what is truly unique in their experience as well as commonalties with other participants. This learning, which we seldom use as a resource, is the base of the knowing and understanding of leadership in general, as well as our own leadership. Furthermore, the way we talk using images, metaphors, sensuous details, puts our leading into the context of our work.

Along with the inward glance, we also search for a conceptual framework, a scaffolding, that opens new perspectives, writings, theories for us. So we examine theories and writings about leadership, power, fear, and communication. The language of our reflections – images, metaphors, sensuous details- encourages the debates, adaptations, and considerations of what framework is best for the work context as we live it day by day. Thus, the language of management lessens and the essential humanity of leading begins to emerge.

Another source of learning is what Hodgkinson (Hodgkinson 1996) calls the “Luther moment”, i.e. the moment when Luther tacked his propositions on the door of the church and said “Here I stand. I can do no other”. The end of compromise. For many of us, there has been a "Luther moment". Our choice, the decision of how and when to take a stand, varies greatly. But, as Hodgkinson points out, these are the moments when a new order – or a new vision – is created.

There is a small but significant interest in the aesthetic and its connection to leadership. This most often appears as ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’. It is included in writings and workshops on the competencies and the culture needed to create them.

There are, however, other engaging connections of the aesthetic and leadership. The vision of great artists, for example the Impressionists, has changed how we see the world –literally. We travel many miles for the experience of being with their works, spend large amounts of money to purchase the originals – or copies of them. We do the same with those who have changed our lives: leaders, teachers, and others. We want to be in their presence, keep artifacts of our time with them, take their example, their values, as paths to follow in our lives.

The aesthetic experience is a total fusion of our imagination and the work of art. This sense of being lifted out of time inspires us and transforms our understanding of what aesthetics contributes to our well being.