Chapter Four
Figure-Ground
The conditions that must exist before leadership is possible
Overview
The preceding chapters assume some recognisable social space in which leadership operates. This one puts that assumption in question, and asks what leadership consists of when the space itself is the thing being fought over. Its title comes from the observation that dominant leadership theory makes the individual figure and the system ground — an arrangement that is anything but a neutral analytical choice.
Elias's figuration dissolves the free-standing individual into a web of interdependencies. Lefebvre's account of the production of space dissolves the stable backdrop. Between them, neither figure nor ground survives as the orthodox literature assumes it.
Three cases follow: civic space dissolved and reasserted in England in 2011; a figuration that had to be built from nothing in post-conflict Nicaragua; and Socratic questioning as the leadership act that consists in refusing to resolve.
Key questions
- What is being treated as figure here, and what has quietly become ground?
- Does the space in which this conversation could happen actually exist yet?
- Who is holding it open, and at what cost to themselves?
- What is the question this figuration's stories are designed to prevent?
- Is uncertainty being closed prematurely because closure is more comfortable?
Central concepts
Cases in this chapter
Work with it
Related lens: Figure-Ground
Related tools: Critical Narrative Review
Status: paraphrased from the manuscript · author review required