According to Dr. Teresa Bejan of Oxford’s Department of International Relations, in Ancient Greek democracy, Isegoria (Bejan, 2017) is often used to describe the equal rights of citizens to participate in public debate in the democratic assembly. Why is the concept of Isegoria important to an HR academic? It is important because it is a critical attribute in democratic forms of leadership. Furthermore, in what Revd. Dr. William Lamb (2021) also of Oxford University refers to as a ‘spiritual exercise’ as opposed to a ‘rhetorical device’ another form of free speech is mentioned. Parrhesia or ‘expressive freedom’ is witnessed most visibly during Jesus's spoken interaction with the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Gospel according to Matthew. How does this famous instance affect our view of democratic forms of leadership?
In the words of Collinson et. al (2018), where the Raelinian notion of Leadership-as-Practice (L-A-P) or ‘Leaderful’ practice is referenced to define the norms of ‘democratic tradition’ as enshrined and embedded in practice, or demokratia per se[1], Collinson explains that Raelin is referring to ‘participatory’ and ‘deliberative’ process. In this view, leadership is democratic and "holds an inherently positive connotation associated with certain democratic norms of equality and freedom to participate”. These are the 4C’s that constitute Raelin’s model of L-A-P: Compassion, Collaboration, Collectiveness and Concurrency.
What we refer to as leadership, in theory, can be impacted in a variety of ways by team dynamics. According to a 2023 article published online by management consultancy firm, Bain & Company, entitled, “At the Top, It’s All About Teamwork”, there is a notion that “effective teams” exhibit what the article refers to as ‘collective behaviours. As an example of the application of this form of leadership to teamwork, Benjamin Higgens, MD of Human Resources at Société Générale Group, one of France’s largest corporate and investment banking institutions by AUM, featured in a 2023 article published by The People Space, demonstrating how the bank’s collaboration with a leading workplace culture and behaviour consultancy led to a 'participatory engagement' which included 89% of its current workforce in London.
The article demonstrates how through authentic inclusion, potential agents of change, senior leaders, and other employees, were able to acquire knowledge on effective decision-making and behaviours. How does this link back to the democratic concepts of Isegoria and Parrhesia? I may go into that linkage in more depth later in another Open blog. But for now, I thought I'd share these references and articles on the topic as a formal introduction.
References1. Bejan, T. M. (2017) ‘Dr Teresa Bejan writes about the two clashing meanings of freedom of speech‘, University of Oxford – Available at https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/dr-teresa-bejan-writes-about-two-clashing-meanings-free-speech (Accessed on 26 January 2024)
2. Collinson, D., Jones, O. S. and Grint, K. (2018) ''No More Heroes’: Critical Theories on Leadership Romanticism’, Organisational Studies, 39(11). pp. 1625-1647 [Online] (Accessed on 26 January 2024)
3. Foucault, M. (1983) ‘Lecture 6: Discourse and Truth: The Problemitization of Parrhesia’, University of California at Berkeley
4. Gan, X., Jia, J., and Le, Y. (2023) ‘Transforming Vertical Leadership into Shared Leadership in Infrastructure Project Teams: A Dual-Pathway Perspective’, Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management [Online] (Accessed on 26 January 2024)
5. Raelin, J. A. (2003) ‘Creating Leaderful Organisations: How to bring out leadership in everyone‘, Berret Koehler Publishers [Online] (Accessed on 26 January 2024)
6. Revd. Lamb, W. (2021) ‘Parrhesia, Openness, Boldness and Accountability’, Vacation Term for Biblical Studies 2021 [Online] (Accessed on 26 January 2024)
7. Womack, K. (2020) ‘A Study of Leaderful Practice in Church Organizations’, University of New Hampshire Scholar’s Repository – Available via https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=ms_leadership (Accessed on 26 January 2024)
[1] 'Demokratia' is the Grecian concept analogous to modern Western democracy
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