A plea for leadership theories

Abstract

This article addresses the challenge of teaching theory to people who view theorising sceptically. This is often the case in the context of leadership  trainings. In this article, I critically analyse the trivialisation of leadership, often based on success stories, and offer seven methods to include theory in  leadership classes, namely electing students; reversing the order: practice-theory instead of theorypractice; creating aha experiences with theory;  selecting “good” theory; pointing out the benefit of a special theory; viewing theories as eye-glasses, and suggesting eyeglasses from different  disciplines. I then argue, first, that leadership theory is needed, because real leadership is nontrivial and, secondly, that we need to teach more than one  leadership theory, in order to encourage critical thinking.