Innovation Leadership: The Revolution Starts With Words - ForbesComplexity is getting . . . more complex.High sentiments always win in the end. The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.George Orwell Where will we find the next generation of innovation leaders, those willing and able to believe in themselves, take risks, and persevere? Well, one place to look might just be in our university and college first-semester writing classes. It seems almost axiomatic that long-term business strength, economic growth, and the health of our society in general depends in great measure on innovative leaders. Our world becomes more complex every day, technology grows at an ever-increasing pace, and human systems of organization are changing and evolving before our very eyes. Our future success as a society, as well as the success of individuals in their individual lives, hinges on how well we cultivate, nurture and grow individual leaders. At the same time that we have this urgent need to develop the next generation of leaders, we are witnessing a backwards-focused war of pedagogy waging between educators, business leaders and politicians. The variety and diversity of opinion regarding what we should teach, what students need to learn, and what purposes our system of higher education should serve is loud, fractious and counter-productive. You hear and read the same narratives every day: "Teach those things that will get students jobs!" or "Train the students to work in my business!" or "Let's teach life skills!" The declaiming just goes on and on and on. And it seems to leave out an important part of the debate: the student, the future leader. A misplaced emphasis on "outcomes" distracts us from the more important challenge of creating, nurturing and encouraging leadership. Students in this debate function as mere output, or just one more measure of effectiveness, rather than as human beings. We test for skills, competencies, milestones. We grade and measure and evaluate and label countless aspects of every student - except leadership. That's because leadership is hard to find, hard to measure, and harder still to teach. So, where do we look? For many students, the mandatory, oft-lamented freshman writing class is their first exposure to those elements of personal growth that are central to leadership. It is (or should be) a class that invites reflection, an intense focus on language, and exploration of the wonder and power of dialogue and conversational inquiry. It is a time to discover leadership. Far from being a simple "skills" class, freshman writing can (or should) be a powerful forum for leadership development, and for vectoring students onto a path that will be creative, risk-tolerant and leadership-focused throughout their educational experience - and then on into the rest of their lives. It is the place where they can learn the centrality of language and the power of reflection for their own growth in leadership. When speed of execution is normative and rapid-fire decisions are a constant, the art of reflection can seem quaint, a holdover perhaps from earlier, more sedate times.Continue reading....