What Would I Do Differently? Using First Person Voice to Develop Leadership Identity for Health Care Professionals

Can leadership be taught? Those of us who offer courses on leadership, as part of an academic program, face this question quite often. It is my belief that acquiring more knowledge on leadership does not readily translate into becoming a better leader – especially so at a time in history where leaders have to deal with more complexity and change than ever before (Snowden & Boone, 2007; Malloch & Porter-O’Grady, 2009). Leadership is a process of becoming rather than a process of acquiring. In this paper, I argue the need to ground our teaching practices in complex responsive processes (Stacey, 2003), share one such practice we employ in a graduate program for health care professionals, and discuss the implications.