Professor at Faculty of Education and Psychology U. Francisco de Vitoria
We contribute to the improvement of the evidence-base in leader and leadership development, by proposing testimonies as an approach for supporting and capturing the impact of the experience of learning that underpin leader and leadership development interventions. We illustrate how testimonies can be embedded in interventions and be designed such that they foster reflexive learning as well as, accounting for the improvements in action that learning leadership programs support. By positioning testimonies as a method of learning leadership and approach for arresting the impact of experiences of learning, we not only strengthen evidence-base management. We also advance our understanding of impact and its enduring and oscillating effects that can connect individuals, communities and institutions. We trace in the extant literature the use of testimonies in the UK Research Excellence Framework, evidence-base management debate, and human resource development field and illustrate, through examples, how they extend beyond their fact-finding orientation to foster responsibilization. We present emerging findings from a pilot study and explore the proposition that testimonies account for a person's truth – not merely their lived reality – but also their experiences of learning humanity – advancing human potential. We frame this as advancing a new learning leadership manifesto focusing on flourishing. Flourishing of all life on the planet attends simultaneously to the ‘I’ (leader development) with the ‘We’ (leadership development) and in doing so, explicates how the ‘Us’ and ‘Our’ actions contributes through development to serve the common good.
