Language, metaphors, and phenomenology of leadership

In current scholarship, the subject of leaders and leadership has been identified and measured through traditional sampling and research techniques. The assumptions of these techniques is that leaders and leadership operate as a positional, top down phenomenon. Articulated by a cultural voice, these techniques are limited to traditionally accepted modes of inquiry and research. The purpose of this study was to explore a philosophical conceptual frame, one that is based in language phenomenologically with an epistemological orientation. By studying the language of leadership, interpretations and descriptions may be rendered which focuses a metaphorically constructed lens of reality. Secondly by allowing the researcher to express the self phenomenologically the humane elements of research and leadership spring forth. The writer found that life itself is the expression, through language and metaphor, of leadership, and that every person is capable of this expression. Through prophetic and spiritual language, the expression of "ducere vitam" is brought to the realm of relationships, sharedness, and vision