{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,12]],"date-time":"2026-08-12T15:38:44Z","timestamp":1786549124049,"version":"build-2736575974"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2009]]},"group-title":"SSRN","reference-count":24,"publisher":"Elsevier BV","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"abstract":"This presentation is based on our research program over the last seven years in which our objective has been to rigorously distinguish leader and leadership and to create a technology for providing access to being a leader and exercising leadership effectively (in short, a technology for reliably creating leaders). Our research program involves not only discovering the technology, but also to create a course that would be available to faculty in higher education to use, experiment with, research, improve on and innovate from. Our efforts thus required an experimental laboratory to discover what will enable us as educators to efficiently and effectively create leaders.\n\nDean Mark Zupan of the U. of Rochester Simon School of Business provided us with a research\/teaching laboratory during the five years (2004-2008) we worked there with students, alumni, executives, and faculty from various academic institutions. This laboratory allowed us to investigate leader and leadership as phenomena, and to create technologies for providing actionable access to leader and leadership. The course is now also taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy, was delivered in 2009 at the Erasmus Academie (Rotterdam), and a version of which is taught at the Erasmus University Law School. In June 2010 the course was taught at the Mays School of Business, Texas A&M University and in November 2010 in India under the auspices of the IC Centre for Governance and MW Corp. The course was taught at the Dartmouth Medical School in June 2012, in Whistler B.C. Canada for the benefit of the Erhard-Jensen Ontological \/ Phenomenological Initiative in October 2012, at entrepreneurship@UBC, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada in June 2013, in Cancun, Mexico for the benefit of the Erhard-Jensen Ontological \/ Phenomenological Initiative in October 2013, in Singapore, hosted by Nanyang Technological University in July 2014, in Bermuda for the benefit of the Erhard-Jensen Ontological \/ Phenomenological Initiative in October 2014 and in Dubai, UAE held at the Zayed University Convention Center in January 2015. The course is still under development and will be for several more years. \n\nThe course is designed to leave participants being leaders and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self expression, and to contribute to creating a new science of leadership.\n\nThe technology and the course is founded on what we term an ontological\/phenomenological model of human nature. The ontological approach is uniquely effective in providing actionable access to being a leader and exercising leadership effectively.\n\nWhile ontology as a general subject is concerned with the being of anything, here we are concerned with the ontology of human beings (the nature and function of being for human beings). Specifically we are concerned with the ontology of leader and leadership (the nature and function of being for a leader and the actions of effective leadership). Who one is being when being a leader shapes one\u2019s perceptions, emotions, creative imagination, thinking, planning, and consequently one\u2019s actions in the exercise of leadership.\n\nBeing a leader and the effective exercise of leadership as one\u2019s natural self-expression does not come from learning and trying to emulate the characteristics or styles of noteworthy leaders, or learning what effective leaders do and trying to emulate them (and most certainly not from merely being in a leadership position, or position of authority).\n\nIf you are not being a leader, and you try to act like a leader, you are likely to fail. That\u2019s called being inauthentic (playing a role or pretending to be a leader), deadly in any attempt to exercise leadership.\n\nAn epistemological mastery of a subject leaves you knowing. An ontological mastery of a subject leaves you being.\n\nGaining access to being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership as one\u2019s natural self-expression also requires dealing with those factors present in all human beings that constrain each person\u2019s freedom to be \u2013 and constrain and shape one\u2019s perceptions, emotions, creative imagination, thinking, planning, and actions. When one is not constrained or shaped by these factors \u2013 what we term \u201contological constraints\u201d \u2013 one\u2019s way of being and acting results naturally in one\u2019s personal best. We work with the students so that they accomplish this for themselves.\n\nThe Underlying Theory of the Course: Part I -- The Three Foundational Elements of Leadership\n\nIntegrity (in our model a positive phenomenon):\n\u2022\tBeing whole and complete \u2013 achieved by \u201chonoring one\u2019s word\u201d (creates workability, develops trust).\n\nAuthenticity:\n\u2022\tBeing and acting consistent with who you hold yourself out to be for others, and who you hold yourself to be for yourself. When leading, being authentic leaves you grounded, and able to be straight without using force.\n\nBeing Committed to Something Bigger than Oneself:\n\u2022\tSource of the serene passion (charisma) required to lead and to develop others as leaders, and the source of persistence (joy in the labor of) when the path gets tough.\n\nThe Underlying Theory of the Course: Part II -- A Context That Uses You\n\n\u2022\tOur research has led us to distinguish leader and leadership through four different lenses or levels of analysis: 1) as linguistic abstractions, 2) as phenomena, 3) as concepts, and 4) as defined terms. Viewing leader and leadership in these four dimensions creates leader and leadership as a powerful context.\n\n\u2022\tWe work with the students to create for themselves what it is to be a leader, and what it is to exercise leadership effectively, as a context that uses them. By \u201ca context that uses them\u201d, we mean a context that has the power to leave students in any leadership situation being a leader and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression. (As it has been said: \u201cthe context is decisive\u201d.)\n\n\u2022 \tBy \u201ca context that has the power to leave students being a leader and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression\u201d, we mean the following:\n\u2022\tA context that has the power in any leadership situation to shape the way in which the circumstances the students are dealing with occur for them such that their naturally correlated way of being and acting is one of being a leader and exercising leadership effectively. \n\u2022\tNote: being and action are a natural correlate of the way in which the circumstances that a person is dealing with occur (show up) for that person.\n\n\u2022\tStudents begin to create this context for leader and leadership for themselves by first freeing themselves from the constraints and shaping imposed by their network of unexamined ideas, beliefs, biases, social and cultural embeddedness, and taken-for-granted assumptions relative to what it is to be a leader and what it is to exercise leadership effectively. This then allows students the freedom to create for themselves this new context for Leader and Leadership that has the power to become their natural self-expression.\n\n\u2022\tWe give students access to creating this new context for leader and leadership by distinguishing Leader and Leadership from the perspective of four distinct aspects, which when taken together as a whole create this new context: the context that in any leadership situation shapes the way in which what is being dealt with occurs for the student such that their naturally correlated way of being and acting is one of being a leader and exercising leadership effectively.\nWe distinguish Leader and Leadership, each as:\n\n \u25aa Linguistic Abstractions (leader and leadership as \u201crealms of possibility\u201d)\n \u25aa Phenomena (leader and leadership as experienced; that is, as what one observes or is impacted by, or as exercised)\n \u25aa Concepts (the temporal domain in which leader and leadership function)\n \u25aa Terms (leader and leadership as definitions)\n\n\u2022\tAll founded on Integrity*, Authenticity, and Being Committed To Something Bigger Than Oneself.\n\n*See: \n<a href=\"http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=1511274\">http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=1511274<\/a>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=1542759\">http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=1542759<\/a>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=920625\">http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=920625<\/a>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=932255\">http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=932255<\/a>\n\nThe Underlying Theory of the Course: Part III -- Ontological Constraints\n\n\u2022\tOntological Constraints: Having distinguished what it is to be a leader, and what it is to exercise leadership effectively, as a context that has the power to give students the being of a leader and the actions of effective leadership as their natural self-expression, we provide students with exercises that allow them to become aware of and remove the ontological perceptual and functional constraints imposed on their natural self-expression.\n\n\u2022\tOntological Perceptual Constraints: The source of our ontological perceptual constraints is our network of unexamined ideas, beliefs, biases, social and cultural embeddedness, and taken-for-granted assumptions about the world, others, and ourselves. These ontological perceptual constraints limit and shape what we perceive of what is actually there in the situations with which we are dealing. As a consequence, if we do not remove these perceptual constraints, then in any leadership situation we are left dealing with some distortion of the situation we are actually dealing with. \n\n\u2022\tOntological Functional Constraints: In everyday language the behavior generated by an ontological functional constraint is sometimes referred to as a \u201cknee-jerk reaction\u201d. Psychologists sometimes refer to this behavior as \u201cautomatic stimulus\/response behavior\u201d \u2013 where, in the presence of a particular stimulus (trigger), the inevitable response is an automatic set way of being and acting. From a neuroscience perspective, many ontological functional constraints could be termed amygdala hijacks. When triggered in a leadership situation, one\u2019s ontological functional constraints fixate one\u2019s way of being and acting. Saying the same thing in another way, these ontological functional constraints limit and shape our opportunity set for being and action. As a consequence, the appropriate way of being and appropriate actions may be, and in fact often are, unavailable to us.\n\n\u2022\tThus, gaining access to being a leader and the effective exercise of leadership requires that we loosen the grip of these debilitating Ontological Constraints. Or to put it more simply, we must take away what is in the way of our being a leader and exercising leadership effectively. \n\nFor the pre-course reading assignment see: <a href=\"http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=1513400\">http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=1513400<\/a>\n\nAnd for the full 1000 pages of the course material used in the Dubai, UAE course held at the Zayed University Convention Center, see <a href=\"http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=1263835\">http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=1263835<\/a>\n\nPresented to: Thunderbird Business School, Phoenix, AZ, Feb. 11, 2011; 1st Annual Leadership Summit Texas A&M Health Science Center \u2013 Scott and White Healthcare, College of Medicine, Temple, TX: IC Center For Governance, New Delhi, India, Sept. 5, 2010; Harvard Business School Leadership Seminar, Boston, MA Feb. 26, 2010; Decision Sciences Institute Meetings, New Orleans, LA, Nov. 15, 2009; Canyon Partners, Los Angeles, CA, October 22, 2009; Simon School of Business Leadership Course, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY., July 22, 2009; Gruter Institute Squaw Valley Law, Brain and Behavior Conference, May 20, 2009; US Air Force Academy Center For Character and Leadership Development, Colorado Springs, April 30, 2009; and Olin School of Business, Washington University in St. Louis, and Cook School of Business, St. Louis University, St. Louis, MO, April 6, 2009.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.2139\/ssrn.1392406","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2011,12,28]],"date-time":"2011-12-28T13:13:43Z","timestamp":1325078023000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Introduction to Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological Model (PDF File of PowerPoint Slides)"],"prefix":"10.2139","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-2046-4999","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Werner","family":"Erhard","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Michael C.","family":"Jensen (Deceased)","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Kari L.","family":"Zeller","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"78","reference":[{"key":"ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/b978-0-7506-7223-8.50015-0","article-title":"Teaching Smart People How to Learn","author":"Chris Argyris","year":"1991","journal-title":"Harvard Business Review"},{"key":"ref2","article-title":"Introduction to the Special Issue 'The Challenges of Leadership in the Modern World","author":"Warren Bennis","year":"2007","journal-title":"American Psychologist"},{"key":"ref3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.2307\/1587344","author":"? 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