ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the leadership transformation produced by the Women’s Leadership Series (WLS), from inflexible to receptive leadership. It shows that the WLS fostered greater leadership effectiveness through this transformation by fostering a shift in a habitual, self-amplifying and context-dismissing thinking that was at the root of inflexible leadership behavior. The chapter illustrates that inflexible leaders’ self-affirming and context-dismissing thought patterns produced a distortion that was the exact opposite of hidden leadership. Fifty-two percent of WLS interviewees told stories pertaining to the transformation from inflexible to receptive leadership. Inflexible leadership stories were not about dramatic and short-lived situations but of chronic on-going difficulties in which individuals persisted with well-practiced patterns of thought and behavior despite disappointing results. The WLS facilitated a transformation from inflexible to receptive leadership through affecting a shift in a habitual self-affirming and context-dismissing pattern of thought and action.
