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0:04
Let's consider the aesthetic style
of Barack Obama,
the 44th President
of the United States of America.
The way in which he comports himself
has been noted by media
throughout the world,
his relaxed style,
the way that he across
as the king of cool,
but let's use some of the ideas
that have already been presented here
to unpick his aesthetic style
in a bit more detail
and also consider
what their implications might be
or others wanting to think
more carefully
about how aesthetics
might be applied to leadership
in terms of how they might use
these ideas to illuminate
or to inform their own way
of taking up the leadership role.
0:46
Let's start by considering
more generally
the question of
how a particular aesthetic is created.
We'll look at three different
aspects here.
The first is the way
in which a leader uses language.
In particular, we'll focus on
how a leader frames the situation
as being very important,
the kinds of word pictures
that they used to describe the situation
that the leader is in, and finally,
the way they use story
and connect the particular
specific situation with a larger,
more mythological landscape.
Secondly, we'll look at the way
a leader uses their body
both in terms of
body language and gestures
but also in aspects
called micro-affirmations.
Micro-affirmations is a term
that was coined by
a social scientist Dorothy Rowe,
working in the United States
in the 1960s
who was looking at why it was that
certain followers never felt
actually engaged with the leaders
that they meant to be following.
And what she found was
that leaders perform,
what she called them was,
micro-affirmations on a daily basis
which actually gave people an idea
about whether or not
they were being included or not.
This included just small things
like the length of time a leader
might hold a follower's eye
or it might include the way
that they brought them in
on conversations,
certain gestures that they made,
or just giving them
a small sort of tap on the hand
or on the shoulder just giving them
those small indications
that the leader liked and esteemed them.
The second aspect of use of the body
is comportment,
by comportment I mean,
not just body language,
but it's the way
the person holds themselves,
the way the person is.
The way a person comports themselves
is an expression of something
that might be authentic about them.
It's their general way
of being in the world,
and in particular,
their kind of mode of engagement
with other people.
And finally, I would like to consider
the importance of context
and how the way
in which the leader matches something
in what they do
to the particular context
which is so critical
in creating a certain aesthetic.
This goes back to ideas of authenticity
but also speaks to the way
the leader connects the specific
with more general aspects
of the situation at hand.
