Chapter 6: A Tale of Two Perspectives: An account of Entity and Social Constructionist Approaches to “Conflict” in Leadership Development

This chapter’s intention is to speak to the experience of developing a relationally orientated leadership. In so doing, we map the journey (still ongoing) towards a critical social constructionist practice among our facilitation team at Compass. This journey has involved marked shifts, debates, swings, arguments, conflict, and discoveries focusing on the differences between social constructionist and constructivist perspectives. Many of the pinch points on that journey have been created by the association between constructivist ideas and an entity perspective. That being the case, we begin by defining these terms as we have used them here. We elaborate on the implications for a conversation between the different perspectives throughout this chapter.