At Hitotsubashi ICS, the MBA program integrates leadership development throughout the curriculum. The required course Leadership Development Journey sets students on their way, inviting them to grow intentionally as a leader, building relatedness skills right alongside the latest quantitative and analytical skills. This article explains the course’s foundational approach.

Jody Ono
Specially Appointed Professor

More than a few times over the years, as I’ve continuously developed the Leadership Development Journey course, has a student remarked: “This must be a really hard class to teach.”

Well - yes, it is. As Harold Geneen said, “Leadership cannot be taught. It can only be learned.” Why? Because leadership learning is so very individually driven, and so very personally rooted. As the person in the room who’s called the “professor,” I am duty bound to subdue my own cultural and mental models of leadership in order to work productively with the multitudes of these among the “students,” many of whom have faced leadership challenges in life and work that I have not. Because our leadership is always grounded in who we are and what we believe fundamentally about the world and people – whether these beliefs are well known to us, or not.

Greg Stebbins, my friend and co-author, is a leadership coach and writer whose work informs this article. Greg offers from his experience: While teaching a doctoral-level course in Transformational Leadership, we often discussed the difference between DOING and BEING. I often asked the class, “Who are you?” The frequent answer was what they did in the world. I would point that out and again ask, “Who are you?” Eventually, the frequent answer was, “I don’t know.” That became the topic for the balance of the semester.

Let’s begin with a truism: Leadership is an elusively complex phenomenon. Across the ages, a bank of books, a myriad of models, and a plethora of paradigms stand at the ready to help us unravel its mysteries, define it succinctly, and make clear recommendations for its practice. Still, we yearn for more and better leadership.

Leadership educators strive to make the practice of leadership accessible to as many as possible, and to encourage leadership of the highest quality possible. What do we mean by leadership? In one sentence: Leadership is transcending beyond the ordinary, exceeding expectations, and rising above limitations to unite people in shared purpose and energize them through collective envisioning. In her teaching, Jody defines leadership as “an invitation to engage in change.”

While we acknowledge that personality, skill, style, and circumstance all are important contributors to the influence and impact a leader may have, we believe that most critical to high quality leadership is a sustained capacity for deepening relatedness and evolutionary wisdom.

Understanding of leadership as a human phenomenon has moved from the old Great Man theory (ouch) through the Transformational models into an increasingly spiritual and global approach that relies heavily on conscious awareness and perspective-taking. These are not new concepts, but their momentum is building in proportion to concern for the nurturing of critical relational dimensions of leadership, like trust and empathy, in our technology-driven, increasingly transactional world.

Technology “connects” us in important ways, but it can also drive wedges and build walls against human relatedness. The late psychologist and leadership scholar Michael Maccoby aptly described the social character of the Millennial generation as “the most connected, least related generation.”

In attunement with the needs and challenges of our zeitgeist, leadership, too, is evolving. From our classroom discussions, corporate education programs, and executive coaching, we discern a shift of consciousness, from independence to interdependence.

In organizations, we are usually consumed by conversations about "what" and "how." What do we need to do, and how will we do it? Less frequently do we ask: Who do I need to be most effective with others while getting the job done? There is fundamental insight required here, in order for a person to participate in a healthy evolution of leadership for our time.

This insight is rooted in an most observation we’ve made in our work, that is consistent across cultures, nationalities, industries, and professional pursuits: Leaders generally have limited knowledge, and sometimes only superficial curiosity, about how others experience them and about the extent and nature of their influence on others, positive or negative. They can build others up, or tear them down, with generic compliments or flippant remarks. "Most leadership failure can be attributed not to a failure of knowledge, but rather to a failure of presence" (Jones, 2004). Therefore, a leader must become more conscious of making themselves far more effective and humbled by their state of "Being" than their acts of "Doing."

Being is leading in context

A leader centered on Being does not relegate or displace the importance of action or performance. Rather, a focus on Being lays the conceptual foundation on which ethically-based leadership, acting for the highest good of all concerned, stands and can be engaged. Our way of Being reflects how the situation we are dealing with occurs for us. At the same time, that situation is shaped by the context we bring to it.

This is why we say that leadership always occurs in context, within a set of fundamentally unconscious but framing references and assumptions. Contexts are not objective truth but are defined by our processing of experiences, ours or another's. That is to say, experiences during play in the multi-interactions of human existence imbue meaning and, through such meaning, construct our world.

Context sculpts how we make sense of any leadership challenge or setting. For example, the context we bring to work might say that an employee's emotions are not my problem. That point of view, or attitude, or even worldview, will color how our organization occurs for us, and our actions will correlate with this context. It is this kind of contextual awareness that often leads to undermining the foundation of the leader.

Being is an anchor for the deep-seated tenets of leadership. Engaging this conceptual space, however, can be unfamiliar and unsettling. As leaders, we can "get our arms around" our behaviors and thus create or change them through our choices, in a best-case application of “Doing.” Being is tougher to access. We don't easily know Being; but it is who we are.

Authentic leadership

Since around 2005, the gold standard of leadership education or even “training,” particularly in business schools, has been authentic leadership. And for good reason: Authentic leadership practice rests squarely on cultivating self-awareness, transparency, and ethical behavior in individuals. Authentic leaders clarify and develop, in-depth, a sense of their values and the needs of their followers, striving constantly to build trust and to create an environment where open communication and collaboration thrive. This relational element invites leaders and followers to share the same vision.

Authentic leadership is a far more complex model than the leadership industry often allows. It has been misunderstood and misapplied and likely therefore, debated over recent decades. Essentially, authentic leadership guides us to be honest with and about ourselves (and not try to be somebody else), but also to view oneself as capable of developing intentionally, if we so choose. Oprah Winfrey, who built her entire media empire on authenticity, vulnerability, and honest bonding with her audience, is a wonderful example. Her leadership features courageous openness about her struggles and staunch commitment to empowering others through storytelling and self-discovery.

Years ago, a Japanese colleague cautioned me that teaching authentic leadership to students from primarily Asian contexts would be “a hard sell.” And sure enough, starting out, I found that its tenets did give students pause. Authenticity counsels leading from individual purpose, values, and vision – but that may not be generally well received in (organizational) cultures where open voicing of one’s personal anchors and objectives could be seen as inappropriate, self-centered, or even unprofessional.

Over time, I discovered that while students valued authentic leadership’s encouragement of individual or personal development, the tenets felt somehow incomplete. In many Asian societies, like Japan’s, that place strong emphasis on group well-being, leadership needs to reflect and elevate collective consciousness. At Hitotsubashi ICS, therefore, a students’ leadership development journey begins at the beginning: with introspection to encourage self-discovery and self-disclosure around personal worldview, purpose, values, ethics, vision, and more in order to unpack and understand their own authenticity.

But the journey doesn’t stop there. Rightly, students are more and more concerned about geopolitical and social externalities and environmental impacts. Meanwhile, corporate L&D departments are hard pressed to increase workplace “engagement.” Mid-career professionals are seeking candid conversations about what purpose really means in their everyday life and work. New entrants to the world of work are finding traditional organizational settings “boring.”

Therefore, leadership learners will do well to cultivate a consciousness beyond the self, up and out, through inclusive conversations – starting in our course together, but continuing through all the MBA experience – about what it will mean to lead in a world of accelerating change, economic instability, institutional fragility, political polarization, and climate crisis.

From authentic to transcendent

What we observe now, and encourage actively in our work, is an evolution from authentic leadership to transcendent leadership.

Authentic leadership, if developed well, establishes an invaluable foundation for continued growth as a leader. Appropriately for its purpose, it centers on the individual student of leadership. But, we propose, it is not a final destination. Our collective leadership journey continues.

Transcendent leadership takes the work of authentic leadership and scales it up, extending the radius of influence beyond the self and organizational concerns. Authentic leaders are anchored in values, self- awareness, and transparency; their approach is about trust and building rapport with people. Transcendent leaders go beyond their immediate scopes, settings, and objectives to leave their marks on society and the community. The focus is on building unity in working towards a shared vision that serves a collective meaning and purpose.

Nelson Mandela may be considered a transcendent leader because of his uncanny ability to inspire and unite people across deeply ingrained divides. His leadership flowed from a profound ethical vision. After decades of imprisonment, Mandela's dedication to reconciliation rather than revenge signaled his ability to transcend personal hurt for the broader, collective interest of South Africa. Mandela emerged from the furnace tempered, more robust, wiser, and more resilient – and went on to foster national healing and model peaceful conflict resolution.

Leadership is evolving

If we are intentional about our leadership, it will evolve right along with us, in sync with our expanding perspectives on the world and people, and on our deep-held wishes for these. Evolution is not replacement, displacement, or substitution – it’s a cumulative and inclusive progression; a continuous maturation. It happens when a leader fully internalizes that their decisions affect the business and inspire followers through felt and observed effects that benefit society.

References:

Crossan, M., Vera, D., & Nanjad, L. (2017). “Transcendent leadership: Strategic leadership when stakeholders matter,” Business Horizons, 60(5), 667-677.

George, B. (2003). Authentic leadership: Rediscovering the secrets to creating lasting value. Jossey-Bass.

Maccoby, M. (2017). Strategic Intelligence: Conceptual Tools for Leading Change. Oxford University Press.

Ono, J. (2021). “The Weight of the Worldview” The Beautiful Truth Magazine, London, three-part series.

Ono, J. and Stebbins, G. (2025). “From Authentic to Transcendent: A Leadership Evolution,” The Beautiful Truth Magazine, February 24.

Stebbins, G. (2020). Transcendent Leadership: Manifesting Organizational Vitality. Savvy Books.

Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L., Wernsing, T. S., & Peterson, S. J. (2008). “Authentic leadership: Development and validation of a theory-based measure,” Journal of Management, 34(1), 89-126.