Reflective Essay on Leaders and Learning

Running head: REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON LEADERS AND LEARNING
REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON LEADERS AND LEARNING
Name of the student
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Author note

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REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON LEADERS AND LEARNING
Introduction
Theories of Organizational Learning help us in understanding the need for being
competitive in the changing and challenging world. The theories of organizational Learning
especially help organizations to adapt to the changing environment. The role of the leader here
becomes extremely important because the leader is the one who knows how to implement
change, goes ahead, does it, and shows others how to do it.
In this essay, I shall discuss Organizational Learning theories in the context of the quote
by John C. Maxwell. I will first introduced the quote and break it down to see what the speaker
meant by it. While breaking down the quote, I shall explore the three ways – knowing, going and
showing – shown by Maxwell. In doing so, I will utilize the Organizational Learning theories to
validate the arguments. I will provide examples of leadership in the political and business
context to prove the arguments.
The quote –
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way”
The quote was used by John Maxwell in one of his books titled The 21 irrefutable Laws
of Leadership and since then, the quote has inspired many. The quote precisely explains the way
a leader should be and is.
Discussion
In my views, the quote is simple yet very powerful because it explores the previously
ignored and undisclosed qualities of a leader. Previously, leadership qualities mostly focused on
the leader as the possessor of vast knowledge and capabilities. The leader was the one who only

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REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON LEADERS AND LEARNING
knew how to inspire the followers and guide them. Maxwell argued that the leader is the one
who walks the path himself and then inspires others to follow him. The quote can be viewed
from different perspectives, the one being that it was meant to inspire common citizens to
become leaders themselves in their daily lives. Other perspective could be that the speaker of the
quote wanted to let people know that they have the ability to make people listen to and follow
them.
We could explore the three ways of knowing, going and showing in a better way by using
the organizational learning theories. Prior to discovering the three ways, we must first explore
the theories of OL and establish an association between those and the three ways. The most
common definition of OL theory, as I have found is that it is a course of developing, preserving
and relocating knowledge within an organization. The OL theory also states that individual
learning is the first or initial phase of OL and when the information learned by the individual is
shared and stored, it becomes organizational learning (Noruzy et al. 2013). Theorists have
developed several theories of OL over the years that included the experiential learning theory
and assimilation theory.
Coming back to the three ways of knowing, going and showing, the three theories of OL
concisely explain these. Experiential Learning theory comes under the cognitive category of OL
and has four stages of learning. David Kolb was the proponent of this theory. As Kolb describes,
the first stage is the concrete experience followed by the second stage, which is abstract
conceptualization (Kolb 2014). The third and fourth stages are reflective observation and active
experimentation respectively. While the first two stages constitute the acquisition of information,
the last two stages form the transformation of experience. We could observe that two ways of
knowing and going mentioned in the quote is explained through these stages. When the leader