How Might Aesthetic Knowing Relate to Leadership? A Review of the Literature

Aesthetic knowing may be valuable to educational leadership practice because it links feeling and intuition to procedural information to inform decision-making. Within the large and diverse field of aesthetics, some models apply aesthetic knowing to leadership practice. Scholarly interest in this area emerged in the late 1980ʹs, and various conceptualizations of aesthetic leadership abound in the literature. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to review and clarify the relationship between aesthetic knowing and leadership skills. In effort to answer the question, "How do scholars relate aesthetic ways of knowing to leadership?" 23 literature sources from 1986-2010 were reviewed. As a result, four categories of aesthetic leadership qualities emerged: emotional awareness and empathy; sensory and somatic attentiveness; interest in organizational beauty; and the promotion of moral purpose.