Creative Domain

So far, I have suggested that if leadership is a creative process, then we need to focus on the practice of leadership, but I have not yet really talked about what the practice of leadership is (other than the example of the Action Inquiry skills at the end of chapter 2) or even what leadership is. This is in part because defining leadership and a practice of leadership is not as simple as it might seem. When Michael Jordan was leading the Chicago Bulls to six championships, when was he leading and when was he just playing basketball? When he would take the ball at the end of the game and make the winning shot, was that an example of his greatness as a basketball player or his greatness as a leader, or both? When the director of research and development for a consumer products company puts together a team to develop a new deodorant, is he or she being a leader? To answer these questions in any reasonable way, we have to define the domain of leadership.