Role‐Playing Games as a New Adventure for Leadership‐As‐Practice: Forming a Leadership Framework Around Collective Creativity and Development

Abstract

The current paper explores a transformative approach to leadership that integrates with a view of analog role‐playing games (RPGs) as a system for human interaction, aiming to leverage these experiences and foster collective creative leadership. In the face of urgent global challenges, traditional leadership models prove inadequate, necessitating a shift in understanding leadership as a process of adaptive change among human groups. Drawing on phenomenology, relational sociology and constructivist perspectives, I advocate for a conceptualization of leadership as a socially constructed, meaning‐making endeavor mutually embedded within and generating cultural context. I emphasize the essential role of collective cultural approaches and propose a co‐creative education process that incorporates play and creativity for effective leadership development. Then, I delve further into the intersection of leadership and play, highlighting the potential of RPGs in facilitating transformative, collective creativity. The proposed model views RPGs as Leadership‐As‐Practice Development (LAPD) and explores how analog RPGs can be employed as dynamic platforms for leadership learning, identity development, team‐building, and symbolic storytelling processes.