Mandela's Leadership Legacy Emotional and Existential Wisdom

Introduction: At the Edge of Rationality; PART ONE Prologue: Mandela as "Human, All Too Human"; PART TWO Frameworks for Understanding Existential Threats 1 The Hidden Secret of Mandela’s Leadership: Leading through Moods and Emotions; 2 Conceptual Frameworks of the Book; 3 Apartheid as a Breakdown in Relationality; Reflective Pause for Practitioners; PART THREE From Routine to Rupture, Estrangement to Engagement 4 From Ubuntu to Exile: The Breaking of Relation; 5 Mandela and the Country Boy Within: From Convention to Disruption to Transformation; 6 From Estrangement to Political Engagement; 7 Socrates and Mandela: Courtroom Philosophy as World-Disclosure; Reflective Pause for Readers; PART FOUR The Existential Challenges of Prison 8 Mandela’s Metamorphosis in Prison; 9 Mandela’s Meditative Transformation; 10 Mandela’s Transformational Leadership in Prison: Reframing and Reconfiguring as Forms of Change; 11 Power in Powerlessness: Finding Freedom from Within Constraint; 12 The Power of Presence: Disclosing New Worlds through Leadership; Reflective Pause for Readers; PART FIVE Mandela’s Response to the Existential Threat of a Political Assassination 13 Setting the Context for Mandela’s Response to the Existential Threat Posed by the Assassination of Chris Hani; 14 The Existential Language of Mandela’s Address: Calling a Nation into Being; 15 From Calculative to Reflexive Phenomenological and Meditative Thinking: Mandela’s Address After Hani’s Assassination; Reflective Pause for Practitioners; PART SIX Mandela’s Leadership as a Way of Being-in-the-World 16 Mandela as Existential Therapist: Leaping Ahead in Crisis and Transformation; 17 Mandela’s Strategic Leadership Amid Existential Disruption; 18 Mandela’s Emergent Lived Experience of Ubuntu Philosophy; 19 The Art of Dialogue Across Difference: Mandela’s Ubuntu Existential Process; 20 Mandela’s Practical and Existential Wisdom: An Aristotelian Lens; 21 Beyond The Prince: Mandela’s Ubuntu Transformation of Power; Reflective Pause for Practitioners; PART SEVEN From Philosophical Failure to Therapeutic Leadership 22 Mandela’s Letting-Be and Heidegger’s Assertion: Two Responses to Existential Crisis; 23 Conclusion: Mandela’s Existential Ubuntu Therapeutic Leadership Attunement; Reflective Pause: Dwelling Within Existential Crisis; Appendix One: Mapping the Arc of Existential Disruption and Emergence; Appendix Two: Glossary of Philosophical and Framework Terms

Biography

Steven Segal was an Associate Professor of Management at Macquarie University, Australia, from 1999 to 2021 and is currently in private practice as a psychologist and leadership coach. He also runs professional development workshops for coaches and psychotherapists.

"Mandela’s Leadership Legacy is a book for our times. It presents a powerful blend of the Ubuntu sensibility of Africa with the existential perspective of Western philosophy to illuminate the foundational paths of Nelson Mandela’s ennobling transformation of world history. This book could and should be read as a touchstone for the presence, reflectiveness, and courageous activism that is as imperative for our times as it was for Mandela, and that Mandela so prophetically modelled. I, and many others in the emerging existential activism movement, owe a debt of gratitude to Mandela—may his impact on ‘experiential democracy dialogues’ prevail!"

Kirk Schneider, Ph.D., Author of The Polarized Mind, The Depolarizing of America, and Life-Enhancing Anxiety: Key to a Sane World

"This book invites us to see moods not as passing emotions but as profound sources of questioning and disciplined reflection. In drawing on the example of Nelson Mandela, it shows how engaging with real-life social, political, and organisational challenges can be a route for some people to develop as leaders—demonstrating inner integrity, courage, and reflexivity in ways that are admired and followed by others. Coaches, trainers, therapists, and mentors will find here not only philosophical richness but also a wellspring of practical wisdom for their work with others."

Jonathan Gosling, Emeritus Professor of Leadership, University of Exeter, Former co-founder of the Exeter Centre for Leadership and Author of Influential Work on Leadership Practice