Redefining Leadership Through Critical Theory
As a person of color and a migrant, I found immense value in Katherine E. McKee’s approach to leadership through the lens of critical theory in her article “Critical and Transformative Approaches in Leadership Evaluation and Research.” While most of my professional experience began in Mexico, I have spent nearly ten years working in the U.S., often navigating spaces where I am in the minority.
One key observation from my professional journey is that “critical thinking” is often stifled when evaluating leadership. Employees hesitate to express their honest opinions due to fear of retaliation or the belief that their feedback will not be taken seriously. This highlights the urgent need for a shift in corporate leadership culture—one that values employee experiences beyond token gestures like annual surveys, which often serve more as a box-checking exercise than a foundation for meaningful change.
McKee’s argument about elevating the voices of the least powerful—those most affected by leadership decisions—is universally relevant across disciplines and levels of leadership. This approach calls for deep listening and inclusion of often marginalized or ignored perspectives.
We live in a pivotal moment in which critical theory must be central to processing information and responding to global events. This extends beyond leadership into every facet of society, especially as we face environmental collapse and increasing societal fragmentation. The cracks in our systems are becoming more visible and may soon be beyond repair. This is where the insights of the Frankfurt School of thought become critically important, particularly in challenging the systems of power and authority that often go unquestioned.
Thinkers like Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse emphasized the necessity of understanding the structures of domination in society and dismantling the ideology that reinforces them. They argue that critical theory’s role is to identify how social and political forces obscure the experiences of marginalized groups and prevent them from having agency. These insights are especially relevant today, where authoritarian tendencies and inequality are becoming more entrenched. We challenge the systems that perpetuate these inequities by critically evaluating leadership practices.
McKee’s emphasis on continual deconstruction echoes this idea: “We must ask them what they see that is working well, how we can build on it, what positive impacts they are seeing, who among our participants is engaging in effective leadership, and what further positive impacts they would like to see.” Pursuing perfection is not only unattainable but also the wrong goal. Genuine progress and improvement can occur by embracing imperfection and committing to constant reflection and correction.
Incorporating the insights of the Frankfurt School reinforces the importance of this reflective process: constantly questioning the status quo and not being afraid to critique systems that seem immovable. True transformation requires an ongoing willingness to challenge established norms and create space for the voices and experiences that have been systematically ignored.
