Telling Tales Out of School

Abstract

In a letter to her friend the novelist Mary McCarthy, Arendt (1995) states ‘I wish you would write about what it is in people that makes them want a story … Life itself is full of tales’ (p. 129). For Arendt, narrative enables us to find meaning, and gain a sense of who we are in relation to others. In this chapter, I explore the situated, embodied nature of leadership through the narrative accounts provided by ten senior women leaders in higher education. My main purpose is to show how these diverse accounts offer insights into the interconnections among gender, authenticity and leadership.