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Negative Capability in
Leadership Practice
Implications for Working
in Uncertainty
Charlotte von Bülow

Peter Simpson
Negative Capability in Leadership Practice
Charlotte von Bülow · Peter Simpson
Negative Capability
in Leadership Practice
Implications for Working in Uncertainty
Charlotte von Bülow Peter Simpson
Bristol Business School Bristol Business School
University of the West of England University of the West of England
Bristol, UK Bristol, UK
Crossfields Institute Group Crossfields Institute Group
Stroud, UK Stroud, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-95767-4 ISBN 978-3-030-95768-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95768-1
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to three extraordinary scholar and practitioners who
are no longer with us: Robert French, Chris Seeley and Bruce Irvine, thank
you for working in uncertainty with us and for your tireless commitment to
personal and professional transformation.
Acknowledgments
Our warm thanks go to Helen Simpson and Fergus Anderson for their
patience and love during this time, to our families and friends for
their care and understanding, and to our encouraging and supportive
colleagues at the University of the West of England and Crossfields
Institute.
We want to recognise all the people whose voices weave through the
chapters in this book—thank you for your determination to explore Nega-
tive Capability with us and for sharing your lived experience of working
in uncertainty.
Last, but not least, we are deeply grateful to all past, present and future
students, clients, managers, leaders and organisations that inspire us to
write this book and to our editors at Palgrave Macmillan for their patience
and assistance in getting this book to publication.
vii
Overview
Chapter 1
In this short chapter we set the scene for our exploration of the contribu-
tion of Negative Capability to leadership practice. As we strive to navigate
and make sense of the unparalleled global challenges facing us, organi-
sational life is still influenced by the image of effective leadership as an
individual in a position of authority with exceptional capabilities, and
most significantly possessing knowledge that others do not. If we want to
update our image of leadership and renew our relationship with knowl-
edge, it starts with a commitment to self-knowledge and a new approach
to leadership education. It is against this backdrop that we situate Nega-
tive Capability in leadership practice as a way of being when working in
uncertainty. The brilliance of the English poet, John Keats, who coined
the term Negative Capability, was to understand how ‘high achievement’
relies on a temporary abstinence from active, measurable, or positive capa-
bilities, in favour of just being —creating what might be thought of as an
empty space that is normally filled with thoughts, emotions, and activity.
As such, Negative Capability has a place in the leadership landscape in
relation to the experience of being without —not knowing, not acting, and
not having, as well as associated tensions, contradictions, ambiguities, and
anxieties inherent in its practice.
ix
x OVERVIEW
Chapter 2
Negative Capability was conceived by the English poet, John Keats. We
note that applications of the idea in leadership studies have tended to
interpret it as a ‘positive capability’: as ways of thinking, feeling, or doing.
This is an approach that we challenge in more detail in chapter three,
arguing that Keats understanding of Negative Capability was more exis-
tential: to be capable of being in uncertainty without needing to grasp
for knowledge and certainty. We discuss how he saw the influence of
Negative Capability in both the ordinary interactions between people,
particularly in its contribution to a higher quality of thinking, as well as
in relation to the extraordinary—the ability to gain insight into the tran-
scendent qualities of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. These ideas are then
discussed in relation to modern leadership practice, and how Negative
Capability relates to the practice of attention, a sense of purpose, the work
of leisure, and passion in leadership practice. This provides an outline of
the conceptual framework that structures the book.
Chapter 3
In this chapter we explore in detail the notion of Negative Capability and
how it can be understood to contribute to leadership practice. Having
discussed in Chapter 2 the genesis of the idea and its relevance to working
in uncertainty, we begin by illustrating what such leadership might look
like. The early part of this chapter then explores the origins of Keats’
insight gained through a catalogue of challenging life experiences. This
forms the basis of a critique of existing literature on Negative Capa-
bility in leadership, which tends to focus on ways of thinking, feeling,
and doing. By contrast, our interpretation of Negative Capability is as a
way of being, being with, and being without. It is argued that Negative
Capability enables us to work in a state of not knowing without simply
reaching for old ideas or resorting to habitual behaviours. This focus on
being-in-the-world also contributes to the important task of humanising
our responses to dealing with the challenges of working in uncertainty.
The chapter ends by introducing the importance of a focus upon inquiry
and the practice of attention when leadership involves working without
knowledge—ideas that are explored in greater depth in Chapters 4 and 5.
OVERVIEW xi
Chapter 4
Against the backdrop of the global challenges facing us now, we ask:
what do leaders have to draw upon if not knowledge? In this chapter
we explore the relationship between Negative Capability and a practice of
a heightened quality of attention. We start by suggesting that our existing
narratives about the world and our place in it must be revised if we are to
liberate our attention from the capture of outdated stories. In the current
reality of the Attention Economy, where our attentional behaviours are
tracked and traded as a highly prized commodity in the global market-
place, we propose that a regular and deliberate practice of attention is
crucial to restore a sense of individual agency and develop new faculties
of discernment. In this context, we also highlight the urgent need for
an ethics of attention. Lastly, we introduce the specific practice of evenly
suspended attention as a particular doorway to a way of being in uncer-
tainty that creates the conditions for experiencing Negative Capability in
our leadership practice.
Chapter 5
Leadership benefits from an extensive knowledge of the complexities of
the organisational and societal context, but it is also concerned with a
shared journey into an unknown future. The ability to work in uncer-
tainty with others but without the required knowledge is where Negative
Capability can contribute. We align with those who believe that leadership
is better understood as a process that may emerge from any individual or
group of individuals, rather than necessarily requiring positional authority
or outstanding ability. Leadership is a process of transformative change
where individual and collective will is brought to bear in an energetic
and dynamic interchange of value. From this can emerge a shared sense
of purpose and meaning, which is explored further in Chapter 6. The
challenges of a practice of deliberately eschewing positive capabilities to
make space for fresh ideas is explored through an extended illustration
of the experience of an organisational leader facing a crisis. Through this
we explore the challenges of working with ambiguity and contradiction,
including the pain and suffering that sometimes has to be endured in
the practice of leadership. The chapter concludes with an exploration of
Foucault’s ideas on Care of the Self in leadership.
xii OVERVIEW
Chapter 6
In the context of leadership practice, there is a creative tension between
the definable and undefinable aspects of purpose. This chapter begins by
challenging the dominance of the understanding of purpose as something
that can be described with precision. This has supported an approach to
the leadership of organisations dedicated to the pursuit of utilitarian ends
and undisputed growth. Instead, we suggest that purpose can emerge as a
sense, as well as a set of measurable outcomes, and the leadership challenge
is to hold in balance these definable with undefinable elements of purpose.
This idea is explored in a case study that highlights the complexity faced
by leadership practitioners, particularly in relating to others who demand
clarity and simplicity—and sometimes irritably reach after fact and reason.
We introduce the idea that a sense of purpose can be experienced at the
level of the ordinary, where we find ourselves in the liminal space between
knowing and not knowing, as well as at the level of the extraordinary,
where the ineffable engages us with its Mystery. Drawing on themes from
other case studies explored in the book, we investigate how leadership
practitioners can develop a ‘poetic sensibility’ from working with an emer-
gent sense of purpose in a state of flow, whilst also holding the important
balance between internal and external expectations that must be met.
Chapter 7
As a complement to the ‘work of production’, we introduce the phrase
‘work of leisure’, which plays an important and specific role in learning
and inquiry. Drawing upon Negative Capability, leadership practice will
involve giving attention to the need for an appropriate balance between
leisure and production. It is an overemphasis on the latter that has
contributed to a culture of busy-ness and overwork. In relation to
Negative Capability, we are drawing attention to the requirement for a
particular form of leisure—not merely as rest from productive work but
as a form of work that is concerned with the search for something not yet
known. Productive work is associated with mastery, power, and control.
By contrast, the work of leisure is concerned with contemplative inquiry
and receptive vision that can permit unplanned transformations in under-
standing and insight. For example, it is through the work of leisure that
we can find, or be found by, a sense of purpose, as discussed in Chapter 6.
Through two illustrations, we explore the challenges of legitimising the
OVERVIEW xiii
work of leisure in our organisations but suggest that this may in fact
support the work of production as well as contributing to humanising
the workplace.
Chapter 8
In this chapter, we explore how passion lies at the heart of leadership
practice. This sometimes manifests as a spirited enthusiasm but Negative
Capability sensitises us to passion as a felt absence or lack that stimulates
our desire to know, to have, to do, or to be. It is this desire to fill the
sense of lack, or vacuum within us that can generate our passion for the
task. When associated with Negative Capability, passion is being without
an irritable reaching after mastery and control, and it is an acceptance of
things as they are, even if things are not to our liking. We position our
inquiry into the role of passion in leadership practice against the backdrop
of Plato’s Symposium with a particular focus on the lineage and mythology
of the figure of Eros. This leads us to explore the parallels between Keats’
notion of Negative Capability and the Socratic Paradox of knowing only
that one does not know. We end the chapter by sharing a leadership prac-
titioner’s account of lived experience that points to the importance of
mutuality and shared inquiry in leadership practice with passion.
Chapter 9
To consider Negative Capability requires Negative Capability. We cannot
measure, quantify, describe, or even practice Negative Capability—it is
not an objective that can be met or a task that can be ticked off the to-
do list, nor is it a goal one can be set. Yet in the context of leadership
practice, the implications of Negative Capability can be experienced by
us and the people we work with. We experience Negative Capability at
the level of being as we become attuned to its nature, significance, and
impact. This is not a quick fix, but we take inspiration from the philoso-
pher, Pierre Hadot, who draws our attention to ‘Philosophy as a Way of
Life’, a tradition that has clear echoes in Keats’ life and work. We end with
a caution that any leadership practitioner that seeks to become attuned to
Negative Capability should be mindful of the potential challenges they
might face in their own context. We have drawn attention to the inner
work required, the need to address external expectations—imagined as
xiv OVERVIEW
well as actual—and the potential consequences of making leadership deci-

sions that are not automatically justified by the typical demonstration of
established ‘fact & reason’.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
A Journey from Concept to Application 3
Reference 4
2 Working in Uncertainty 5
Keats on Negative Capability 6
The Ordinary and the Extraordinary 9
The Experience of Not Knowing 13
Mysteries and Unknowing 15
Illustration: Living by Faith 16
References 18
3 Negative Capability 21
Illustration: Esha Patel, the Chief Executive 21
Capable of Being—The Life and Personal Philosophy of John
Keats 23
Negative Capability in the Leadership Literature 24
Not Knowing in a Knowledge Economy 27
Attention and Inquiry 30
References 32
4 The Practice of Attention 35
Illustration: Project 100 36
Reclaiming Attention 38
xv
xvi CONTENTS
A Deliberate Practice of Attention 39

Attentional Ethics 41
Evenly Suspended Attention 43
An Experience of Surrender 46
References 48
5 Leadership 51
Uncertainty and Contradiction in Organisational
Leadership 54
Illustration: The Prison Governor 56
Care of the Self 60
Space for a New Idea 62
References 64
6 Purpose 69
Defining Purpose 70
A Sense of Purpose 71
Illustration: The Social Entrepreneur 72
A Balancing Act 75
Working with Emergence 76
References 80
7 The Work of Leisure 83
Illustration: EARThSus 85
Ancient Philosophy and the Place of Leisure 88
A Culture of Leisure 89
Conscious Administration 91
Illustration: StraightMeadows Inc. 93
References 96
8 Passion 99
Socrates and Plato’s Symposium 101
The Experience of Lack 103
Illustration: Founding Synergico 105
Mutuality in Shared Inquiry 108
The Ladder of Love 110
References 113
CONTENTS xvii
9 Concluding Thoughts 115

Philosophy as a Way of Life 116
Negative Capability and Situational Awareness 117
References 120
Index 121
About the Authors
Dr. Charlotte von Bülow is Senior Lecturer in Leadership at the Bristol

Business School, University of the West of England, and the founder of
the Crossfields Institute Group. She spent 20 years working in the private
sector as a social entrepreneur, CEO, educator, coach, consultant and
governor. During this time, she founded the Crossfields Institute Group
a UK educational charity, Ofqual regulated Awarding Organisation,
Consultancy and Educational Action Research Institute. As a consultant
and coach, she has worked for several UK private and public sector insti-
tutions as well as organisations in Botswana, China, Finland, Germany,
Qatar, Russia, Scandinavia and the US. Her teaching and research activi-
ties focus on working in uncertainty, inclusive and distributed leadership,
the ethics and practice of attention, reflective and reflexive practice in
leadership and management, as well as innovative approaches in teaching,
learning and assessment. Her publications include ‘Negative Capability
and Care of the Self’ in Parardox and Power in Caring Leadership: Crit-
ical and Philosophical Reflections (Ed. L. Tomkins Elgar, 2020) and ‘The
Deep Education Conversation in Climate of Change and Complexity’
in Deep Adaption: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos (Ed. J.
Bendell & R. Read, Polity Press, 2021).
Dr. Peter Simpson is Associate Professor in Organisation Studies at

Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, and Senior
Consultant for the Crossfields Institute Group. As a practitioner as well
xix
xx ABOUT THE AUTHORS
as researcher, he has held a range of leadership positions in the Business

School including Director of MBA and Executive Education, Director
of Business Development, Head of School, Director of the Research
Unit in Organisation Studies and Deputy Director of the Bristol Centre
for Leadership and Organizational Ethics. His current research inter-
ests are in the application of ideas on spirituality, psychodynamics and
complexity to the study and practice of leadership in situations of uncer-
tainty. Recent research projects include strategic action research projects
with a UK educational charity (2019–2021) and a US non-profit (2017–
2018) and the ESRC Seminar Series ‘Ethical Leadership: the contribution
of philosophy and spirituality’ (2014–2017). He has published widely in
international journals on leadership, change management, organisational
complexity, group dynamics and workplace spirituality. He co-authored
with Robert French Attention, Cooperation, Purpose: An Approach to
Working in Groups Using Insights from Wilfired Bion (Karnac, 2014) and
co-edited Worldly Leadership: Alternative Wisdoms for a Complex World
(Palgrave, 2011) with Sharon Turnbull, Peter Case, Gareth Edwards and
Doris Schedlitzki.
List of Tables
Table 5.1 A summary overview of Bell’s (1996, pp. xvi–xvii) three

realms in capitalist society 54
Table 7.1 The conscious administration of the work of leisure
and of production 95
xxi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
As co-creators and citizens of the knowledge economy, we share a

tendency to respond in a particular way when faced with the multiple
and diverse challenges of life: we rely on accumulated experiences based
on existing knowledge, or habitual behaviours based on unrevised narra-
tives about how things are—or how we would like things to be. In
our encounters with otherness and difference, wicked problems, or the
inexplicable, we may even default back to instinctive, semi-conscious
fight-flight responses. Where has this prevalent human response to the
unpredictability of this world led us?
We are writing at a time when the assumption of human mastery of
the planet is being questioned and a narrative is starting to emerge that
is even more significant than the diminution of our fantasy of power and
control. In recent years, leaders have become accustomed to hearing of
the extinction of species and the destruction of animal habitats as a direct
consequence of human population growth and commercial activity—
some are beginning to contemplate the possibility that we may be heading
towards the collapse of human civilization as we know it. We are struck
by the implications of this, and we are less than convinced that the world
should look to ‘decision makers’ and ‘leaders’ for solutions. Whilst lead-
ership is needed, to be sure, the path ahead is unlikely to emerge from
unchallenged conventional practices and old thinking.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
C. von Bülow and P. Simpson, Negative Capability in Leadership
Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95768-1_1
2 C. VON BÜLOW AND P. SIMPSON
As we strive to navigate and make sense of the unparalleled global

challenges facing us, organisational life is still influenced by the image of
effective leadership as an individual in a position of authority with excep-
tional capabilities, and most significantly possessing knowledge that others
do not. If we want to update our image of leadership and renew our rela-
tionship with knowledge, it starts with a commitment to self-knowledge
and a new approach to leadership education—we need to make our busi-
ness schools, and our businesses, the context in which we can engage
with the wisdom of contradictions, ambiguities, and tensions—we need
to make it our business to find new ways of being in uncertainty.
Leadership is a complex and contested notion, and it is not our inten-
tion here to try to define our position with precision. We contribute to
literature that challenges the common leadership image and we propose
that leadership is better understood as a process that may emerge from
any individual or group of individuals, rather than necessarily requiring
positional authority or outstanding ability. We are exploring leadership as
a process of transformative change where individual and collective will is
brought to bear in an energetic and dynamic interchange of value. From
this can emerge a shared sense of purpose and meaning.
It is against this backdrop that we situate Negative Capability in leader-
ship practice as a way of being when working in uncertainty. The brilliance
of the English poet, John Keats, who coined the term Negative Capa-
bility, was to understand how ‘high achievement’ relies on a temporary
abstinence from active, measurable, or positive capabilities, in favour of
just being —creating what might be thought of as an empty space that
is normally filled with thoughts, emotions and activity. Keats noticed that
when there is a vacuum of knowing, the human tendency is to fill this with
feeling, thinking and doing—and it is in this sense that Negative Capa-
bility is also about being without . We are not suggesting that Negative
Capability has more value than other responses to working in uncertainty
and the exercise of leadership will clearly need to draw upon knowledge of
one form or another. However, it is the ability to find an appropriate way
of being whilst in a state of not knowing that is a primary characteristic
of leadership as practice. Negative Capability has a place in the leadership
landscape in relation to the experience of being without —not knowing,
not acting, and not having, as well as associated tensions, contradictions,
ambiguities, and anxieties inherent in its practice.
When writing about Negative Capability, we are faced with a chal-
lenging paradox: the natural inclination is to frame this important notion
1 INTRODUCTION 3
as a practice in the field of leadership, but to do so would be to repu-

diate and contradict its very nature. As a way of being in uncertainty,
Negative Capability is more akin to an experience we can come to recog-
nise, appreciate, and learn to create the conditions for it to contribute
to our practice. When Keats chose to talk about Negative Capability, he
was pointing to its ontological significance. Spending time with Negative
Capability is to go on a journey of discovery in unknown terrains—uncov-
ering on the way how to understand and transform current behaviours
and practices and, eventually, learning more about what it means to
navigate in uncertainty. This book is a contribution to all practitioners—
leaders and educators, researchers, and philosophers—who are ready for
such a journey and who strive to understand what it is to be human, what
we can make of it and how to find new ways of being in this world.
A Journey from Concept to Application

We will argue that Negative Capability cannot be observed or described,
except by saying what it is not. Consequently, it is not something that
can be practiced but it can have an influence on leadership practice and
its impact can be experienced. Consequently, we have attempted to create
a flow within and between chapters that offers a red thread for readers to
follow. We suggest, therefore, that the book is best read from beginning
to end in chronological order.
We begin with the development of a conceptual framework for an
understanding of Negative Capability and the importance of a practice
of attention when working in uncertainty. In Chapters 2 and 3, we get
to know John Keats, the historical backdrop, and the context in which
we first encounter Negative Capability. Central to our argument is the
interpretation of Keats’ notion of Negative Capability as existential, the
ability to experience ourselves at the level of our being when working
in uncertainty, without a dependence upon thought, feeling or action.
In Chapter 4, our inquiry addresses the question: what do leaders have
to draw upon if not knowledge? Our answer is that Negative Capa-
bility supports a heightened quality of attention, which can contribute
to leadership practice.
In Chapter 5 we begin to explore the implications of Negative Capa-
bility and the practice of attention for leadership and we proceed to focus
on important aspects of leadership practice that require a shift in thinking
when drawing upon Negative Capability in Chapter 6, where we investi-

gate how we can understand, as well as practically engage with a sense of
purpose as one of multiple dimensions of purpose in leadership practice. In
Chapter 7, we build a new foundation for an expanded epistemology of
work, giving attention to the work of leisure as well as production. As we
reach the top of the ladder in Chapter 8, our inquiry looks at the impor-
tance of an understanding of passion that includes the place of acceptance,
even suffering, as well as enthusiasm in leadership practice.
Phenomenological accounts of the lived experience of those involved in
leadership weave through all the chapters and illustrate key points through
the reflections of individuals whom we had the privilege of interviewing
or working with over the years. All the stories shared are anonymised but
authentic and rooted in the gritty reality of leadership experience that has
been ‘proved upon our pulses’ (Keats in Gittings, 1970, p. 93).
Reference
Gittings, R. (1970). Letters of John Keats. OUP.
CHAPTER 2
Working in Uncertainty
Negative Capability, that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties,

Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. John
Keats
The notion of Negative Capability was mentioned just once towards the
end of 1817 by the English poet, John Keats. He does not explain it in
detail, nor does he ever return to it again in his later writings. However,
in the two centuries since he shared his insight, the idea has captured the
imagination of many in a variety of fields.
Our purpose is to explore the potential contribution of Negative Capa-
bility in leadership practice. However, even after decades of our combined
efforts in this inquiry, we still find it difficult to write about. Much of
the literature on this topic drifts into describing positive capabilities, like
patience, tolerance of ambiguity, and open-mindedness. These may not
be proactive capabilities, like problem solving or strategic planning, but
they are still ‘positive capabilities’ of thinking, feeling and doing. Keats’
Negative Capability is more existential: it is to be capable of being in
uncertainty.
Writing about Negative Capability is difficult, partly, because writing
is a positive capability. However, just as in apophatic spiritual traditions,
which are based on the conviction that the Divine Being (with a capital
‘B’) is beyond naming or description, Negative Capability as ‘being in
uncertainty’ cannot be ‘said’, just as it cannot be thought, felt or done.

Switzerland AG 2022
All writing about Negative Capability, therefore, is at best a pointing

towards, or an ‘unsaying’ (Sells, 1994) of what Negative Capability is
not. As we work hard at trying to find ways to write about what cannot
be expressed, the tools we have at our disposal are those things that can
be seen, said, and recognised. In talking about leadership practice, this
inevitably requires us to talk about positive capabilities. However, our aim
is to point towards the Negative Capability that might be behind what is
manifest in the thoughts, feelings and actions of individuals and groups.
This suggests the need to clarify two key features of this investiga-
tion into the nature and contribution of Negative Capability. First, we
overemphasise a focus on Negative Capability in our discussion of ideas
and in our interpretations of the illustrations from practice. In doing so,
we run the risk of giving the impression that we believe positive capa-
bilities are less important. This is not the case. It is just that we need to
present an imbalanced account in order to have a chance of making visible
what it is not possible to see, to reach towards saying what cannot be
said. The second and most important feature of how we have approached
our task is that we have tried to hold onto the knowledge that we do
not, and cannot, know how to describe or discuss Negative Capability.
To consider Negative Capability requires Negative Capability. Ours is an
inquiry undertaken at the edge between knowing and not knowing. We
are working in uncertainty.
Keats on Negative Capability

We begin our exploration of the potential contribution of Negative Capa-
bility to leadership practice by quoting the whole letter to his two brothers
in which Keats introduced the idea (Gittings, 1970, pp. 41–43). This
reveals that this notion arose in a moment of insight in relation to his
experiences with several friends and acquaintances. The common theme
is a critique of these individuals for the inferior quality of their thinking,
from which we infer a lack of what Keats named Negative Capability.
In addition to his description of Negative Capability, this letter
provides us with an insight into Keats’ interest in the ordinary, everyday
and the extraordinary, ineffable. The former, which we see in the details
of his daily activities, we hear about first in his characterisation of Smith,
Hill, Kingston and Du Bois as ‘all alike’, and then in the critique of his
two friends, Dilke and Coleridge. In the everyday relations of life, Keats
is frequently disappointed in the quality of thought and conversation of
2 WORKING IN UNCERTAINTY 7
others and is not afraid to criticise, even poets with a greater reputation
than his own, like Coleridge and Wordsworth.
He moves seamlessly between his discussions of the ordinary (‘I have
had two very pleasant evenings with Dilke’) and the extraordinary (‘in
close relationship with Beauty and Truth’) because in his world the two
are intimately related. It is the role of the ‘great poet’, as it is of ‘every
Art’, to bring the extraordinary and transcendent into the everyday. This
is also illustrated by Keats with reference to Shakespeare, who possessed
Negative Capability ‘so enormously’, and an artistic intensity ‘capable of
making all disagreeables evaporate.’
Looking at the whole letter (Gittings, 1970, pp. 41–43), rather than
just the common quotes gives the sense of Keats as someone for whom
philosophy was a way of life (see Hadot, 1995)—not an abstract philos-
ophy but a practice that was integrated into his daily experience—both
personal and professional. This is a common feature of his poetry and
letters—as was his unusual grammar!
Hampstead Sunday
22 Dec. 1817
My dear Brothers,
I must crave your pardon for not having written ere this.
I saw Kean return to the public in ‘Richard III’, & finely he did it &
at the request of Reynolds I went to criticize his Luke in Riches — the
critique is in to-day’s champion, which I send you, with the Examiner, in
which you will find very proper lamentation on the obsoletion of Christmas
Gambols & pastimes: but it was mixed up with so much egotism of that
drivelling nature that pleasure is entirely lost. Hone, the publisher’s trial,
you must find very amusing; &, as Englishmen, very encouraging — his
Not Guilty is a thing, which not to have been, would have dulled still
more Liberty’s Emblazoning — Lord Ellenborough has been paid in his
own coin — Wooler & Hone have done us an essential service — I have
had two very pleasant evenings with Dilke, yesterday & to-day; & am at
this moment just come from him & feel in the humour to go on with
this, began in the morning, & from which he came to fetch me. I spent
Friday evening with Wells & went next morning to see Death on the Pale
horse. It is a wonderful picture, when West’s age is considered; But there
is nothing to be intense upon; no women one feels mad to kiss, no face
swelling into reality. The excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of
making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship
with Beauty & Truth — Examine King Lear & you will find this exam-
plified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any
momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness
— The picture is larger than Christ rejected —
I dined with Haydon the sunday after you left, & had a very pleasant day, I
dined too (for I have been out too much lately) with Horace Smith & met
his two brothers, with Hill & Kingston, & one Du Bois, they only served
to convince me, how superior humour is to wit in respect to enjoyment
— These men say things which make one start, without making one feel;
they are all alike; their manners are alike; they all know fashionables; they
have a mannerism in their very eating & drinking, in their mere handling a
Decanter — They talked of Kean & his low company — Would I were with
that Company instead of yours, said I to myself! I know such like acquain-
tance will never do for me & yet I am going to Reynolds, on wednesday.
Brown & Dilke walked with me & back from the Christmas pantomime. I
had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several
things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to
form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare
posessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is, when man
is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact & reason — Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a
fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from
being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued
through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with
a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or
rather obliterates all consideration.
Shelley’s poem is out, & there are words about its being objected too,
as much as Queen Mab was. Poor Shelley, I think he has his Quota of
good qualities, in sooth la!! Write soon to your most sincere friend &
affectionate Brother.
John
Interpreting what was intended by this phrase, Negative Capability, is

made difficult by the lack of any systematic development by Keats himself.
However, we know from his other writings that it emerges from an
ongoing philosophical inquiry. Our approach to the work of interpreta-
tion is to try to stay as close as possible to what is recounted in this letter.
We agree with others that connections can be made with related ideas—
his own as well as those of others in his acquaintance, such as Leigh
Hunt’s ‘passive capacity’, William Hazlitt’s ‘disinterested imagination’,
and Coleridge’s ‘suspension of disbelief’ (Roe, 2012, p. xix). However,
we are reluctant to go as far as some in understanding Negative Capa-

bility as a ‘conceptual umbrella of diverse elements that are interrelated’
(Ou, 2009, p. 185; see also, Saggurthi & Thakur, 2016). Our reasons for
this will be explored further in Chapter 3.
For now, we wish to set the scene for our inquiry into the implications
of Negative Capability in leadership practice through the lenses of the
ordinary and the extraordinary.
The Ordinary and the Extraordinary

In the capitalisation of Beauty, as in Keats’ other letters and poems, we
see the influence of his schooling in the poetry and philosophy of Ancient
Greece, which reverberates throughout his writings. Aristotle listed ten
categories of existing things, and this relates broadly to what we are refer-
ring to as the ordinary: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time,
position, doing, having, and being affected. Keats’ notion of Negative
Capability is relevant to the ordinary, but his reference to Beauty points
towards a contribution beyond the ordinary. In the Middle Ages, the
triumvirate of Beauty, Truth and Goodness came to be referred to as the
Transcendentals, which are expressions of being that exceed, or transcend,
the world of the ordinary, and, in some traditions, are closely related to
the unity of the divine. However, typically this has been overlooked in
recent interpretations of Negative Capability because of the tendency to
marginalise the transcendent in modern discourses, not least in leadership
studies.
In part, this marginalisation has occurred for good reason, with the
discourses of transcendence too often being used as instruments of domi-
nation by the leadership elites of religious institutions and monarchies to
silence and control. Ironically, since the Enlightenment that promised to
free us from the vagaries of blind faith, the process of marginalisation
has been used rather effectively by the new leadership elites in political,
scientific, and commercial institutions to silence those with a different
transcendent belief to their own (Simpson, 2020).
Our preference is for a more inclusive understanding of transcendence,
recognising that there are many ways of considering the possibility that
there are realities beyond the ordinary experience of being in the world.
Keats used the language of Beauty, Truth and Goodness and was seeking
to express this in his poetry, philosophy, and practice. Long (2015) uses
language that is, perhaps, more conducive to modern sensibilities when

she talks of ‘connectedness to source’, suggesting that,
a spiritual source, God, a deity, or even natural forces (e.g., Gaia) may
be the source. In more secular terms, source may come from an overall
purpose beyond individual egos – a communal purpose or a historical,
cultural dynamic […] Often the source must be discovered through a
process of inquiry and connection: for instance, prayer, meditation, body
awareness, the arts, cultural ritual, or socio-analytic practice. Source is not
always self-evident and might be deeply unconscious, requiring reflective
methods, both individual and group in order to gain access. (pp. 9–10)
We are arguing that Keats’ ideas on Negative Capability are relevant in

two aspects. The first, which is dominant in existing literature on this
capability, appreciates the importance of attending to the limitations of
our empirical knowledge. In other words, there are things to be known
in the empirical world that are not yet known but are, for our purposes,
relatively ordinary phenomena. From this perspective, Negative Capa-
bility is associated with the ability to tolerate uncertainty, content to work
with half knowledge in the pursuit of greater certainty, as we shall see
in Chapter 3. As such, the contribution of Negative Capability can be
likened to a method of inquiry.
The second aspect is ontological rather than methodological,
concerned with the nature of being, which is beyond knowing in the
empirical sense. These ideas have prominence in a range of philosoph-
ical and religious traditions, each drawing upon different concepts and
language to express this experience of transcendence, which Keats points
towards with his use of the term ‘Mysteries’. This is what we are referring
to when we use the term extraordinary.
In the letter above, the storytelling that surrounds Keats’ description
of Negative Capability illustrates, primarily, what it is not. This has reso-
nances with the ancient method of negation or unsaying (Sells, 1994)
when talking of the ineffable—those aspects of our experience that are
beyond explanation or description. When illustrating a lack of Negative
Capability, Keats points towards the behaviour of Dilke and Coleridge as
typified by ‘any irritable reaching after fact & reason’.
We know a little about Dilke from some of Keats’ other letters and
the key seems to be this: that he was a person who was fixed in his ideas,
taking dogma as truth. In the following excerpt we also see echoes of his
thoughts on Smith, Hill, Kingston and Du Bois:
Dilke was a Man who cannot feel he has a personal identity unless he
has made up his Mind about everything. The only means of strengthening
one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing—to let the mind be
a thoroughfare for all thoughts, not a select party. The genus is not scarce
in population; all the stubborn arguers you meet with are of the same
brood — They never begin upon a subject they have not pre-resolved
on… Dilke will never come at a truth as long as he lives, because he is
always trying at it. (Letter to his brother and sister-in-law, September 24,
1819, in Gittings, 1970, p. 326)
Again, with Dilke as his illustration, Keats is pointing to the general

tendency to carry with us our ‘pre-resolved’ ideas, and that this prevents
us from being able to ‘come at a truth’. In the Negative Capability
letter, he is making the same point about Coleridge, who he suggests
‘would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude’ (that is, something that
has the appearance of being true). Coleridge’s pre-resolved ideas were
famously rooted in his commitment to post-Kantian German philosophy
(Hamilton, 2007). His critique of Dilke and Coleridge was that they
shielded themselves from experience, and so from truth, by bringing
an already formed understanding. Murry (1926, p. 58) argues that,
by contrast, ‘What Keats holds to be true philosophy abstains from all
dogmatism’.
Some have chosen to emphasise this practical aspect of Negative Capa-
bility, emphasising the capacities to resist conceptual closure (Chia &
Morgan, 1996) and to maintain an attitude of openness in relation to
reality (Cornish, 2011). However, Keats’ letter seems, clearly to us, to go
much further. He is concerned with the ontological as well as practical
significance of this capability. This draws our attention to the importance
of being in the presence of experience, with its inherent uncertainties, and
we argue that this is fundamental to Keats search for Beauty and Truth.
In Negative Capability, Keats sees a critical capacity for a philos-
ophy of freedom (Steiner, 2011), allowing the search for truth—both
ordinary and extraordinary—to be unencumbered by commitments to
existing knowledge derived from dogma or previous experience. Contin-
uing directly from his critique of Dilke and Coleridge, Keats argued, that
it is ‘the sense of Beauty’ that ‘obliterates all consideration’. If we wish
to be faithful to these strong convictions in our exploration of Negative

Capability in leadership practice, then we must be prepared to open our
inquiry to more than the rational and ordinary and leave room for the
ineffable and extraordinary.
In uncertainties, Mysteries and doubts, Keats noticed that there are
those who have already made up their minds about everything through
‘consideration’ and who consequently miss the possibilities of insight
into what is before them. When knowledge is taken from elsewhere and
applied to the understanding of the present moment, the opportunity is
lost to discover the experience of a new beauty or truth in the ‘Pene-
tralium of mystery’, the inner sanctum, those deep places of uncertainty,
Mystery, and doubt within the self.
However, we must remember to avoid creating a binary separation
between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Keats is talking about the role
of Negative Capability in relation to both, and in the interplay between
the two. In the everyday experiences of life, Keats is exhorting us to be
open to the possibility of fresh insights into the practical outworking of
beauty, truth and goodness in the world. Further, Negative Capability
is also required to hold a space within and between us that is open to
Beauty, Truth and Goodness at the transcendent level of Being.
Keats saw Shakespeare as exemplifying this capability and found in
his writing the outworking of a radical search for ‘Beauty & Truth’.
We say radical because the example of King Lear makes clear that Keats
did not see representations of Beauty and Truth as necessarily beautiful
or good by common standards. Smith (2019) says of the play, ‘King
Lear is perhaps Shakespeare’s most desolate tragedy… without ultimate
redemption… perverse…’ (p. 223).
In Keats’ philosophical inquiry, he is constantly seeking to bring
together the ordinary/practical and the extraordinary/ontological. Our
opportunity—which is also a challenge—is to consider the potential
implications of both aspects of Negative Capability in leadership prac-
tice. We suggest that in the two hundred years since Keats, society has
been through many significant transitions, not least in its relationship
to knowledge. This is associated with a polarisation of theory and prac-
tice, and of philosophy and experience. If Negative Capability is to have
implications for practice in the sense that Keats intended, then the chal-
lenge is to find ways to bring together the ordinary/practical and the
extraordinary/ineffable.
The Experience of Not Knowing
Andrew, the managing director of a medium sized computer software organ-

isation, was leaning his chair against the wall, both hands behind his head.
The part time MBA class was in the first lesson of a new module in leading
change and Jo, the lecturer, was presenting her ideas on the importance of
attending to emotion and politics as well as rational approaches to manage-
ment. Andrew was poised but merely listened attentively until the lecturer
made the generalisation that people tend to be averse to change because uncer-
tainty provokes anxiety. ‘Can I say something,’ he called from the back of the
class. ‘Of course...’ she replied. ‘What you are saying is bollocks. If there is
not enough change in my organisation, I get bored and will do something
just to make things interesting’. The rest of the class were shocked into atten-
tion, now sitting in an uncomfortable silence, wondering what was going
to happen next. Their fears were misplaced as the intervention raised the
discussion to a higher level, stimulating an exploration of the complexities of
change management in relation to difference, power, conflict and the political
process.
Andrew was, in our experience, unusual in his love of change. In

fact, it was clear that he drew personal power from his ability to tolerate
uncertainty and clearly enjoyed flexing his intellectual muscles when the
opportunity arose. This was noted in other modules—with male as well
as female lecturers—and his approach to his assignments was noteworthy
in that he had a practice of starting them no earlier than 24 hours before
the submission deadline. His rationale was that he was on the programme
to learn to be a better manager and did not want to be constrained by
the assignment brief in what he was able to explore. Pragmatically astute,
he had worked out early in the programme that this strategy allowed him
to do well enough to gain a pass mark, and often better, as his depth of
engagement in the subject gave him some insightful things to say. It also
helped to stop him from becoming bored!
This does demonstrate some Negative Capability as well as showing the
importance of a range of positive capabilities that are required to work in
situations of uncertainty, such as the confidence to inquire proactively,
seek out information, and exercising skills of debate and problem solving.
Keats letters provide ample evidence of similar aptitudes and behaviours.
Andrew was unusual in his behaviour, the other students more typical,
because modern discourses in organisations and society are dominated by
a valuing of knowing and a discomfort with not knowing. It is not that

Andrew was wholly right in his assertion. Rather, we are drawing attention
to his pursuit of a more complex, deeper, truth, which must be content
with ‘half-knowledge’ as it pursues an insight from the Penetralium of
mystery.
This illustration draws our attention to one of the reasons why Nega-
tive Capability is not more prominent in modern culture in that an
unquestioned assumption prevails that it is better to be certain than uncer-
tain. We are unable to feel content unless we have relevant knowledge and
tend to feel restless, inadequate, irritable if we are compelled to deal with
what is seen as a deficiency. Consequently, our ways of working tend to be
predicated on seeking to achieve this ‘better’ state of knowing. Worse, but
not uncommon, we develop ways of hiding our ignorance—and, collec-
tively, we too frequently collude with such behaviour because we want to
know that it is possible to hide.
But what if we could change the way that we think about uncer-
tainty? Rather than seeing it as a deficiency (a lack of knowledge), could
uncertainty be thought of as stimulating? Andrew created change and
uncertainty because he was easily bored—he wanted more stimulation
in the workplace. We also see in his behaviour an inclination towards
learning and inquiry, which were stimulated by the perceived deficiency
in his skills and knowledge, and it was this that prompted him to register
for an M.B.A.
Moreover, there is a need to understand that uncertainty and not
knowing in the workplace is not merely an ‘absence of knowing’. It is
an inevitable aspect of professional practice and needs to be given more
careful attention. It is an integral part of our working lives and deserves
to be acknowledged as legitimate—not a cause for shame and embarrass-
ment. If we can change our attitude towards not knowing, we can begin
to develop capabilities that will better support our practice. Consequently,
we are interested in methods of working in uncertainty without, neces-
sarily, seeking to know whatever it is that we think we do not know. What
we might seek, instead, is beauty, truth, and goodness without knowing
what these might be when they become manifest. In Andrew, we see a
passion for inquiry for its own sake and not with a predetermined goal in
mind. Alongside a range of positive capabilities, Negative Capability is an
aspect of such an approach, which acknowledges the potential importance
of learning to be with uncertainty.
Mysteries and Unknowing

One of the difficulties in giving explicit attention to the ineffable is that a
poetic capability is required to say what cannot be said, and with subtlety
point towards what cannot be seen. Moreover, we are writing in a societal
culture dominated by the pragmatic mindset of a knowledge economy
that struggles to simultaneously hold a socio-economic rationale along-
side a poetic contemplation of truth. It is our assumption that speaking
of the transcendent should be attempted only with humility, which is
inherent in the ambiguous subtlety of poetry.
In an organisational context, the opposite mindset tends to proliferate
and the desire for certainty demands that transcendence, if it is acknowl-
edged at all, is managed by leaders who are expected to know. The leader
is put into an invidious position—doomed either to maintain a pretence
or to be exposed as incompetent. Gabriel (2015) offers a psychoanalytic
interpretation of the relationship between leaders and followers in which
the latter can unconsciously project transcendent qualities of omnipotence
and legitimacy upon those in positions of authority. He argues that a
leader is ‘one of a case of archetypes that populate our mind’ manifesting,
variously, as ‘a saint […] a devil […] a devious schemer […] and a sacrifi-
cial lamb’ (p. 319). In a similar vein, Grint (2010) argues that the denial
of the sacred in leadership is tantamount to denying leadership itself. This
supports a hierarchical view of leadership that creates a separation from
followers, demands the sacrifice of self and/or others, and silences both
opposition and the existential angst of supporters. Grint is persuasive in
his belief that alternative understandings of leadership are difficult to enact
because they demand greater effort, requiring followers to take on more
responsibility.
Indeed, leadership that draws upon Negative Capability requires
greater effort from all and demands shared responsibility—as was hinted
at in our observation of Andrew’s fellow students, in their silence and
reluctance to take up their own authority. Such leadership cannot be the
function of a lone individual but must be a process in which all have a part
to play. The split between leaders and followers discussed by Gabriel and
Grint must dissolve. However, without someone who knows to carry the
responsibility, being in uncertainty is a challenge for all involved. Grint is
correct that the pressure for the separation of roles is great, even in the
ordinary, everyday uncertainties of the workplace. The challenge is greater
still if there is an aspiration to bring something of the extraordinary into
the world because it is not only uncertainties but also Mysteries that must
be faced.
The following illustration demonstrates some of these pressures and
will resonate with the experience of many who are wary of bringing the
transcendent into leadership practice.
Illustration: Living by Faith
Tom and Jean had, by their own admission, ‘always been at the social services
end of the Christian spectrum.’ When Jean experienced a miraculous healing,
a sense of destiny entered their lives, which they came to believe was to establish
a residential home for young people. They believed this to have the backing
of God. They began looking for a house and funds. A possibility of obtaining
both arose, and they took a leap of faith. They resigned from their jobs and
sold their house.
The negotiations for funds collapsed. They were confused. Tom described
this time as the start of ‘an emotional roller coaster.’ Encouragement came
through small successes. Through church networks they were loaned a small
house to live in, free of rent. Their passion and conviction inspired others
to become involved on a voluntary basis. Their non-residential work with
young people grew. Links were formed with local organizations, including a
telephone counselling service which provided an office for them to work from.
For three years they kept going on a shoestring budget. Their initial funds
were soon exhausted, and they lived hand to mouth. The stresses of everyday
life meant that some who started to work with Tom and Jean drifted away.
There were also signs that Tom and Jean’s single mindedness was difficult
for those working with them: some began to grumble that they were not being
listened to, expressing a dislike for the controlling, hierarchical approach to
leadership. Some drifted away quietly but others left in bitter conflict.
They persisted, putting in place the organizational, financial and legal
structures required for the project. A charitable trust was set up. Then, a prop-
erty was found, and planning permission obtained. Finally, the longed-for
breakthrough occurred: a local government organisation needed a project that
could start before the end of the budget year because other projects had fallen
through at a late stage. The house was purchased and renovated. Within a
year they were running their residential home.
However, the home struggled to become viable and financial pressures esca-
lated. A strong difference of opinion began to develop, a rift between Tom
and Jean on the one side and the trustees on the other. The house operated for
a year before the trustees ousted them and put another couple in charge. The
home operated for another year and then closed.
At the time, Tom and Jean described themselves as ‘living by faith’ but
others experienced them as dogmatic in their opinions. They demon-
strated Negative Capability, working in uncertainty over a prolonged
period, but by invoking the presence of God as the basis of the authority
to lead, they behaved as though they were the ones who knew best and
in doing so alienated others. In this they lost touch with unknowing as
well as not knowing.
We are making a distinction between not knowing and unknowing
to make a conceptual distinction between the everyday experience of
uncertainty, not knowing, and what, for Keats, entailed a reaching after
the extraordinary in Beauty, Truth and Goodness. This is the realm of
‘Mysteries’, which Keats capitalises in the same manner as he does the
Transcendentals.
The ineffable has been described in the Christian tradition as a
‘Cloud of Unknowing,’ which understands the transcendent as inherently
unknowable. Johnston (1974, p. xv) suggests that in this intellectual dark-
ness, ‘God can be loved but he cannot be thought. He can be grasped
by love but never by concepts.’ It seems that Tom and Jean might have
begun in love (for God, for young people, to do good in the world)
but became caught in a battle of ideas about who knew best. They were
challenged by not knowing in relation to the practical/ordinary and lost
touch with unknowing in relation to the ineffable/extraordinary.
Expressing this another way, they lost touch with Negative Capability.
Under the pressure of expectation, they practiced leadership as those who
knew better. They had some success but failed to achieve their ambitions.
That is not to say that staying in touch with Negative Capability would
have enabled them to establish a successful residential home. This is not
what Keats means by ‘Achievement’—consider, again, King Lear as his
exemplar of the intensity of Art. To the extent that they were able to be
in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, Tom and Jean did bring an intensity
and, to a limited extent, Beauty, Truth and Goodness did obliterate all
consideration. However, in a culture where ‘knowledge is king’, and it is
consideration that obliterates Beauty, the extraordinary transcendent can
so easily come to fuel leadership as an instrument of domination.
Whilst we remain mindful of the importance to Keats of the Mysteries,
our primary focus is on the uncertainties of the everyday with which those
involved in the practice of leadership must engage. With Keats, we are

convinced of the inevitable interplay of the ordinary and the extraordi-
nary, the pragmatic and the transcendent, but in our inquiry, we choose
to walk before we try to run. We will retain an attentive awareness of the
role that the extraordinary can sometimes play in leadership, but we do
not begin to address this theme in any depth until the final chapters, on
purpose and passion.
Leadership has a particular role to play in relation to uncertainty in
the everyday realities of organisations. This entails the development of
a range of relevant capabilities in relation to the practice of attention, a
sense of purpose, the work of leisure, and the role of passion. This is not
to denigrate the capabilities that require knowledge and knowing, which
remain a crucial element of effective leadership practice, but the challenge
is also to find ways to acknowledge and work with the experiences of not
knowing. This is what we believe Keats was attempting to achieve, and he
coined the phrase Negative Capability to emphasise the value of taking
seriously our engagement with not knowing. We suggest that Negative
Capability brings a new dimension to our understanding of these capabil-
ities, which is further heightened when we include a consideration of the
experience of transcendence and unknowing.
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Cornish, S. (2011). Negative capability and social work: Insights from Keats,
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logic. Continuum.
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CHAPTER 3
Negative Capability
In this chapter we will explore how Negative Capability might contribute

to leadership practice. Having discussed the genesis of the idea and its
relevance to working in uncertainty in the previous chapter, we will begin
by illustrating what such leadership might look like. We will do this
through the story of Esha Patel, the chief executive of a private educa-
tional college, who was faced with the sudden and unforeseen change in
her institution’s financial situation. What makes this event significant for
our purposes is that Esha, in her response, was drawing upon Negative
Capability and demanded the same of her team.
Illustration: Esha Patel, the Chief Executive
Esha received the news late on a Friday afternoon that a change in UK

government policy concerning the recruitment of overseas students would lead
to a sudden and unforeseen loss of core income. She felt the pressure from
the Chair of the Board to call an emergency meeting with her senior team
over the weekend, but she did not react to these expectations. Instead, she spent
the whole weekend reflecting on the issue and concluded that any decision was
likely to have a significant impact on the financial health of the organisation.
She did not produce a solution and waited until Monday to involve her senior
team.

Switzerland AG 2022
Esha met with her team for a couple of hours first thing on each day of
that week. The only condition she made was that they should not come with
solutions but be prepared to think together. Every day, Esha let the discussion
flow until it started to sound like conclusions were being drawn and, at that
point, she stopped the meeting.
By the end of a week, a shared perspective had emerged. The result was
unexpected...
In resisting the pressure to come up with a solution from her Board, Esha
showed strength of conviction and courage. Such behaviour is a risk—a
naïve engagement with uncertainty can lead to unfortunate outcomes. For
example, there are many professional contexts within which being slow
to act or a careless admission of ‘not knowing what to do’ might have
a detrimental effect on the individual’s reputation and credibility within
the organisation. At this stage, we would merely point out that Nega-
tive Capability is not a passive or submissive stance. It might not play
out well in some organisational contexts, but its contribution to prac-
tice is concerned with improving the quality of attention, engagement
and response. We have followed Esha’s journey through and beyond this
initial crisis point, witnessing and recording some of her reflections on the
decisions and actions taken at the time. We will return to this story later
in the chapter to explore what happened.
Keats describes Negative Capability as ‘when man is capable of being
in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after
fact & reason’ (Gittings, 1970, pp. 41–43). We suggest that in relation
to leadership practice this is the capacity to be with the uncertainty of
a challenging situation and to be without the desire to reach for quick
solutions. Consequently, an inner space is left open, which is the seat
of a heightened quality of attention. The deliberate practice of attention
enables those involved in leadership to engage with the complexity and
uncertainty of a situation.
As will become evident, our interpretation of Keats’ notion, as well
as our lived experience of Negative Capability, differs somewhat from
what can be found in the existing organisation studies literature. Firstly,
however, we must ask—how did Keats describe Negative Capability and
what was he trying to convey?
3 NEGATIVE CAPABILITY 23
Capable of Being---The Life

and Personal Philosophy of John Keats
Keats died young, at just 25 years of age, and yet his life, poetry and
letters have drawn an extraordinary amount of attention. As a result,
even though he lived in London over two hundred years ago, we know a
great deal about what might have contributed to his personal philosophy,
of which Negative Capability is a central aspect (see, for example, Bate,
1963; Murry, 1955; Roe, 2012; Ward, 1963). By the age of nine Keats
had lost his father, a younger brother (Edward), and two uncles; at the
age of fourteen he nursed his mother at her deathbed; at twenty-three he
did the same for his nineteen-year-old brother (Thomas). From an early
age, Keats knew what it meant to live in uncertainty.
Motion (1997, p. 41) argues that ‘Every attempt that he would later
make to explain the conditions of human existence sprang from his
conviction that suffering was its only reliable component.’ In relation
to organisational leadership, this is reminiscent of Bennis and Thomas’
(2002, p. 39) suggestion that,
…one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is

an individual’s ability to find meaning in negative events and to learn from
even the most trying circumstances. Put another way, the skills required to
conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are
the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders.
It is in such situations that the gulf is most pronounced between knowl-

edge gained from theory and the experiential realities of working in
uncertainty. Keats recognised that beyond the experience of ‘seeing
nothing but pleasant wonders’ is the opportunity for ‘sharpening one’s
vision into the heart and nature of Man — of convincing one’s nerves that
the world is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression’
(letter to Reynolds, 3 May 1818, in Gittings, 1970, p. 95). Staying close
to Keats’ own words in his description of Negative Capability, we observe
that he is drawing attention to the challenge of remaining capable of being
when assailed by uncertainty.
One of the challenges in understanding Negative Capability is that
there is little awareness of it and its significance: ‘few people save Keats
have even suspected its existence’ (Murry, 1926, p. 47). This general lack
of awareness is compounded by a lack of desire to develop a capability that
might include the possibility of pain and suffering. By contrast, we see in

Keats’ biography a clue to his awareness of a capability that allowed him
to face what Murry called ‘the pains which are knit up in the very nature
of existence’ (p. 47). However, in this, Keats was not drawing upon a
specific tradition but had an inquiring practice which reflects some of the
characteristics of what Hadot(1995) called ‘philosophy as a way of life’.
Murry explains,
...the word Philosophy in Keats’ writings does not mean the technical
subject which bears that name. What it means is a comprehension (and a
comprehension of a peculiar kind) of the mystery of human life. To acquire
this comprehension is necessary for Keats if he is to achieve his purposeof
doing some good in the world by poetry... Keats never really wavered in
his belief that the highest kind of poetry was the vehicle of the highest
kind of truth, and as such the supreme benefit that could be conferred
upon humanity at large. This highest kind of poetry, Keats felt, called for
great sacrificeand demanded great suffering. (Murry, 1926, p. 60)
We see Keats’ traumatic life experience as the cauldron within which

Negative Capability and his wider philosophy emerged. Our interpreta-
tion derives not merely from seeking to be faithful to Keats’ description
of Negative Capability, but also through our understanding of the forma-
tive impact of his life experience on the development of his ideas, as well
as by interpreting the phrase in the context in which the idea arose, which
was discussed in Chapter 2.
Negative Capability in the Leadership Literature

Having looked at the life of Keats and touched on his philosophy, we
will now dive into some of the interpretations that can be found in the
organisational leadership literature and illustrate where we take a different
perspective from some other scholars. In outline, we can say that our
reading of Keats, and our experience of Negative Capability, is an invi-
tation to shift focus and attention from knowing and doing to ways of
being, being without and being with.
Negative Capability is an enigmatic notion and whilst it has found
its way into the leadership literature over the last three decades, there
was initially little effort made to explore its contribution to the field—it
merely seems to resonate with the lived experienceof leaders. For example,
Bennis (1989, p. 148) quotes Keats in the context of ‘moving through

chaos’, but then just states ‘There’s probably no better definition of a
contemporary leader than that’ (see also Handy, 1989, p. 54).
Since then, one prominent focus has been on Negative Capability as
the capacity to contain or tolerate anxiety (French, 2001; Grint, 2007,
p. 241) when working in uncertainty. Keats himself addresses the chal-
lenge of coping with anxiety when he argues that ‘extensive knowledge
is needful to thinking people… to ease the burden of Mystery’ (Gittings,
1970, p. 92). However, in his description of Negative Capability, Keats
makes no reference to ‘easing the burden’ but rather to be ‘capable
of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts’. Consequently, we do not
believe that Keats understood Negative Capability as a form of ‘extensive
knowledge’. Indeed, one of the most important contributions of Negative
Capability is to allow the leader to recognise and accept when she does
not know. Consequently, we maintain that the containment of anxiety is a
positive capability that is an element of Keats wider philosophy but distinct
from Negative Capability.
Others interpret Negative Capability as the capacity to resist concep-
tual closure (Chia & Morgan, 1996), remaining content with ‘half-
knowledge’ (Bate, 1939, p. 63; Saggurthi & Thakur, 2016, p. 185).
Again, we see a focus here on positive capabilities related to knowing
and doing —not being. Related to this, another interpretation is open-
ness —both in relation to reality (Cornish, 2011) and as a quality of
receptive inaction and patience (Simpson et al., 2002). When discussing
one of Keats’ accounts of the poetic character (Gittings, 1970, pp. 157ff.),
Murry (1926) observes a radical openness in Keats, ‘a state of extreme
and agonizing receptivity, this passive sensitiveness of the being’ (p. 53).
In this, Murry makes an explicit connection with being, which is closer to
our understanding, although the focus is on a receptive openness, which
is a positive capability, which we will discuss in more detail in Chapter 7
on the work of leisure.
In relation to Murry’s identification of an intense feeling state, Keats
himself famously cried, ‘O for a Life of Sensations rather than Thought!’
(letter to Bailey, 22 November 1817, in Gittings, 1970, p. 37). Bari
(2012) suggests that
Keats feels… life, phenomenally and affectively, and he expresses it in his

poetry, where the feeling of things cultivates a feeling for life, in the sense
of an aptitude, sensitivity or susceptibility to all that it entails. The term
‘feeling’ operated broadly… moving between the distinctions of sensation,

emotion and apprehension. In all three cases, feeling designates something
that is non-conceptual, or not ‘known’ in the properly Kantian sense, but
is ‘felt’ as surely as it were. (p. xvii)
The most substantial recent contribution was made by Saggurthi and

Thakur (2016) who offer a comprehensive review of existing literature
and argue that the practice of Negative Capability can enable managers to
operate more effectively in situations of doubt and uncertainty, defining
it as
the ability to delight in doubt and revel in uncertainty without feeling

compelled to rationalize half-knowledge or to reach for facts or fall back
on existing knowledge structures, resisting conceptual closure and in a state
of diligent indolence and passive receptivity, move toward a knowing with
the power of one’s imagination, sensations, and intuition. (p. 185)
Inspired by the idea of an ‘organic conception’ which ‘grows increas-

ingly richer…’ (Ou, 2009, p. 2), they present an image of Negative
Capability as a ‘conceptual umbrella of diverse elements that are interre-
lated’ (p. 185). They identify its potential contribution as a challenge to
reductionist worldviews, promoting an alternative discourse that does not
‘advocate performativity, the need for control, and a mechanical perspec-
tive’ (p. 181). In this they draw upon the work of several popular systems
complexity theorists(Scharmer, 2008, 2010; Senge et al., 2005; Wheatley,
1992) in questioning whether dominant management discourses are
adequate for the task of engaging effectively with the challenges of organ-
isational uncertainty and change. Some organizational scholars (French&
Simpson, 2015; Ramsey, 2014) are engaged in a related exploration of
leading in uncertainty, arguing that more careful attention needs to be
given to what is not known, even unknowable: a practice that requires
time and the capacity to think deeply in order to make perceptive,
discerning judgements (Stacey, 2012, p. 108).
We support the general thrust of Saggurthi and Thakur’s argument.
However, whilst acknowledging that their conclusions were systemati-
cally derived from their review of a wide range of sources—not just
relating to leadership, but also in the fields of literature, psychology,
and social work—we question the appropriateness of their definition.
Our difficulty is quite simply that few of the ideas contained in it were
used by Keats when he described Negative Capability. By developing an

‘organic conception’ that draws upon additional qualities and capabilities,
they dilute the meaning of Negative Capability and its potentially unique
contribution. Moreover, because their definition is a composite of several
‘diverse elements’ it becomes extremely difficult to know how one might
develop Negative Capability. In short, the phrase loses its usefulness to
leaders—unless it is first deconstructed into its constituent parts. This, of
course, then returns us to the question, ‘what is Negative Capability?’.
Saggurthi and Thakur present it as a prescription for the challenges
of complexityand, in doing so, share a similar failing to much of the
systems complexity literature upon which they draw (Hancock & Tyler,
2004, 2009). There is no quick fix to complexity, no comfortable way
of engaging with uncertainty. Negative Capability may contribute as
intended, but it may also unexpectedly lead to difficult and uncomfort-
able experiences rather than ‘the ability to delight in doubt and revel in
uncertainty’.
Keats believed that pain and suffering is a prominent state for the
pure poet—essential rather than something to be tolerated (Bate, 1939,
p. 47). He understood the world as a ‘vale of Soul-making’ (Letter to his
brother and sister-in-law, 21 April 1819, in Gittings, 1970, p. 249), the
soul developing through bitter experience, creating a capacity through
which ‘they know and they see and they are pure’ (ibid., p. 250). It is
a challenge to consider a way of being that leaves one open to—perhaps
even embraces—pain and suffering. This is not a common expectation of
a contract of employment in most organisations.
Not Knowing in a Knowledge Economy

When we are trying to understand the potential contribution of Negative
Capability to leadership practice, it is important to consider the impact of
the stigma attached to admitting any level of ignorance. In many organi-
sations, to suggest that there is value in exploring ways of not knowing
carries potential reputational risks. Within our culture in the West, so
carefully constructed around the implicit power dynamics of a knowl-
edge economy, the experience of not knowing can be compared to a
form of social insolvency. In other words, the phenomenology of not
knowing the solutions to a problem is analogous to that of being in
debt—and common fears of how one is perceived will follow suit. Is it any
wonder, then, that the idea of embracing the experience of not knowing
is counterintuitive?
In relation to leadership practice, we suggest that this is, at least
partially, rooted in the dominant popular image of an effective leader as
someone with exceptional capabilities and, most significantly, possessing
knowledge that others do not. To draw upon Negative Capability requires
an alternative mindset and to illustrate this, let us return here to the story
of the crisis that faced Esha and her management team.
Esha decided to facilitate a process that allowed spaciousness and time, and
which welcomed ‘not knowing’ as a legitimate part of the discussion. She was
aware that this could be seen as irresponsible and be anxiety-provoking for
the team, particularly in such a crisis. Yet Esha took that risk. In response
to the Board’s requests for a plan, she respectfully responded that there were
too many unknown issues to allow a swift decision. Instead, Esha invited her
team to come to a collective understanding of what could be known about the
situation whilst also recognising what could not.
The team worked together for a week without making any decisions. For
the first couple of days, some team members brought along proposals and
Esha merely reminded them that they should not come with solutions but be
prepared to think together. By inviting the team to remain with the experience
of not knowing, their attention was not captured by an irritable reaching
after solutions unsupported by evidence. Consequently, whilst it was a stressful
time, ultimately their decision was not driven by anxiety.
At the end of the week, the conclusion was reached that the greater wisdom
lay in accepting the situation and allowing the programme to close. In the
weeks that followed, the quality of the approach to decision-making was highly
praised by the team. Furthermore, whilst the result was unexpected, the action
taken turned out to be a sound strategic move for the organisation. Rather
than putting all their efforts into defending the status quo, they turned
their attention and energies to new opportunities and a re-imagining of
the identity of the college.
What we see here is that Esha was capable of being in uncertainties

and this was supported by her courage to go against the expectations of
powerful others, reacting without an irritable reaching after fact & reason.
The spaciousness and time to dwell in the situation enabled the team to
co-create a new perspective on the crisis. Esha’s response was strategic
and innovative and not driven by short-termism. We do see evidence of
the positive capabilities of tolerating anxiety, resisting conceptual closure,
receptivity, and patience. However, what we saw was a more fundamental
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Title: Gondola days
Author: Francis Hopkinson Smith
Release date: August 31, 2023 [eBook #71528]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company,

1897
Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GONDOLA

DAYS ***
FICTION AND
TRAVEL
By F. Hopkinson
Smith.
TOM GROGAN. Illustrated.

12mo, gilt top, $1.50.
A GENTLEMAN
VAGABOND, AND SOME
OTHERS. 16mo, $1.25.
COLONEL CARTER OF
CARTERSVILLE. With 20
illustrations by the author
and E. W. Kemble. 16mo,
$1.25.
A DAY AT LAGUERRE’S,
AND OTHER DAYS.
Printed in a new style.
16mo, $1.25.
A WHITE UMBRELLA IN
MEXICO. Illustrated by the
author. 16mo, gilt top,
$1.50.
GONDOLA DAYS.
Illustrated, 12mo, $1.50.
WELL-WORN ROADS OF
SPAIN, HOLLAND, AND
ITALY, traveled by a
Painter in search of the
Picturesque. With 16 full-
page phototype
reproductions of water-
color drawings, and text by
F. Hopkinson Smith,
profusely illustrated with
pen-and-ink sketches. A
Holiday volume. Folio, gilt
top, $15.00.
THE SAME. Popular Edition.
Including some of the
illustrations of the above.
16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &
CO.
Boston and New York.
GONDOLA DAYS
BACK OF THE RIALTO (PAGE 87)
GONDOLA DAYS
BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR
BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND
COMPANY THE RIVERSIDE
PRESS CAMBRIDGE 1897
COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
NOTE
THE text of this volume is the same as that of “Venice of To-Day,”
recently published by the Henry T. Thomas Company, of New York,
as a subscription book, in large quarto and folio form, with over two
hundred illustrations by the Author, in color and in black and white.
PREFATORY
I HAVE made no attempt in these pages to review the
splendors of the past, or to probe the many vital questions
which concern the present, of this wondrous City of the
Sea. Neither have I ventured to discuss the marvels of her
architecture, the wealth of her literature and art, nor the growing
importance of her commerce and manufactures.
I have contented myself rather with the Venice that you see in the
sunlight of a summer’s day—the Venice that bewilders with her glory
when you land at her water-gate; that delights with her color when
you idle along the Riva; that intoxicates with her music as you lie in
your gondola adrift on the bosom of some breathless lagoon—the
Venice of mould-stained palace, quaint caffè and arching bridge; of
fragrant incense, cool, dim-lighted church, and noiseless priest; of
strong-armed men and graceful women—the Venice of light and life,
of sea and sky and melody.
No pen alone can tell this story. The pencil and the palette must lend
their touch when one would picture the wide sweep of her piazzas,
the abandon of her gardens, the charm of her canal and street life,
the happy indolence of her people, the faded sumptuousness of her
homes.
If I have given to Venice a prominent place among the cities of the
earth it is because in this selfish, materialistic, money-getting age, it
is a joy to live, if only for a day, where a song is more prized than a
soldo; where the poorest pauper laughingly shares his scanty crust;
where to be kind to a child is a habit, to be neglectful of old age a
shame; a city the relics of whose past are the lessons of our future;
whose every canvas, stone, and bronze bear witness to a grandeur,
luxury, and taste that took a thousand years of energy to perfect, and
will take a thousand years of neglect to destroy.
To every one of my art-loving countrymen this city should be a
Mecca; to know her thoroughly is to know all the beauty and
romance of five centuries.
F. H. S.
CONTENTS
An Arrival 1
Gondola Days 8
Along the Riva 28
The Piazza of San Marco 42
In an Old Garden 58
Among the Fishermen 85
A Gondola Race 101
Some Venetian Caffès 116
On the Hotel Steps 126
Open-Air Markets 136
On Rainy Days 145
Legacies of the Past 155
Life in the Streets 176
Night in Venice 197
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Back of the Rialto (see page 87) Frontispiece
The Gateless Posts of the Piazzetta 14
The One Whistler etched 26
Beyond San Rosario 58
The Catch of the Morning 90
A Little Hole in the Wall on the Via Garibaldi 116
Ponte Paglia ... next the Bridge of Sighs 136
The Fruit Market above the Rialto 140
Wide Palatial Staircases 160
Narrow Slits of Canals 186
San Giorgio stands on Tip-toe 198
AN ARRIVAL
OU really begin to arrive in Venice when you leave Milan.
Your train is hardly out of the station before you have
conjured up all the visions and traditions of your childhood:
great rows of white palaces running sheer into the water;
picture-book galleys reflected upside down in red lagoons; domes
and minarets, kiosks, towers, and steeples, queer-arched temples,
and the like.
As you speed on in the dusty train, your memory-fed imagination
takes new flights. You expect gold-encrusted barges, hung with
Persian carpets, rowed by slaves double-banked, and trailing rare
brocades in a sea of China-blue, to meet you at the water landing.
By the time you reach Verona your mental panorama makes another
turn. The very name suggests the gay lover of the bal masque, the
poisoned vial, and the calcium moonlight illuminating the wooden
tomb of the stage-set graveyard. You instinctively look around for the
fair Juliet and her nurse. There are half a dozen as pretty Veronese,
attended by their watchful duennas, going down by train to the City
by the Sea; but they do not satisfy you. You want one in a tight-fitting
white satin gown with flowing train, a diamond-studded girdle, and an
ostrich-plume fan. The nurse, too, must be stouter, and have a high-
keyed voice; be bent a little in the back, and shake her finger in a
threatening way, as in the old mezzotints you have seen of Mrs.
Siddons or Peg Woffington. This pair of Dulcineas on the seat in
front, in silk dusters, with a lunch-basket and a box of sweets, are
too modern and commonplace for you, and will not do.
When you roll into Padua, and neither doge nor inquisitor in ermine
or black gown boards the train, you grow restless. A deadening
suspicion enters your mind. What if, after all, there should be no
Venice? Just as there is no Robinson Crusoe nor man Friday; no
stockade, nor little garden; no Shahrazad telling her stories far into
the Arabian night; no Santa Claus with reindeer; no Rip Van Winkle
haunted by queer little gnomes in fur caps. As this suspicion
deepens, the blood clogs in your veins, and a thousand shivers go
down your spine. You begin to fear that all these traditions of your
childhood, all these dreams and fancies, are like the thousand and
one other lies that have been told to and believed by you since the
days when you spelled out words in two syllables.
Upon leaving Mestre—the last station—you smell the salt air of the
Adriatic through the open car window. Instantly your hopes revive.
Craning your head far out, you catch a glimpse of a long, low,
monotonous bridge, and away off in the purple haze, the dreary
outline of a distant city. You sink back into your seat exhausted. Yes,
you knew it all the time. The whole thing is a swindle and a sham!
“All out for Venice,” says the guard, in French.
Half a dozen porters—well-dressed, civil-spoken porters, flat-capped
and numbered—seize your traps and help you from the train. You
look up. It is like all the rest of the depots since you left Paris—high,
dingy, besmoked, beraftered, beglazed, and be——! No, you are
past all that. You are not angry. You are merely broken-hearted.
Another idol of your childhood shattered; another coin that your soul
coveted, nailed to the wall of your experience—a counterfeit!
“This door to the gondolas,” says the porter. He is very polite. If he
were less so, you might make excuse to brain him on the way out.
The depot ends in a narrow passageway. It is the same old fraud—
custom-house officers on each side; man with a punch mutilating
tickets; rows of other men with brass medals on their arms the size
of apothecaries’ scales—hackmen, you think, with their whips
outside—licensed runners for the gondoliers, you learn afterward.
They are all shouting—all intent on carrying you off bodily. The
vulgar modern horde!
Soon you begin to breathe more easily. There is another door ahead,
framing a bit of blue sky. “At least, the sun shines here,” you say to
yourself. “Thank God for that much!”
“This way, Signore.”
One step, and you stand in the light. Now look! Below, at your very
feet, a great flight of marble steps drops down to the water’s edge.
Crowding these steps is a throng of gondoliers, porters, women with
fans and gay-colored gowns, priests, fruit-sellers, water-carriers, and
peddlers. At the edge, and away over as far as the beautiful marble
church, a flock of gondolas like black swans curve in and out.
Beyond stretches the double line of church and palace, bordering the
glistening highway. Over all is the soft golden haze, the shimmer, the
translucence of the Venetian summer sunset.
With your head in a whirl,—so intense is the surprise, so foreign to
your traditions and dreams the actuality,—you throw yourself on the
yielding cushions of a waiting gondola. A turn of the gondolier’s
wrist, and you dart into a narrow canal. Now the smells greet you—
damp, cool, low-tide smells. The palaces and warehouses shut out
the sky. On you go—under low bridges of marble, fringed with
people leaning listlessly over; around sharp corners, their red and
yellow bricks worn into ridges by thousands of rounding boats; past
open plazas crowded with the teeming life of the city. The shadows
deepen; the waters glint like flakes of broken gold-leaf. High up in an
opening you catch a glimpse of a tower, rose-pink in the fading light;
it is the Campanile. Farther on, you slip beneath an arch caught
between two palaces and held in mid-air. You look up, shuddering as
you trace the outlines of the fatal Bridge of Sighs. For a moment all
is dark. Then you glide into a sea of opal, of amethyst and sapphire.
The gondola stops near a small flight of stone steps protected by
huge poles striped with blue and red. Other gondolas are debarking.
A stout porter in gold lace steadies yours as you alight.
“Monsieur’s rooms are quite ready. They are over the garden; the
one with the balcony overhanging the water.”
The hall is full of people (it is the Britannia, the best hotel in Venice),
grouped about the tables, chatting or reading, sipping coffee or
eating ices. Beyond, from an open door, comes the perfume of
flowers. You pass out, cross a garden, cool and fresh in the
darkening shadows, and enter a small room opening on a staircase.

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Negative Capability in Leadership

Practice : Implications for Working in

Charlotte von Bülow

ISBN 978-3-030-95767-4 ISBN 978-3-030-95768-1 (eBook)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com

well as actual—and the potential consequences of making leadership deci-

A Deliberate Practice of Attention 39

9 Concluding Thoughts 115

Dr. Charlotte von Bülow is Senior Lecturer in Leadership at the Bristol

Dr. Peter Simpson is Associate Professor in Organisation Studies at

as researcher, he has held a range of leadership positions in the Business

Table 5.1 A summary overview of Bell’s (1996, pp. xvi–xvii) three

As co-creators and citizens of the knowledge economy, we share a

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

As we strive to navigate and make sense of the unparalleled global

as a practice in the field of leadership, but to do so would be to repu-

A Journey from Concept to Application

when drawing upon Negative Capability in Chapter 6, where we investi-

Negative Capability, that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 5

All writing about Negative Capability, therefore, is at best a pointing

Keats on Negative Capability

Interpreting what was intended by this phrase, Negative Capability, is

we are reluctant to go as far as some in understanding Negative Capa-

The Ordinary and the Extraordinary

language that is, perhaps, more conducive to modern sensibilities when

We are arguing that Keats’ ideas on Negative Capability are relevant in

Again, with Dilke as his illustration, Keats is pointing to the general

to be faithful to these strong convictions in our exploration of Negative

The Experience of Not Knowing

Andrew, the managing director of a medium sized computer software organ-

Andrew was, in our experience, unusual in his love of change. In

a valuing of knowing and a discomfort with not knowing. It is not that

Mysteries and Unknowing

Illustration: Living by Faith

involved in the practice of leadership must engage. With Keats, we are

In this chapter we will explore how Negative Capability might contribute

Illustration: Esha Patel, the Chief Executive

Esha received the news late on a Friday afternoon that a change in UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21

Capable of Being---The Life

…one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is

It is in such situations that the gulf is most pronounced between knowl-

might include the possibility of pain and suffering. By contrast, we see in

We see Keats’ traumatic life experience as the cauldron within which

Negative Capability in the Leadership Literature

Bennis (1989, p. 148) quotes Keats in the context of ‘moving through

Keats feels… life, phenomenally and affectively, and he expresses it in his

‘feeling’ operated broadly… moving between the distinctions of sensation,

The most substantial recent contribution was made by Saggurthi and

the ability to delight in doubt and revel in uncertainty without feeling

Inspired by the idea of an ‘organic conception’ which ‘grows increas-

used by Keats when he described Negative Capability. By developing an

Not Knowing in a Knowledge Economy

What we see here is that Esha was capable of being in uncertainties

Title: Gondola days

Author: Francis Hopkinson Smith

Release date: August 31, 2023 [eBook #71528]

Original publication: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company,

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GONDOLA

TOM GROGAN. Illustrated.