Published Online:June 2025
Product Name:The IUP Journal of Effective Executive
Product Type:Article
Product Code:IJEE020625
DOI:10.71329/EffectiveExecutive/2025.28.2.34-50
Author Name:Kurt April, Dorota Bourne and Babar Dharani
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Management
Download Format:PDF
Pages:34-50
This paper introduces the Golden Repair Leadership Model (GRLM), a transformative framework grounded in the philosophies of Wabi-Sabi, Kintsugi, and Ubuntu to reimagine leadership in the Global South. Challenging dominant Western ideals of perfectionism, individualism, and control, the model foregrounds imperfection, relationality, and spiritual inclusion as core tenets of authentic leadership. The GRLM unfolds through four developmental phases: Shattering, Sorting the Pieces, Golden Mending, and Display and Presence. These stages represent a journey from fragmentation toward embodied wholeness, wherein personal wounds and systemic marginalization are reframed as sources of ethical strength and communal repair. Drawing on narrative inquiry, emotional maturity, and decolonial sensibilities, the model positions leadership as an act of soul-work rather than performance. By affirming personal challenges and visible scars as testimonies of resilience and integrating spiritual epistemologies long excluded from organizational discourse, the GRLM offers a culturally-resonant and psychologically-robust alternative to conventional leadership paradigms. The framework calls for leaders to engage in visible vulnerability, relational authenticity, and strategic discernment—thereby fostering inclusive and humane organizational spaces. This paper contributes a critical and aesthetic reorientation of leadership, particularly suited to postcolonial contexts seeking epistemic justice and holistic transformation.
Leadership discourse in the twenty-first century is at a critical inflection point.