They were taken into a black-painted room

Maciej Zaremba

Chapter 5 in Leadership, Art, and Responsibility, 2026, pp 24-24 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter presents journalist Maciej Zaremba's account of the Shibboleth experiment, as described in his widely noted article in Dagens Nyheter. He portrays the study's unusual method: 13 sessions in which participating leaders were brought into a darkened room and confronted with an intense collage of diaries, poetry, historical documents, and shifting musical fragments. Through his rendering of the programme and its outcomes, Zaremba conveys how this artistic form disrupted habitual perception, stirred latent emotions, and summoned existential and ethical questions among participants – without the word “leadership” ever being spoken. His article offers a rare external perspective on the Shibboleth study, capturing both the unsettling force of the method and the depth of reflection it evoked, alongside the transformative effects later observed in the research.

Keywords: Shibboleth Experiment; Art-based Method; Leadership Study; Emotional Impact; Ethical Reflection; Participant Responses; Transformative Effects; Experiential Pedagogy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781049403991
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