Experiencing the Shibboleth: from stress to insight

Julia Romanowska

Chapter 8 in Leadership, Art, and Responsibility, 2026, pp 39-64 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter traces the participants’ journey through the artistic space of the Shibboleth programme – a movement from stress, confusion, and emotional upheaval towards deepened clarity of insight. At first, the Shibboleth appears elusive and difficult to grasp: a demanding encounter that unsettles habitual ways of thinking and resists immediate understanding. Strong emotions rise to the surface, breaking through familiar defences and calling the participants forth into a mode of presence. To receive the Shibboleth, an inner shift is required – away from an instrumental, self-protective stance and into an aestemethical orientation marked by heightened aesthetic, emotional, and ethical receptivity. In this openness, imagination begins to move freely, associations unfold, and moments of wonder and almost breath-held presence emerge. Through the stories embodied in the Shibboleth performances, participants are drawn into the inner worlds of others and encounter vulnerability and longing. The emotional movement acquires ethical resonance. Confronted with the realities of human suffering and destructiveness, participants begin to question the assumptions and illusions that have shaped their lives. A space opens in which new perspectives and possibilities of being take form. Long after the programme has ended, participants continue to carry traces of these experiences: fragments of memory and feeling that return in moments of uncertainty and orient moral judgement. What remains is a heightened sense of shared humanity, an expanded responsibility for others, and a renewed reverence for the fragility and dignity of life. This reorientation appears to reshape how they carry and exercise leadership and power in lived practice.

Keywords: Shibboleth; Art-based Leadership Intervention; Aesthetic Orientation; Emotional Insight; Ethical Responsibility; Subjectivity Transformation; Vulnerability and Responsibility; Shared Humanity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781049403991
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