I’ve been thinking about how much of our leadership style — the real one, the one that shows up when we’re tired or cornered — started forming long before we ever held a job title. Long before a performance review. Long before a “vision” or a “mission” or a “strategic plan.”

The shaping began in school.

Lessing, the British-Zimbabwean writer who spent a lifetime dissecting systems of power and conditioning, once said…

…children should be told outright that their education is a form of indoctrination.

Not indoctrination as villainy. Indoctrination as inevitability. Society passes on what it needs to survive. Schools teach far more than content; they teach the acceptable bandwidth of thought.

And when you look at leadership through that lens, a few things click into place.

• We reward compliance because we were rewarded for compliance.
• We fear being wrong because we were punished for mistakes.
• We follow the script because we were taught there was one answer, one method, one safe path.
• We avoid conflict because the child who questioned the teacher learned quickly that discomfort comes with consequences.

And what about what Bob said?

There is a line from Bob Dylan’s 1966 song “Absolutely Sweet Marie” on the album Blonde on Blonde…

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

If you’re new to Dylan — he’s the American songwriter who reshaped modern music in the 60s with lyrics that function more like riddles than verses.

The line quoted sounds like outlaw bravado at first, but has nothing to do with crime. It’s about stepping outside inherited frameworks — the psychological “laws” we absorbed from school, family, culture — and realizing you don’t get to hide behind them anymore.

When you stop running on scripts,
you’re accountable to your own clarity.

And this is where indoctrination and leadership meet.

Most leaders are still operating from the internal architecture built in childhood:

• Don’t challenge authority.
• Stay inside the lines.
• Get the right answer.
• Avoid being seen as difficult.
• Play safe.
• Minimize risk.
• Don’t think too far beyond what exists.

But real leadership — aligned leadership — requires the very thing school quietly suppressed:

• Independent thought.
• Discernment.
• Courage.
• Internal authority.
• A willingness to see what doesn’t fit and say what’s inconvenient.

Lessing names the conditioning.
Dylan names the honesty required to step beyond it.

Together they form a quiet diagnosis of why so many leaders feel misaligned: they’re using instincts trained for obedience to navigate roles that require originality. They’re trying to lead from a mind that was never taught to trust itself.

Maybe the issue isn’t that we lack critical thinking. Maybe it’s that we were never given permission to practice it. And now, adulthood is asking for a kind of inner rewiring — a shift from inherited certainty to chosen clarity.

Because the moment you recognize the indoctrination… you also inherit the responsibility to decide what stays, what goes, and what part of your leadership finally is yours to own and self direct.

STRATEGIC REFLECTION PROMPT

What early lesson from school still shapes how you lead today — and what truth becomes possible once you name it?

About Giselle

I’m Giselle Hudson — Organization & People Development Sensemaker™, MCODE® Legacy Coach, writer and musician. I help leaders and independent professionals close the gap between strategy and execution by making invisible friction visible, so direction can finally translate into results.

If execution isn’t matching intent and you can’t quite see why, message me on WhatsApp. We’ll start with a brief Clarity Conversation to understand what you’re facing and decide together whether a focused Sensemaking Session is the right next step.