This paper focuses on the role of cognitive disequilibrium in preparing democratic educational leaders. Followers emerge into leaders with what are many times unconsciously socialized norms and values indigenous to their local culture. One of the roles of a democratic leadership preparation program is to challenge these unconsciously accepted norms through systematically planned activities and experiences. Such activities and experiences, coupled with dialogue specifically designed to create cognitive disequilibrium, facilitate the removal of self-imposed barriers in the learning process and help leadership students exorcise internalized fallacies. The emancipation from such self-imposed barriers facilitated by the cognitive disequilibrium process ameliorates students' global view and enhances their promise as democratic educational leaders. (Contains 2 figures.)