A Postcolonial Leadership

Asian Immigrant Christian Leadership and Its Challenges

Choi Hee An, Hee An Choi

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781438477480, 9781438477497
• eBook ISBN: 9781438477503
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethnic & Tribal Religion

Explores the possibilities and challenges of Asian immigrant Christian leadership in the United States.

In A Postcolonial Leadership, Choi Hee An explores the interwoven relationship between Asian immigrant leadership in general and Asian immigrant Christian leadership in the United States. Using several current leadership theories, she analyzes the current landscape of US leadership and explores how Asian immigrant leaders, including Christian leaders, exercise leadership and confront challenges within this context. Drawing upon postcolonial theory and its analysis of power, Choi examines the multilayered dynamics of the Asian immigrant community and Christian congregations in their postcolonial contexts, and offers a new liberative interpretation of colonized history and culture in order to propose postcolonial leadership as a new leadership model for Asian immigrant leaders.

PART I

UNDERSTANDINGS OF LEADERSHIP

Even though Christian leadership has created its own definition of leadership and its practices throughout Christian history, Christian leadership studies has not been recognized as an area of academic study within leadership studies. However, in recent years, it has become one of the most significant topics in the area of theological studies. It is deeply influenced by and actively interacts with business, management, and social psychology theories pertaining to leadership and its formation by analyzing who leaders are, what characteristics/behaviors they demonstrate, and how these characteristics function in organizations and in relation to others. Therefore, it is important to briefly explore prominent leadership theories in a secular context and how these theories understand, interpret, and evaluate leadership before exploring what Christian leadership is and how it is exercised in and beyond the Christian church.

Chapter 1

Leadership in a Secular Context

The word leadership appeared for the first time in Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language (1818). It was defined as “the state or condition of a leader.”1 However, this word was often either absent or defined in a very simplistic manner in nineteenth-century dictionaries. Almost no definition existed. At the turn of twentieth century, all four dictionaries, The Century Dictionary (1889–1911), Universal Dictionary of the English Language (1898), Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary (1904), and Murray’s A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (1908), defined leadership in a standardized manner, as an office or a position that intimates guidance or control.2 After 1965, many dictionaries defined leadership in variations that encompassed two themes: 1) “the office or position of a leader” and 2) “the ability to lead.”3 Even though these dictionaries began to reflect different views of defining leadership, such as the social psychologist’s and behaviorist’s views, they did not illustrate the complexities of the concept of leadership. Definitions of leadership in dictionaries remained simplistic and instructive. However, these definitions influenced leadership studies and its assumptions in the early stage of the discipline.

Over the course of leadership studies’ development as an academic discipline, there have been overwhelming numbers of definitions of leadership created. In fact, Joseph C. Rost counted 221 definitions of leadership from 1900 to 19904 and 110 definitions of leadership in 1980s literature alone.5 As leadership studies develop, there are several prominent groups or approaches that represent common definitions of leadership. Some scholars emphasize leaders’ traits, skills, or styles and others emphasize context, situation, or interpersonal relationship. For example, Jean Lau Chin classifies leadership in three distinct ways: by “leadership characteristics,” “contextual leadership,” and “interpersonal process of leadership,”6 whereas other scholars, such as Victor Dulewicz and Malcolm Higgs, categorize these theories into six schools: “the trait school,” “the behavioral or style school,” “the contingency school,” “the visionary or charismatic school,” “the emotional intelligence school,” and “the competency school.”7 Still others, such as Rost, categorize these definitions in different frameworks, such as “leadership as do the leader’s wishes,” “leadership as achieving group or organizational goals,” “leadership as management,” “leadership as influence,” “leadership as traits,” “leadership as transformation.”8

Peter G. Northouse defines leadership as “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal,” while he conceptualizes this definition based on four components: “1) Leadership is a process, 2) leadership involves influence, 3) leadership occurs in groups, and 4) leadership involves common goals.”9 Grounded on his own definition, he considers leadership through the lens of several approaches and theories, such as trait approach, skills approach, style approach, situational approach, contingency theory, path-goal theory, leader-member exchange theory, transformational leadership, servant leadership, authentic leadership, team leadership, psychodynamic approach, women and leadership, culture and leadership, and leadership ethics.10

The definition of leadership changes widely based on the perspectives of theorists. Joanne B. Ciulla sees these definitions as the key to explaining the same thing despite disagreement among scholars, and she claims these definitions have one purpose: “leadership is about one person getting other people to do something. Where the definitions differ is in how leaders motivate their followers and who has a say in the goals of the group or organization.”11 John Antonakis, Anne T. Cianciolo, and Robert J. Sternberg interpret these definitions as “the nature of the influencing process that occurs between a leader and followers, and how this influencing process is explained by the leader’s dispositional characteristics and behaviors, follower perceptions, and attributions of the leader, and the context in which the influencing process occurs.”12

Even though there is no single definition of leadership upon which all scholars agree, it is quite possible to agree about two assumptions. First, as Ciulla, Antonakis, Cianciolo, and Sternberg indicate, most of the current leadership theories are within the paradigm of one leader and multiple followers. These theories assume that only one person is a leader in any organization or situation. Others are exclusively treated as followers. Second, these theories assume a clear power difference between leaders and followers and designate different roles for them. A leader is not just a leader. The position of the leader is understood to occupy the top of the power hierarchy. Each school or group has its own assumptions, but these two assumptions are commonly embraced by most leadership theories. These assumptions are explored in more detail along with three theories in the next sections. Instead of exploring all different leadership groups, let’s consider three prominent theories that deeply engage Christian leadership: trait leadership theory, transformational leadership theory, and feminist leadership theory.

These three theories are the most influential in shaping how leadership, including that of countless Christian leaders, is practiced. As trait theory has been continuously studied from the premodern period to the modern period, common characteristics and features of leaders are collected and examined. Based on this research, the fundamental framework of leadership studies has been formed. Trait theory still strongly influences the formation of images of current leaders. Unlike trait theory, transformational leadership and feminist leadership theories have been intensely developed in recent years. However, because these theories challenge and reconceptualize traditional leadership, the meaning of leadership is continuously reconstructed. They greatly impact the development of a new concept of modern leadership. Therefore, it is important to explore these theories historically and culturally to understand how Christian leadership interacts with them throughout Christian history.

Trait Leadership Theory

Early classic leadership studies focused on the leader’s innate personality characteristics. The common statement of this theory is: “He is born to be a leader.”13 It is the so-called great men theory. It claims that great leaders, great men, have biologically inherited certain qualities that make them uniquely fit for leadership. In 1869, Sir Francis Galton was among the first to make this statement. Studying the hereditary background of great men, he asserted that some individuals were natural leaders.14 Several early theorists, such as Frederick Adams Woods and Albert Edward Wiggam, studied kings and the aristocratic class and postulated biological class differences between superior leaders and followers. Their studies reinforced the concept of leaders as great men who were born to be leaders. Jerome Dowd claimed that “there is no such thing as leadership by the masses. The individuals in every society possess different degrees of intelligence, energy, and moral force, and in whatever direction the masses may be influenced to go, they are always led by the superior few.”15 The assumption of these early great men theorists is that leaders have distinctive inherited qualities of character and ability, implying, furthermore, that leaders are chosen by God or by natural selection. This assumption is the primordial foundation of modern trait theories of leadership, which have influenced many psychologists and social scientists.

Dimensionalizing Personality into Human Traits

In the twentieth century, Gordon Allport was one of the first scholars who initiated this discussion of the biological inheritance of human traits. Based on the contrasted notions of “nomothetic disciplines vis-à-vis idiographic ones,” he believed that humanity “possesses a unique configuration and assortment of polymorphic traits found ‘in any age or land’ and, in an individual, ‘personal dispositions.’ ”16 He classified these as “cardinal, central, and secondary traits.”17 Cardinal traits pertain to an individual’s prevalent personality and are deeply interrelated with emotions, cognitions, self-esteem, and certain behaviors, both private and public. Central traits are the same as cardinal traits, but several central traits can be exhibited simultaneously in the same individual whereas secondary traits are shown only in certain situations. Allport’s understanding of these traits helped other theoreticians develop correlational approaches to trait formulation that impacted further development in this theory.

One of the most influential scholars in this theory is Raymond B. Cattell, who combined the mathematical skills of a statistician and the great skills of a clinician. As a nomotheticist, he developed this theory more analytically and structurally than others. Reducing forty-five hundred personality descriptors to under two hundred, he analyzed data and presented sixteen source traits. He generated sixteen primary factor descriptions (warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule-consciousness, social boldness, sensitivity, vigilance, abstractedness, privateness, apprehension, openness to change, self-reliance, perfectionism, and tension) and five global-factor scale descriptors (extraversion, anxiety, tough-mindedness, independence, and self-control) along with constitutional traits and environmental-mold traits.18 His profuse data and analysis became the critical resource of the five-factor model (the Big Five), one of the best-known current trait theories.

Like Cattell, Hans J. Eysenck is another scholar who devoted his work to dimensionalizing personality and developing measures for assessing those dimensions. He formulated personality in two dimensions, introversion and extraversion. He characterized extraversion as “quiet plausibility, spontaneity, expressiveness, impulsivity, optimism, gregariousness, assertiveness, and dominance,” and he understood the characteristics of introversion as “shyness, pessimism, unobtrusive social behavior, a tendency to solitude and quietude, and inhibitedness.”19 Later, he added a third dimension, psychoticism, that “ranges from extreme emotional liability, moodiness and chronic anxiety, and depressed affect at the one pole to high levels of self-esteem, self-confidence, emotional stability, and calm, reasoned approaches to problem-solving at the other.”20 These three traits are often called the “three-factor model.” His understanding of personality development is situated in both environmental and biological genetic factors but heavily relies on the emphasis of “genetic contribution to individual biological bases of temperament,” especially to intelligence.21 He set up the preliminary foundation of the modern work of personality theory.

Along with the three-factor model, one of the most influential trait theories is the Five-Factor Model theory (the Big Five) that has been widely accepted and used until now. Based on Cattell’s data and his analysis, many scholars, such as Ernest Tupes, Raymond Christal, Donald Fiske, John M. Digman, Robert McCrae, Paul Costa, Lewis Goldberg, and others, intensely examined and formed this theory. Even though some scholars chose other terms, McCrae and Costa labeled neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness as the five higher-order factors:

1) Neuroticism is a factor to assess adjustment versus emotional instability in characteristics from worrying, nervous, emotional, and insecure to calm, relaxed, secure, and self-satisfied. 2) Extraversion is a factor to measure quality and intensity of interpersonal interaction and activity level from sociable, active, talkative, and person-oriented at the one pole to reserved, sober, and task-oriented at the other. 3) Openness to experience is a factor to assess proactive seeking and appreciation of experience for exploring the unfamiliar. The characteristics of the high scorer are curious, broad interests, creative, imaginative, and untraditional and that of the low scorer are conventional, narrow interests, and unanalytical. 4) Characterizing agreeableness from soft-hearted, good-natured, trusting, forgiving and straightforwardness, at one pole to cynical, rude, suspicious, uncooperative, and manipulative at the other, agreeableness is a factor to understand the quality of one’s interpersonal orientation from compassion to antagonism in thoughts, feelings, and actions. 5) Conscientiousness is a factor to assess the individual’s degree of organization, persistence, and motivation in goal-directed behavior. The characteristics of the high scorer are described in organized, reliable, hard-working, self-disciplined, punctual, ambitious and persevering and that of the low scorer are aimless, unreliable, lazy, careless, negligent, and weak-willed.22

McCrae and Costa developed widely accepted questionnaires for testing these factors and nurtured broader concepts of human dispositions and traits. Each factor was understood as an important characteristic that leaders should develop. Extraversion was considered the most significant trait for interpersonal relationships.

Reducing countless descriptors of human personality into certain traits, trait theories/personality theories try to identify the commonalities of personality descriptors. They wrestled with understanding human characteristics. However, these theories started from questions such as “why some persons are better able than others to exercise leadership.”23 They assumed that some people are better than others in terms of character and abilities, including the physical, psychological, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of character and abilities. The assumptions of this study are based on hierarchal relationships between a leader who is better than others and the rest, who are less than the leader, even though the goal of these theories is to find commonalities in the human character. Individual differences are not treated as differences but as a source of domin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. Understandings of Leadership
• Part II. Leadership and Its Challenges in US Culture
• Part III. Postcolonial Leadership in an Asian Immigrant Christian Context
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover