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Part
One
Understanding Leadership
What is a leader? Who is one? Could anybody become one? Is the concept outmoded?
Before answering such questions, we need to develop a common language about leadership, which is a complex and confusing field. W e can do this using two basic tools presented in Part I of this book. First, a framework organizes ideas of leadership around four leadership paradigms. A âparadigmâ is a pattern that serves as an example of a concept. After introducing some fundamental concepts in Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3 describe the paradigms so that previous research, which has generally focused on isolated components of leadership, can be better understood and integrated within this framework. This then provides us with a common understanding of the four broad paradigms of leadership.
It is also important to link the many, very different leadership theories to the paradigms. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 summarize a range of leadership theories, concepts and approaches, showing how they find expression at four organizational levels: the individual, dyadic or group, organizational, and external or strategic levels. Chapter 4 covers the micro-level, looking at theories relating to individual leaders, as well as relationships between leaders and followers or teams. Chapter 5 focuses in particular on emotion-based leadership concepts, including emotional intelligence, values, and the visionary, transformational and charismatic components of leadership. More macro-level leadership approaches operating at the organizational level and involving âexternalâ leadership considerations are covered in Chapter 6. In Chapter 7, leadership theories and concepts are explicitly related to the leadership paradigms, showing that some approaches apply more to certain paradigms than to others.
The chapters in Part One provide a conceptual basis for analysing and understanding the case studies that follow in Part Two, but the text also refers to the case studies to illustrate some of the concepts and theories raised in Part One.
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1 The Leadership Scene
Key Points
- Concepts of leadership
- Definitions and ideas of leadership
- Leadership in context
- Leading in changing situations
- Aligning leadership and followership
- Organizational performance and leadership
Leadership has long been a topic of interest in complex civilizations, dating back at least to the beginning of written knowledge. For example, in The Republic, Plato distinguished between leaders as men of âgoldâ, and those not intended to lead as men of âbronzeâ. Leadership issues similar to those that people talk about today, such as charisma, leadership as heroic action, the nature of managerial work, organizational equilibrium versus conflict, how to lead through meaning and symbolism, manipulating the truth, and follower participation can be found in Platoâs discourse.1
The idea of developing leadership capability also stems from antiquity. McCulloughâs2 extensive research into ancient Rome, Greece and Troy reveals that many leaders were destined by birth for leadership, and were prepared for this role through their education and experience. Preparing the Pharaohs for leadership was also given considerable thought and attention, while the famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle, was entrusted with the education of Alexander the Great, the future leader of an empire.
Despite literally millennia of interest in the practice and development of leadership, Bennis and Nanus3 point out that âleadership is both the most studied and the least understood topicâ in the social sciences. The concept of leadership remains elusive and enigmatic, despite years of effort at developing an intellectually and emotionally satisfying understanding. This is probably because people discussing leadership are likely to have different concepts in mind, making communication about leadership rather difficult. Consider which of these examples indicate leadership:
- Julius Caesar, growing up among poor immigrants in the tenement blocks of Rome where mutual learning and exchange of ideas take place.
- Winston Churchill, giving the order to bomb Dresden, after the Second World War had officially ended.
- Hewlett and Packard setting up the HP way.
- The US Supreme court voting 5â4 to give the 2000 presidency to George W. Bush, thereby determining the outcome of the Gore-Bush election.
- Mother Teresa setting up and running her order to treat the poor in India.
- A change of culture in the British Royal Family following Princess Dianaâs death.
- Firemen ordering people to leave their homes threatened by bushfire.
- A teacher, mentor or coach in action.
Some people may feel that some of these examples stretch the idea of leadership a bit far, while others would argue that despite their differences, the above instances all reflect leadership. Can all these examples possibly refer to the one concept? Answering this question requires an understanding of what leadership is about â a major challenge.
WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?
Understanding leadership is challenging for several reasons:
- There is no agreed definition of leadership or what the concept should embrace. Many definitions are fuzzy and inconsistent, making it extremely difficult to have a sensible conversation about the concept. When discussing leadership some people include:
- what others would term âmanagementâ;
- reference to the past, present or future;
- dealing with change or managing stability;
- a figurehead or symbol; or
- a process of influence.
Thus, people may well be talking about very different concepts when using the term âleadershipâ, as the examples above show. Traditional models of leadership mostly err in assuming that all individuals in a given organization or society share a common experience and understanding of leadership. Even employees within one educational institution hold a range of ideas about what it is to be a leader.4 - Most ideas about leadership have been intentionally broken down into smaller components so that scholars can conduct publishable research into them. As a result, much of the work on leadership is currently too simple to reflect the full richness and complexity that practitioners face on the job.
- Theories and research into leadership are far from complete. Individual scholars tend to focus on particular aspects of leadership, with few attempting to build consistent theories. Thus, possibly because of the difficulties in agreeing on what leadership is, leadership research and writings contain many gaps that have not been investigated.
- The ideas underlying concepts of leadership have changed over the course of history, parallelling many social and other changes. Since the end of the twentieth century, society has been undergoing change at an almost breathtaking pace. Some of these changes are affecting leadership concepts and practices, as this book will show. A complete understanding of leadership requires acknowledging that leadership concepts apply within a particular social context, and can vary with place and time. What passes as effective leadership in one context may be seen as ineffective in another. Practitioners are seriously challenged in adjusting to new leadership approaches.
Therefore, common definitions and terms are essential to enable people to discuss leadership in a meaningful way. The chapters in Part One of this book are designed to provide this common platform, illustrated by the case studies in Part Two. This common platform maps out a field in which different definitions are situated in relation to each other.
The available information needs to be organized. This begins in Chapter 2 through the introduction of four fundamentally different ways of looking at leadership: the Leadership Paradigms. The paradigms were inspired by four âphasesâ of leadership defined by Dr Wilfred Drath and his colleagues5 at the US Center for Creative Leadership. Although Drath later refined his phases into three, this book expands upon the different ideas of leadership reflected in the four phases.
Ideas of leadership vary, depending on the level of organization to which they are applied. This has led to a range of seemingly unrelated theories. Some focus on the individual leader, others on leader-follower relationships, on leadership at the organizational level, or on the influence of external stakeholders and environments. Scholarly tradition has been to separate many of these approaches. This book breaks with this tradition by including and integrating the different perspectives, allowing the understanding of the various theoretical approaches from within a manageable context.
The reader can refine his or her understanding of each leadership paradigm by relating it to other approaches. In addition, readers can focus on the detail in each paradigm while also obtaining a perspective on the relationship between paradigms.
The reader is then invited to apply the leadership paradigms and associated theoretical approaches to case studies from prominent organizations in Part Two of this book. A study of these actual examples will allow you to apply the theoretical concepts of Part One to the full complexity and diversity of leadership, operating in a variety of contexts. You will see that effective organizations exhibit different kinds of leadership, depending on how they approach their environment, structure, core business, culture, people, processes and systems. Further, âappropriate leadershipâ depends very much on a very broad range of internal...
