On the Theory and Practice of Contemporary Leadership Education

Peter Chiaramonte, BA, BEd (Toronto) MA, PhD (California)

©Marygrove College, Detroit, October 17th 2014

The Purpose of Theory – The Laws of Media – The Misplaced Emphasis on Leaders Vs.
Leadership – Theoretical Antecedents of Contemporary Leadership – Back to the Future –
Rost’s Post-Industrial Definition of Leadership – Lessons in Leadership from the Last
Place on Earth – Does Evaluation Help or Impede Social Innovation? –On Leadership Vs.
Management – The Rhetoric of Leadership – Turning Points & Tumbling Horizons –
Postmodern Constructionism & Leadership – Emergent Complexity: Theory &
Applications – A Speculative Curriculum for Contemporary Leadership –
The Mystery of Leaderly Being

Abstract

The majority of leadership studies of the past one to two hundred years have
been focused primarily on individual leaders and the kinds of select, identifiable
behaviors and characteristics that they represent. However, regardless of theory,
what works in one place at one time with one group of people doesn’t necessarily
translate very well to other places at other times and with other people. The
emergent complexity of twenty-first century organizational life demands more of
leadership in the manner in which we reflect the purpose of group and network
interaction.
In our work here today, we will review the purpose of leadership theory in
general, then apply a critical inquiry approach to swiftly revisit the enduring
influences from more than a century of theoretical antecedents bearing on
contemporary practice and development. For example, before discussing the ways
social innovation phenomena emerge, become institutionalized, known to others, and
made into tradition here at Marygrove College, I’d like to present some definitions
that distinguish leadership from management, while recognizing the importance of
both. Finally, by employing a complexity lens to view how adaptive systems
outcomes are achieved in organizational structures and contexts in which leadership
occurs, we can discuss ways of enhancing an environment in support of social
innovation, individual creativity, and organizational learning.
 2

On Recipes, Toolkits & Transformation

Last month my buddy Mike Flynn who teaches marketing at a college in England
sent me the Harvard Business Review’s 10 MUST READS ON LEADERSHIP. “Are
you a great leader or merely a good one?” the advertisement asks. “Becoming a great
leader doesn’t happen overnight. If you want to be a more effective leader, you need
to work at it.” Wasn’t that obvious? I wondered. “This special collection brings you
deep insight from world-class experts on what makes great leaders,” the pull out
continues. “Even better, you’ll learn the techniques that can turn high performance
leadership from a career objective into an invaluable addition to your management
toolkit.” Wow! I thought. From a sense of career purpose to a management toolkit
all in one easy sentence.
I suspect that the ad men who wrote the copy for the HBR’s special edition on
“The 10 Proven Recipes for Leadership” hadn’t read any of it themselves. And that’s
generally how I see the problem with leadership studies in general. For ONLY
$24.95—Ebook or paperback—the ad promises a “proven recipe for leadership” that
will teach us the ten traits, nine qualities, eight tasks, seven transformations, six
instincts, five levels, four laws, three skills, two brains and one God that it takes—
and I quote—to “transform yourself from a good manager into an extraordinary
leader.”
That’s not to say that some of the articles aren’t of real value. I’ve read them
all and a couple are modern classics. For example, John Kotter’s What Leaders Really
Do and What Makes an Effective Executive by Peter Drucker are both very useful. The
main concern I have with all of these so-called “recipes for success” overall has to do
with the misplaced emphasis each of these essays puts on the individual “leader,” to
the neglect of leadership proper.

The Purpose of Theory

Most academics can relate to the following experience: I hear a tap on my

office door. Three students have come to ask questions about my new contemporary
leadership course. “Is it all about theory?” one of them asks me. “Or will any of it be
of some practical value?” A fair question, I’d say. Then I ask them, “What do you
think is the purpose of theory?” I ask this because in their minds it often appears that
the term theory is associated with a body of useless abstractions that are no Earthly
good to anyone. Let alone those engaged in the shared process and purpose of
innovation in leadership education.
The concept of theory is derived from the Greek word theōria, which means “a
spectacle.” It stems from a verb meaning “to see.” In that sense it is close to our
meaning for “vision.” Personally, I like to consider theory more closely related to
 3

theatre. In either Latin or Greek it means more or less the same thing, “to behold a
spectacle.”
Theory is a lens that serves to sharpen and explain empirical phenomena in
such a way so as to create more meaningful patterns we can all recognize. In terms of
contemporary leadership, theory helps us to anticipate the effects and outcomes of
organizational dynamics. New theory tends to show the approaches we might take in
finding our way toward new and increasingly complex circumstances. Putting theory
to practice will confirm or suggest more appropriate responses and experiments to
take as we move forwards. It helps us to see where we’re going. You’d be surprised
how many corporate CEOs and politicians calling themselves “leaders” haven’t a
clue. Maybe not.

Leadership and the Laws of Media

To philosophize about new forms of leadership education means more than

simply just wiping the slate clean and starting all over with nothing. Canadian
philosopher Marshall McLuhan taught in his Laws of Media, that all human artifacts
and inventions (including new theories) follow these basic four rules: Each new
technology exaggerates one function at the expense of another, which it then in turn
obsolesces. Those are the first two laws of media. (For instance, the printing press
overstated our visionary sense at the expense of our hearing and touch.) A third law
of media is: When a new invention is pushed to its limits—say cell phone use or so-
called “social media”—it flips its function to the opposite form. Where what you get is
the reverse of what you thought you would be getting. (For example, four friends sit
down to lunch and spend the entire hour fondling each other on screens with their
thumbs. Rather than bringing people together, some are left feeling less worthy of
interest to others than some digital vanity held in their palms.) McLuhan explained
the fourth law as retrieving a lost function out of the past, and turning it into some new
human artifact. What he referred to as “the rag and bone shop” of new ideas. The
fourth law of media—when applied to the novel way phenomena emerge in terms of
new leadership theory—explains the recurrence of heroic leadership theory in some
form or another.
And what’s so wrong about leadership theory based on the “Big Gorilla?”
Well… nothing really. We’re primates down deep after all. Nothing wrong in the
sense that in practice none of the traditional concepts and theories about leadership
ever vanishes. Although some do appear less dominant for decades, only to be
subsequently retrieved again in a modified form. However, there was everything
wrong with regard to the misplaced emphasis on individual leaders versus the
process of leadership in contemporary organizations.
 4

And speaking of organizations, I will use this term throughout our time
together to signify any body of people that share a particular purpose—however
informal. Of course, the largest, most complex organizations are our social, political,
and economic institutions. Organization refers not only to entities, but also to
structure and planning approaches. For example, we organize to solve tasks that lie
beyond the abilities of solitary elements. In addition to an institutional perspective,
there is a functional perspective that is more process-oriented and akin to how our
individual organs serve us a coherent purpose. In organizations—as in the human
body—leadership isn’t all in the mind’s eye of a single individual, but rather emerges
from conditions sensed throughout the entire body-network.

The Misplaced Emphasis on Leaders Vs. Leadership

The 20th century dominance of leadership and organization studies by the

discipline of individual psychology has shaped not only the ways in which we view
leadership, but also the interventions designed for its further development. Critics of
the “factory boss” industrial paradigm see much of the leadership literature of the
past century as having misdirected our attention toward the individual leader, at the
expense of understanding the more crucial social relations involved. In other words,
the field of industrial psychology has tended to award prominence to individual
agency, at the expense of understanding the institutional forces surrounding groups
of individuals in a variety of complex post-modern contexts.
Several prominent critics suggest that the 20th century obsession with the
essential principles and characteristics of individual leaders has characterized the
majority of psychological accounts of leadership since its inception. Many critical
theorists suggest that this predominant approach has crowded out other potential
theoretical perspectives which may have proven more productive, e.g.
interdisciplinary contributions from literature, sociology, philosophy, theatre,
political science, culture studies, cinema, art, sport, and so on. But once a seminal
theory is introduced, it never completely disappears. Even the most leader-centric
approaches reemerge in the contemporary work of others.1 And perhaps the most
leader-centric model of all never leaves the stage: the charismatic hero with a
thousand faces. Why? I believe it has to do with the greatest power an individual
leader truly has in any and all organization is referent power—not expert power,
coercive control, or anything else. The power of personal identification trumps them
1
For example, James Kouzes and Barry Posner’s The Leadership Challenge (2007) return to behavioural
leadership style approaches, or Peter Northouse’s reconceptualization of leader-centric traits and industrial
management science.
2
The “great man” [sic] theory of leadership—as it came to be known—was limited to a study of the
character traits of great and heroic persons. These were people who changed the shape of history by their
personal magnetism and the exercise of various forms of legitimate and referent identification power.
However, according to the laws of media, when pushed past its limits, the assumption that only great
 5

all. Thus, the way to begin understanding the history and process of leadership
theory might begin with a reexamination (or exhumation) of the heroic big gorilla
after all.

BREAK: Any questions so far? BREAK:

Theoretical Antecedents of Contemporary Leadership

Though it’s cliché to dismiss the heroic model of leadership as outdated;

nevertheless, none of the major theorists should be dismissed out of hand. All human
systems disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, adult
education, and so forth, are informed, influenced, and continuously revisited by
surrounding, parallel, and interacting social forces. They all have something
constructive to offer our understanding of leadership.

The Heroic Model of Leadership

Despite the fact that we’ve had leadership and leaders among us since the
dawn of time, the study of leadership and the practice of how best to develop it for
our organizations is a relatively new field of disciplined inquiry. Prior to the
Industrial Revolution, there was no body of scholarly definitions to start from. In
fact, up until the early 1900s most people’s understanding of leadership was limited
to the legends of great men and women who were predominantly born and not made.
Although arguably there were some outstanding exceptions of great leaders who
were both. Historically, for the most part great leaders are emulated when they suit
us and overlooked when they do not.2

1911: Scientific Management

The introduction and classification of new theories by chronology is not

necessarily a theoretical progression. It’s really more of a coming around to familiar
frames of reference in ever-expanding orbits. For instance, heroic leadership,

2
The “great man” [sic] theory of leadership—as it came to be known—was limited to a study of the
character traits of great and heroic persons. These were people who changed the shape of history by their
personal magnetism and the exercise of various forms of legitimate and referent identification power.
However, according to the laws of media, when pushed past its limits, the assumption that only great
individuals were born to lead and the rest of us—presumably—born to be led. Consequently, the first
theoretical attempts to understand leadership were to determine which specific traits such blessed souls
possessed. The problem was that many so-called great men and women additionally have some other
proven character traits that no one in their right mind would profitably want to emulate or admire.
 6

classical bureaucracy, and leadership styles theories are all as popular today as when
they were initially proposed a hundred years ago. Keep in mind that by the
beginning of the 20th century, the Industrial Revolution had already resulted in a
dramatic increase in both the size and complexity of organizations. In order to run
them efficiently, the most popular organization theory around the turn of the century
was known as “Taylorism”—named after consulting engineer Frederick Taylor, who
is traditionally regarded the founding father of what he called Scientific Management
(1911). Scientific management was a rigid “Taylor-made” prescription for job design,
divisions of labor, and formal channels of communication—with strict manufacturing
and personnel controls.3 The bright side of scientific management for Henry Ford’s
assembly line production of automobiles was simple: before “Taylorism” it took 12
and a half hours for the Ford Motor Company to build a chassis. In 1913, at Ford’s
assembly line in Highland Park outside Detroit, the time fell to an hour and a half.

1920s: Classic Bureaucracy

One of the first modern thinkers in Europe to write about leadership in

organizations in the early 20th century was Frenchman Henri Fayol, who published
his General and Industrial Administration essays in 1916. In such a technocratic,
industrial environment as emerged at the time; the bureaucratic mindset was to
maintain administrative control by means of real or implied punishments and
rewards. In this respect not much has changed. Thus the “bureaucratic theory”
introduced by Fayol and German sociologist Max Weber (The Theory of Social and
Economic Organization) joined Taylor’s scientific management as another organization
theory in the “classic” tradition.4

3
In one respect, Taylorism provided on-the-job training for better pay than what came before. On the
other hand, its side effects of monotony, alienation and boredom were comically reenacted in Charlie
Chaplin’s film, Modern Times (1936). In the first scenes Chaplin depicts modern humanity as herds of sheep
rushing off to work to be processed as if on their way to slaughter. The company president is presented as
a stern taskmaster who barks reprimands and remotely pulls levers, turns the dials, and scrutinizes workers
taking washrooms breaks via closed-circuit television. In retrospect, early 20th century organization theory
was an attempt to explain and legitimize what was already going on in factories—management by remote control.
Taylor had set out to find the one best way to match people to fit neatly as cogs into the machinery—then
switch the controls. People are seen as interchangeable parts. Chain of command supervisors run the
organizational dynamos and headquarters staff according to strict hierarchical policies, plans, and controls.
The artist Charles Chaplin’s poignant satire was meant to entertain us, of course. But it was no less a
warning against this type of encroachment of our humanity.

4
Throughout the 1920s, Max Weber and Henri Fayol each codified means for fitting people into
progressively larger and larger organizational structures. They did this through more efficient operations
designed specifically for these expanding mass markets. This required highly structured, mechanistic
assembly lines with an emphasis on hierarchical divisions of labor and formal channels of communication.
The results were impressive. However, along with soaring production came the rise of labor unions.
 7

1930s: The Human Relations School

Aided by the development of employee welfare programs that were initiated

by economists and social psychologists, advocates of the new human relations school of
management provided a theoretical counterbalance to the authoritarian drudgery
scientific management and bureaucracy were making of the workplace. Rigorous
planning and controls may have proved to work well enough for the large factory
production of steel and pork bellies, but did not necessarily prove the best way to
operate the myriad small to medium-sized businesses and the human/social systems it
took to maintain a rapidly expanding business and government Or even the
multifarious military industrial complex in America.5

1940s: Beyond the Leadership Traits Approach

Despite the inconclusive results in support of trait theory, the Allied victory
in World War II led organization theorists to revisit the heroic traits approach. It
was still widely assumed that the characteristics of great military warriors could—
and should—be adopted by organizational leaders and managers in order to run

Unfortunately, increased union demands at the time happened to coincide with the Great Depression of
the 1930s, which halted their progress. It could be said that many ordinary people were unhappy in their
work, but happy just to have work. Some people may have been vaguely numb and depressed having to
punch a clock, take orders, and do exactly as they were instructed. Factory workers took what they could
get—generally cold-hearted bureaucratic management. Tight controls were the order of the day and few
bureaucratic administrators seemed to bother much about creating alternatives.
5
Amidst all the bad news of the Depression, it was also during the 1930s—at the Hawthorne plant of the
Western Electric Company near Chicago—that Harvard researcher Elton Mayo and his colleagues (The
Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, 1933) set out to determine the effects of brightness and
ventilation on factory production at the Cicero, Illinois plant. It was here Mayo discovered that informal
social environments among workers at the factory were significantly more important factors for increasing
productivity. Compared to that—lighting and ventilation made no difference at all. “The Hawthorne
Studies” indicated that large factory work could be more productive when human needs for social purpose,
interaction, and belonging were each satisfied. However, Mayo also saw democracy in the workplace as a
divisive and lacking in community spirit. Instead, he looked to American corporate management to restore
the social harmony he believed immigration and industrialization might destroy. (Wikipedia reliably informs
us that Mayo himself was an immigrant from Australia.) Soon to follow publication of professor Mayo’s
Hawthorne Studies was New Jersey Bell Telephone president Chester Barnard’s The Functions of the Executive
(1938), which further emphasized the importance of informal social systems on workforce productivity.
Factory owners, managers, admirals, generals, and corporate boards of directors all seemed surprised. The
assumption was that the big gorillas in senior administration would simply call all the shots. And that the
rest would all do as they were told.
 8

their businesses more effectively. Plenty of people justifiably feel the same today, I
suppose. Despite the continued difficulty researchers and efficiency experts were
having adopting their mindsets and conditions from one site to another, wartime and
heroic leadership traits were all the rage again.6 But rather than concentrate solely on
the “character traits” of individual leaders for enlightenment, Herbert Simon
(Administrative Behavior, 1945) and James March (Organization Science) turned their
attention on “best organizational practices.”

1950s: Behaviorist Theory

In the 1950s, interest in leadership had turned away from the focus on who
individual leaders were as individuals, and more toward what leaders actually did for
the groups and organizations they were part of. The growing emphasis in
behaviorist thinking led some organizational psychologists to undertake extensive
research for the first time using behavior rating scales, in-depth interviews, and field
study survey reports. Harvard Business School consultants like the McKinsey
consultancy group emerged in the 1940s and 50s as advocates of the “numbers
wisdom” that began with Frederick Taylor. Perhaps they should have quit when
they were still ahead of the curve?7

6
This in spite of American psychologist Ralph Stogdill’s (Handbook of Leadership, 1948) review of hundreds
of leadership trait studies where he found that—regardless of its popularity—no reliable or coherent
pattern truly existed. This mass of contradictory results led Stogdill to conclude that traits alone do not
make the leader. So-called “leadership traits,” he suggested, were really quite superficial. Nothing of
substance. More like fashion accessories than a pair of good boots for hiking from one place to another.
While many wartime organizations were scrambling back to past practices among wartime military generals,
statistician and consultant W.E. Deming was among the first to recognize something new on the factory
floor. At places like General Motors and the “swing shift” at several military production plants, the
teamwork exhibited by enlisted women workers especially, appeared to outperform soldiers returning home
to take up their old bureaucratic posts. Overlooked and ignored in America during wartime, Deming and
other organizational consultants took their ideas for low cost economics, teamwork, and quality
management to Europe and Japan to assist in their rebuilding after the war. The Japanese especially,
fostered participative teamwork and consensus decision-making. In contrast, we in Canada and the United
States have defaulted to more autocratic command-and-control models of organization since the 1960s.

7
In spite of increasing literacy and rising economic expectations among all classes of society, the
mechanistic model of organizational leadership clearly prevailed during this time. But there were
theoretical developments afoot that once again restored a more humanistic balance to this authoritarian tide.
For example, in the decade after the war, psychologist Kurt Lewin (Group Design and Social Change, 1952)
found what seemed like startling evidence at the time. He discovered that just by switching leaders in a
group, the character and structure of group dynamics changed as well. One implication of Lewin’s action
planning methods was that everyone has something innately valuable to offer every organizational enterprise.
Furthermore, Lewin believed that no leader or social scientist could really know an institution until they
tried to change it. He found that out later when coaching graduate assistants in democratic and laissez-faire
styles of organizational behavior. His students proved less well suited to consensus building management
 9

1960s: A Path-Goal Theory of Leadership

Researcher Robert House first published his analysis of A Path-Goal Theory of

Leader Effectiveness in 1974. House and his colleagues focused their attention on the
leader’s role in directing followers toward attaining their own goals through the
organization—not the other way around. The next major theoretical development to
take center stage in the debates about leadership development after this was
contingency theory—which led to the beginning of the situational leadership movement
still in vogue today. Path-goal theory uses the same basic assumptions as expectancy
theory—which was first described by Tolman in 1932, and has since been modified
for application in work settings.8

1970s: The Contingency Model

Industrial psychologist Fred Fiedler (A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness) first

introduced his far-reaching research on the contingency model of leadership in 1967.
The general model simply asserts that no one type of organizational framework or
style was appropriate for every leadership situation. It was about this same time that
competency-based frameworks like that of Vroom and Vetton’s (Leadership and
Decision Making, 1973) began to appear—further suggesting that the most
appropriate style of leadership depends on the context of the decisions.9

styles than the typically more autocratic styles they were used to. So stubborn is the managerialist inertia
hung over since the turn of the century status quo.

8
During both the trait and behavior eras of leadership theory, many organizational researchers were still
seeking to find the elusive one best style or system of leadership. They hadn’t fully recognized that no single
style of leadership is universally the best practice across all situations and cultures. Yet, regardless of the
visibility and popularity of emerging theories of situational leadership, the underlying mechanism of the path-
goal theory that preceded it was perhaps the most sophisticated and comprehensive of the contingency
models to emerge. Path-goal theory assumes that work directed toward behavior people believe will lead
them to their own best interests is most appropriate.

9
Fiedler’s predictions that executive training has effects on organizational performance were strongly
supported by both laboratory and field study analyses. However, the situational leadership model
popularized by Blake and Mouton (The Managerial Grid, 1964), Ken Blanchard (Situational Leadership), and
others, tended to dumb everything down. According to the most popular situational leadership models, a
leader adjusts his or her strategy to no more than four simple options—each according to their
subordinates’ ability and motivation to see a job through to completion. Assessing ability and motivation
are important, however, in reality things tend to be more complicated than just these four gospels are
equipped to handle. The real problems with contingency theories are not only the built-in superficial
inconsistencies in leader behavior as perceived by the followers. But also the underlying belief that to
implement change, effective leaders must do whatever it takes to succeed. Despite all the chest thumping—
each and every day we see how ineffective situational leadership actually is in overcoming the natural
 10

1980s: Transformational Leadership and

Organization Culture

The 1980s were witness to an explosion of books and articles about

“leadership” and “corporate culture” that attempted to pull together different
elements from past theories on “traits,” “styles,” “strategies,” “path-goals,” and so
forth. Granted behavioral research on organizational leadership still focused almost
exclusively on the transactional exchanges of leaders who clarified tasks and
rewarded followers for compliance. To be sure “transformational leadership,” as it
was called, moved leadership theory a bit beyond implicit economic self-interests.
This made care and concern for the good of the whole group, organization, or society
more explicit.10 However, even though the theory regarding transformational leaders
has gained fashionable popularity once again for its dramatic claims about the
potential of this type of heroic leadership—it seems implausible to suggest that more
than a very few liberal-minded members engaged in increasingly complex
organizations will share the same or even similar goals. And even when in smaller
and less complex groups we tend to agree, it’s always harder to do than just say so.

1990s: Values-Based Leadership: Character, Charisma, Culture & Community Service

Professor of management at SUNY Binghamton, Bernard Bass (Theory of

Transformational and Transactional Leadership, 1985) was also among the first
leadership scholars to initiate research into James MacGregor Burns’ seminal ideas
on the heroic leadership of JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, et al. Bass’ approach was to
incorporate earlier transactional leadership theory with new transformational and
hybrid approaches that were now being developed. Accordingly, in another well-
read journal article, Bass and Steidlmeier (1999) argued that there is an important

resistance all individuals and institutions have to real changes. Switching styles dooms contingent leaders to
a lack of trust and referent power from those they are trying to win over.

10
Since the 1978 publication of his book Leadership, political scientist James MacGregor Burns began a
wide-reaching campaign to legitimize the field of leadership education. The number of university programs
in the discipline has grown to thousands since then. Instead of looking to the situation to determine what
leadership style to use, Burns suggested transformational leaders the likes of John F. Kennedy and
Mahatma Gandhi determined what the situational context or culture should be, and then went about creating
it with the help of others. So we’ve come full-circle and returned to heroic leadership once again. And in
the decade after the initial surge of attention on transformational leadership, Warren Bennis and Burt
Nanus (Leaders, 1985) reviewed a century’s worth of accumulated knowledge—from heroes to
transformationalists—to define strategies they believed leaders can use to actually go about constructing or
transforming organizational cultures for themselves.
 11

distinction to be made between authentic transformational leaders such as these, as

opposed to pseudo transformational leadership such as was exhibited by the Third
Reich’s Adolf Hitler. And plenty more pretenders before him and since.11

Back to the Future

Another of many promising new avenues of theoretical investigation to

appear in the 1990s was the resurgent theoretical interest in charismatic leadership.
Here attendant shades of heroic character traits shine as bright as before: Abraham
Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and whoever suits our social identification or vested interests at
any particular time.12
And so what was so wrong about leadership theory up to that point at the end
of the twentieth century? Nothing really. Well…everything really. It’s all cultural
rags and bones in the end, after all. Nothing wrong in the sense that in practice none
of these concepts and theories about leadership ever vanishes. Some go to sleep or
fade away for decades sometimes, only to be retrieved again in an altered form. But
there was everything wrong with these theories in the sense that none of what people
were calling “leadership” was really leadership at all. The industrial model of
leadership was nothing more than a wish list of “good management” theory.

11
In contrast, Gandhi for example used selfless virtue and purposeful commitment to mobilize others—
whereas Hitler used his power and propaganda for self-aggrandizement over others. Along with
developments in “authentic” versus “pseudo-transformational” leadership came the revisiting of Servant
Leadership (1977)—a school of thought that originated with the writings of former AT&T exec Robert
Greenleaf. According to Dr. Greenleaf’s organizational analysis—leadership should be seen as a property
of an entire community of action, rather than the behavior of any single individual or special interests.
Evidently, according to Greenleaf and his activists, high office is more a matter of responsibility than
authority. In an environment of servant leadership it was supposed that both leaders and followers would
behave less self-centeredly and be committed to group or community benefits. There has of course been
some evidence of this in certain pockets of society, but so far the effects have not been widespread.

12
One of the many appeals of charismatic leadership theory is that it can be seen from the standpoint of
the followers’ perceptions. That is, attention is paid to the attributions collaborators give to leaders’
intentions, rather than organizational outcomes (Bass and Avolio, 1994; Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Kets de
Vries, 2006.) A summary of these studies by Jay Conger and R.N. Kanungo (The Empowerment Process, 1988)
indicates several common factors we might consider for further theoretical advancement: Environmental
sensitivity, caring for followers’ needs; going against the status quo (breaking with the past or abandoning
default courses of action); articulating a vision (inspiring others to reach mutual goals); unconventional
behavior (coming up with surprising new ideas); and personal risk (enduring self-sacrifice for the good of
the whole organization), and so forth.
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* * *

Joseph Rost’s Post-Industrial Definition of Leadership

The majority of leadership studies in the twentieth century, wrote University

of San Diego professor Joseph Rost (Leadership for the Twenty-first Century, 1991),
were not really about leadership at all. They were about defining “good management”
theory. Many inventories of good management qualities, he said, are actually “wish
lists” as to how leaders are supposed to be. Not a description of how they really
operate. They are either so general as to be meaningless, or so specific as to be
impossible to put into practice. Problems with the industrial model of leadership, he
added, stem largely from the absence of concern on the part of leaders for the
purposes they share with their collaborators. Leadership, he said, is not simply good
management traits or a scabbard of tactical skills for getting others to do what you
want. Rost’s post-industrial era definition of leadership is as follows:

Leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and collaborators who intend

real changes that reflect purposes both leaders and collaborators share in common.

Rost’s definition of leadership was not to disparage management, but to

distinguish leadership. Both are absolutely necessary for healthy organization
development. But they are simply not the same function. It’s not that good
management will no longer be required in the postindustrial age. Good organizations
will need the best of both management and leadership to survive and flourish in the
21st century. Whereas, in the past century we have tended to overemphasize the
practice of one at the expense or near exclusion of the other. Plus, for the most part,
the paths of leadership and management run together for the better part of our
professional careers, especially in the executive phases. As important as both of
these overlapping functions are—the concept of leadership is arguably larger and
deeper in its concern for the organization—as a whole.
Dr. Rost defined leadership as an influence relationship, not one of authority
(as with management). Leaders do not have “subordinates,” they have followers. And
both leaders and their collaborators often switch places. Management, he wrote, is
concerned with the quantity and quality of production (status quo), while leadership
concerns itself with intending real changes. (Note: intentions, not results; and ongoing
change(s) plural.) Managers manage full-time; leadership is episodic. And finally,
leaders do not primarily coordinate the activities of others in the organization; rather
they reflect the shared purposes of the consensus, usually with personal presence and
rhetoric. Leadership, wrote Rost, is not simply good management traits or
competencies.
 13

QUESTION: Against this history of leadership, where do you place

Marygrove’s leadership project in terms of where we are right now? And, where and
how might we take things from here forwards?

Report Out…

* * *

Lessons in Leadership from The Last Place on Earth

Napoleon Bonaparte has been quoted as saying: History is the lie that nobody
challenges. After Amundsen’s victory at the South Pole in 1911 and Scott’s defeat
and death on his return trip—in Britain, Robert Falcon Scott was transformed into a
national hero, a leadership martyr who died in a gallant struggle with a brutally
fierce and capricious mother nature. Amundsen soon faded from public memory. But
what do we really know about past events—and hence the present—when our
understanding of those events has been shaped (perhaps manipulated) by the social
and political agencies of vested interests and longstanding prejudices (Stephen Bown,
The Last Viking, 2012)?
So what does the actual process of leadership look like in all that morass of too many
variables, values, and prejudices? If you were to ask me where to look for a concrete
twentieth century exemplar practices, I would point to the last place on Earth. To
the race to be first to discover the geographic South Pole in 1911-1912 by rival
British and Norwegian expeditions led by Robert Falcon Scott and Roald
Amundsen.13

13
Amundsen was just thirty-three years old when he and his crew were the first to sail across the North
West Passage in 1905. He and his men we also the first to reach the South Pole on December 15th 1911.
The explorer returned several more times to the North Arctic Basin with dog teams and later in flying
machines. On May 14th 1926, in the airship Norge, Amundsen passed over the North Pole, after deliberately
allowing American commander Richard Byrd to be the first to fly over. Or so it was believed at the time.
According to newly uncovered records from the flight discovered in the 1980s, an oil leak in one of his
engines forced Byrd to turn back 150 miles short of his target. Thus, the record once more goes to Roald
Amundsen, who floated over the North Pole three days after Byrd’s failed attempt. Amundsen was
officially first man to both Poles—since it was subsequently discovered that both Americans Frederick
Cook and Richard Peary had fudged their records in their previous journeys north.
 14

“We are all captains; we are all crew”

Amundsen said it is not the number of followers one has as a leader that
matters, but rather how many leaders one creates in the team. He was a true
innovator in every respect. And he knew the value of assessment better than
anyone—which he proved each day in the creative ways he recruited, provisioned,
inspired, and even measured the expedition’s progress.14 We will return to Amundsen
and his comrades again when we discuss consensus decision-making and the rhetoric
of leadership.

* * *

On Leadership Vs. Management

The theoretical distinction between the terms leadership and management is a

significant matter for the field of leadership education, since it informs the selection,
education and evaluation of an expanding pool of social innovators whom are to be
entrusted with significant organizational responsibilities. “You can be appointed a
manager,” wrote British leadership scholar John Adair, “but you are not a leader
until your appointment is ratified in the hearts and minds of those who work for you”
(Effective Leadership, 1988). Adair is a bit old-fashioned, but you can see what he’s
getting at.
Furthermore, even the words “manager” and “management” represent
relatively recent concepts in the West that first entered the English language in the
18th century. The term manager stems from the Latin manus, meaning “hand.”
English soldiers brought these concepts back from the Italian military schools where
“handlers” were trained to deal with machinery and warhorses in battle. In the
century that followed the terms were also applied to employees appointed by modern

14
For instance, on the South Pole journey Amundsen had established a method whereby, in case of lost or
broken thermometers, each man would compete to guess the correct temperature every morning upon
leaving the tent to relieve himself. This of course serves several purposes. Fresh air served to brighten
everyone’s head. Plus, knowing who the best guesser was when it came to the temperature might be useful
in measuring altitude, among other things, should there be no other means left if the instruments were lost
or broken. Substantial prizes of cigars and a telescope for the season’s champion were awarded. And as
each man returned to the tent in the morning, Amundsen had the pungent hot chocolate ready to greet
them with in the Ice Barrier Café. In addition, even though on the way back from the Pole they could easily
have skied twice as far depending on varying wind and surface conditions. By instituting a steady tempo of
15 miles a day, the Norwegians were able to travel exactly one measureable degree of latitude (60 nautical
miles) on a map every four or five days. The team made the entire ski journey of 1860 miles in just 99 days.
 15

industrialists to run their factories and businesses. That’s when bosses and foremen
became management.15
“Leadership” is a much older concept than “management.” The original
meaning of the word leadership comes from the Nordic term laeden, originally
meaning a wagon road or path—or the route a ship takes on a voyage. A leader is
required to pilot the ship, its passengers, and crew safely in the right direction to
their destination. The verb laed meant “to go on a journey.” Leaders were those who
were “first to show the way.” The explorers. Same as always for all time and in every
culture.
Moreover, the term leadership has always implied the establishment of new
aims by the acceptance of others. That is contained in the relative terms: teamwork,
inspiration, and challenge. All with some overall sense of momentum and direction as
well. Yes, these standard connotations carry with them undertones of planning and
administration, but not an overwhelming amount. Social innovators have always
been seen—to one extent or another—as influential change agents who actually
embody (not merely espouse) a congruent personal identity, as well as a shared
vision for the group in terms of its overall objectives.

* * *
The Rhetoric of Leadership

Virtually every situation a bona fide executive leader of any description faces
has everything to do with rhetoric of one type or other—private conversation,
speeches, written documents, small group discussions, press releases (blogs), sound
bites (tweets), letters, articles, vision statements, planning reports, and so forth.
Each of these is to some extent the result of key rhetorical actions that serve to shape
and direct the whole enterprise. For example, the rhetoric of leadership in times of
crisis must create identification for, and with, a worthy goal of achievement, or else
we’ve missed our chance to intend real changes. That’s what, in terms of being
leaderly, a crisis is for.
Invariably, the protagonist in every such leadership “identity story”
invariably announces his or her goal as something new and different. But at the same
time embodying values and themes from a more stable, less turbulent past. The
reflective leader should also make the “counterstory” case that undertaking so noble
a task will not be easy. It will be a competitive struggle for high stakes; not
15
For better or worse, most of the early 19th century “managers” of banks, real estate agencies,
construction firms, railway companies, docks, factories, and warehouses—you name it—were chosen from
the professional ranks of lawyers, engineers, and accountants. These people were generally seen as efficient
“handlers” of any sort. Primarily those with the technical competency and the legal authority to command,
coordinate, reward and punish the work of others within their span of control.
 16

determined by any one individual, but decided by free will and a commitment to
teamwork. All who risk their lives for the cause are to have a discretionary voice in
matters of importance to the entire team. Remember: “We are all captains,” Roald
Amundsen had posted on the saloon wall of his ship, “we are all crew.” Thus the
“embodiment of consensus” was a lived daily experience.
The rhetoric at turning points or periods of organizational transition is
appropriate for providing a clearer sense of direction. And whenever a crisis occurs,
the next step forward is greatly enhanced by leadership rhetoric that customarily
states: This is a new idea, which represents a break from the past, or a radical return
to the roots of the past that has been neglected or misused (Eccles and Nohira,
1992).16
Turning Points and Tumbling Horizons

The rhetoric of leadership requires that leaders continually point the way
ahead to the next horizon. And as each new horizon appears, the goal itself
continues to tumble away from view. For a practical example, we shall return to the
last place on Earth: The Norwegians had arrived at the South Pole healthy and in
good spirits. They had extra fuel and plenty of food for men and dogs left over.
They could not know the comparatively dire circumstances faced by their British
rivals in this regard. Scott and his men were more than a month and hundreds of
miles behind the Norwegians. When asked what they should do with the surplus
food and fuel, Amundsen decided to take it with them, reasoning that they might still
need it to get back.
Speaking from the mathematical end of the Earth, Amundsen voiced another
reminder to his men—that they hadn’t won the race until they’d gotten back first
with the news. For example, the dialogue at the Pole includes the following
statement by Amundsen:

16
Dramatically structured identity stories are those that embody shared values, mutual goals and values
collaborators can relate to and identify with for themselves. I have argued that the power in leaders’
rhetoric lies in narrating team identity, engaging in symbolic turning points, constituting freedom of choice and consensus,
and embodying a competitive spirit in crisis circumstances. Often quoted leadership theorist and cognitive
psychologist, Howard Gardner, has explained, “Leaders achieve their effectiveness chiefly through the
stories they relate” (Leading Minds, 1995). These “stories of identity” are narratives “that help individuals
think about and feel who they are, where they come from, and where they are headed. [Such stories]
constitute the single most powerful weapon in the leader’s literary arsenal.” Leaders, writes Gardner,
achieve their effectiveness through the stories they relate and, equally important, embody. Is this merely
“rhetorical,” or are they relating stories of the lives they have led and thereby seek to inspire in others? He
argues that great leaders are prodigious storytellers who take a story that has been latent, but muted or
neglected in the culture, and bring a new twist to that identity story for a new audience of followers.
Thereby leaders revive stories and reactivate themes from one place and past, on to another stage from
which to build new ventures. Once again we are reminded of McLuhan’s rag and bone shop of culture.
 17

For those who think we have already won, let me say this: the British will be
here, perhaps soon. They don’t give up easily. And, if we should make the
mistake of letting them reach the telegraph first, the issue of priority might
become quite confused. And…. we still have business at the other end of the
earth remember? We are a long way from home. Shall we go? (Griffith,
1985).

There is a crucial element of urgency embedded in all turning point stories.

Rhetoric at significant turning points indicates that—whatever our achievements in
overcoming obstacles may have been to date—leaders are obligated to show the way
ahead to challenges appearing beyond new horizons. Amundsen is in effect saying,
“Despite our advantage, should we make the mistake of letting our competitors beat
us to the claim, we have not won.” Without the imperative challenge to competitive
excellence, organizational leadership would cease to exist at the point of our last
accomplishment—rendering us without goals and aims for the future.
Dramatic narrative approaches to reexamining the lives of big gorillas and
great leaders in history will always intrigue us. This is just one way we can review
and renew our views and exploration concerning leadership. There is always a new
adventure on every horizon. We study the rhetoric of leadership and the dramatic
structures of organizational life—not for the sake of finding any definitive answers—
but in order to broaden our conception of what is possible, sharpen our aim, and
enrich our imaginations.

Postmodern Constructionism & Leadership

In terms of the history of leadership theory, one outcome of the legacy of

postmodernism has been the development of the field known as social
constructionism. Social constructionism can also itself be seen as a source of the
ongoing postmodern movement in leadership theory—just as it has been influential
in the emergent scheme of culture studies in general.
What is constructionism? The concept of socially constructed reality stresses
the ongoing creation of worldviews by groups of individuals in interaction with each
and the rest of society by various means of communication. According to this view,
our personal and social identities become inseparable—not only from the numerous
physical and material realities we must confront daily, but also the cognitive-
emotional and imagined worlds of human social existence and emergent activity. For
example, in the myriad ways and means that obtains ongoing legitimacy by myth,
religion, socialization, and higher education.
Students and faculty both familiar and unfamiliar with twentieth century
existentialist German philosopher Martin Heidegger might expect his assessment of
 18

the future prospects for our educational institutions to be relentlessly pessimistic. For
we now stand in the midst of an historical crisis in higher education for which his
unique and profound insight suggestively highlights a strategy meant to lead us out
of this mess we have gotten ourselves into with the evangelical-technocratic
disbanding of the historical essence of leadership education. In my view—having
unsuccessfully tried to persuade other—leadership is not something that can be
taught entirely online—like prisoners in chains watching shadows on the wall of
Plato’s famous cave.
In terms of contemporary higher education, the deconstructive recovery of
this long-obscured essence of leadership can help us restore meaning to the
increasingly formal and empty ideas. How can an essence change? By redefining the
essence of technology from that which “permanently endures” to that which “remains
in play.” Heidegger understands “essence” in terms of that which emerges and
reveals itself from extinction into intelligibility. Hence, intending to change
contemporary leadership education, we must critique our unthinking reliance on
translating human being into human “resources”—entities relentlessly optimized and
ordered about with maximal efficiency so as to serve purely instrumental vested
interests (Iain Thomson, Heidegger on Ontotheology, Cambridge University Press: 2005:
148). Heidegger, in contrast, is able to suggest an alternative, ontological conception
of higher education meant to bring about a renaissance of the university. Thus, a
major focus of social constructionism today is to uncover the ways in which
individuals and groups create a social space (such as the college campus) in which to
interact and create new organizational artifacts and dynamic relationships. It
involves perceiving the way social phenomena emerge, become institutionalized,
known to others, and made into tradition. No how is this done here at Marygrove
College? [MN: EMERGENT DISCUSSION]

* * *

Emergent Complexity: Theory & Applications

If we can agree that the contemporary world cannot be readily accounted for
through deterministic, clockwork-like models that presume the predictability of
future outcomes, where else might we look among the rags and bones of our cultural
artifacts for clues to what leadership for the future demands? The massive
interconnectivity and the multiplied interactions of human activities suggest that
employing a complexity lens may be of some use in thinking ahead to new human
endeavors. Though the idea of “emergence” has been around at least since the time of
Aristotle.
 19

The term itself seems to have been coined by 19th century English philosopher
and religious sceptic G.H. Lewes. More recently, American biologist and systems
scientist Peter Corning pointed out that no human system could be reduced to the
underlying laws of physics or so-called rules of the game. 17 Thus—as with
leadership—vision, purpose, mission, values, and so on all emerge from the same
source and that’s people. Change the people and the organization’s purpose changes
also. Not the other waysround.
In contemporary social studies, leading adult educators have come to realize
that to enable well-educated individuals to make significant contributions to groups
and organizations in society and its ongoing development—more is required of
higher education than simple content-focused, instrumental training. That’s an insult.
Many students and organizations, especially in human service disciplines and social
sciences, are now demanding an emergent18 “whole-person” approach that has been
some time waiting in the wings and neglected.

Does Evaluation Help or Impede Social Innovation?

To borrow a phrase from contingency theory: It all depends. The tendency in
many organizations these days often appear to prematurely force the passion and
commitment of social innovators into boxes of operational goals and rational models.
It may be more prudent to encourage an early articulation of problems as a baseline
for comparison later—rather than assume assessment to be a definitive judgment of
performance. That way we can treat this as a point of reference to come back to
when more formal evaluative thinking becomes appropriate and helpful.
The conditions of the contemporary world are far different than those that
were experienced throughout most of the 20th century. Whereas in a lost world
whose organizations were largely shaped by practices arising out of the Industrial
Age, today’s organizational environments may better be characterized as being
ubiquitously connected. People, institutions, and information are inescapably
proximate. Therefore, different aspects of knowing, doing and being are never
distinct and entirely independent of each other, but rather are integrated in each
group, individual, or organizational endeavor. Similarly, all educational

17
For example, you cannot use the rules to predict what’s going to happen over the course of a chess
game—not even the next move. Why? Because the “system” involves more than just the rules of the game.
It includes an unfolding moment-by-moment decision making process among a very large number of
available options at each and every choice point. Moreover, the game of chess is shaped by feedback-driven
influences requiring assessment, values, and principles of attack and defense. It is not simply a self-ordered
process. It involves an organized, purposeful activity on both sides.
18
“Emergent” in this sense means occurring when the individual explicitly realizes, and can
articulate, a fundamentally new context for an organizational life in which prior (and future)
experiences can be enhanced with new meaning.
 20

undertakings—despite being conventionally segregated into specific, named

disciplines and divided among individual courses—must be fully integrated and
assimilated by the students themselves in order to become truly useful in practical
application.

So how is this leadership development process to be assessed, measured, and

evaluated in terms of further development?

The answer to this often has much to do with the epistemological frames of
reference we use coming at it. For instance, those with a positivist-functionalist pont
of view will tend to see leadership in terms of positional power, authority, and a
career achievement orientation. Versus those from a position of postmodern critical
inquiry and social constructionism. Positivists assumes universal truths that can be
objectively measured. Conversely, radical humanists suggest that knowledge is
socially constructed, inherently subjective, complex and nonlinear.
An emergent complex system cannot be “made” to work. It either works or it
doesn’t. The corollary (an administrator’s angst): Pushing on the system doesn’t help.
It only makes matters worse. Rather than champion the cause, many forms of
assessment can be the enemy of social innovation if applied at the wrong time and
place, or with the wrong group of people or in the wrong way. For example, systems
change cannot be evaluated in the same way narrowly targeted projects can be
evaluated. And the traditionally, narrow-focused, bottom-line-oriented, goals-based
model just doesn’t work when it comes to the emergent complexity of all well-
functioning networks huddling within other ecological networks of mind and nature.
Furthermore, those with a hierarchical view of organizations emerged at a
time when systems were perceived as closed, functional problem solving was linear,
and executive management all knowing and all-powerful. But from an institutional
perspective, contemporary organizations can be viewed as purposeful structures
within ever changing social contexts.
During the last few decades with the rise of systems thinking, the emergent
complexity perspective has become more and more central to contemporary
leadership. The foil in all this is that a lot of so-called evidence-based practice is all
the rage again. And if we are to be social innovators we must learn to be wary of any
types of Evangelical assessments based on consultants’ bar charts and seven-point
self-report scales. These are such passive methods of judgment compared with the
energizing options that integrate creative emergence with critical thinking.19

19
Specificity, measurability, and clarity all look like and sound like very good things on the surface.
And in more stable and predictable environments this is what we might aim for. But in terms of
dealing with emergent complexity, they can become rigid, limiting factors leading to tunnel vision
and groupthink. To those within a system, the outside reality tends to pale and disappear. At the
very least a speculative curriculum for contemporary leadership might help to buffer the headlong
 21

Who are the social innovators today and how can we spot them? Simply put:
those with a socially constructive purpose. And how do those of us who want to
integrate human systems with social systems get started? We can start from where
we are and with those whom we interact with directly. Staff, students, networks,
community partners, colleagues, competitors, bankers, bureaucrats, and so forth.
Those who we can reach out and touch. Not just abstract from a distance or fondle
with our palms and our thumbs.
What we need is leadership, not expertise. The ongoing evolution of human
knowledge isn’t merely about learning a scabbard of skills or techniques. Leadership
cannot be improved by just drills or training. For one thing, training and education
in leadership imply very different outcomes. Training makes people more alike. But
education—because it involves an examination of one’s personal experience—tends
to make us different from one another. Yet paradoxically alike at the same time.
That’s in part the mystery of leaderly being. But even my putting it that way freaks
out the control freaks.
The foil to that: radical humanists tend to think—rightly so in my opinion—
that the way to build confidence in artists, athletes, academics and social innovators of
all sorts, is through appreciative guidance, challenge and response. Not praise
precisely, but rather the sincere expression of gratitude for their comrades’ and
charges’ human qualities, not just their technical prowess. When we show admiration
through humanism rather than judgment, it’s not just a matter of content, but also of
form. The result in terms of leadership-as-lived-experience could be quite
revolutionary, if not transcendental, which is almost as good.20
In spite of the fact there really is no one best system or secret handshake to
understanding leadership studies or gaining status, leadership development has
traditionally been treated as skills training for individual leaders. Far less social
capital has been invested in developing the collective leadership capacity of groups
and organizations, despite what corporate training division officers so often decree.
That said—taking a confluent open-ended approach to the interdisciplinary study of
organizational leadership is no guarantee of success either. Nor is this type of
education for every student or candidate for promotion. For one thing, having the
freedom and responsibility to determine the usefulness of one’s own course of

gallop into a state of mindless belief that any system can be made to function to achieve its stated
goals (John Gall, Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail, 1975).
20
Thus academic affairs, especially in the liberal arts—I feel—are undoubtedly the most fertile
ground for contemporary leadership education. Without question. Keep it away from the business,
law, and barber schools. Leadership has to become one’s life and Being, not one’s job or profession.
And that involves everyone. Followers do not do “followership.” Collaborators in social innovation
are all part and parcel of the leadership process. And there’s no use in measuring anything until we
know first what it is we’re trying so desperately to develop.
 22

development (in terms of the effects it has on others as well as one’s self) is not an
expectation shared with equal affection by everyone. This can skew the results.

A Speculative Curriculum for Contemporary Leadership:

The Mystery of Leaderly Being

Some other common themes occurring across contemporary leadership

theories have to do with authentic self-knowledge or synnoetics. In addition, some
scholars note a resurgent call for a wider debate of moral leadership principles and
policy. For example, Canadian journalist Naomi Klein’s new book on the ‘wicked’
intractable problems of climate change versus capitalism (This Changes Everything,
2014) is quick to ask after “leadership” when so-called “leaders” wholly abdicate
their responsibilities. Creating a world that is hotter, colder, wetter, thirstier,
hungrier, angrier—while industry continues to drill, burn, frack, and pump all the
Earth’s species into oblivion.
Most academic degree programs in leadership are focused on knowledge, of
course. In particular, with graduate-level disciplines connected to the social sciences,
there is an epistemological underpinning that allows for multiple ways of knowing. If
the degree is more professionally oriented—as opposed to a more purely academic
focus—additionally, it will have a strong emphasis on practice. This is again an
explicit recognition of the fact there are multiple ways of doing leadership also.
Additionally—in keeping with the overarching guiding philosophy of encouraging a
confluence of individual and social transformation—we can add one more dimension
to knowing and doing. Namely, an explicit acknowledgement that there are multi-
variant ways of being leaderly. No one best size or system fits for all. The fact is:
although we often speak of ways of knowing, doing, and being as if they were
separate, this is only for the sake of analysis. In reality they occur together. Just as it
is with the confluence of mind, body, spirit and emotions.

Leadership is one’s life and Being, not a mere job, career or profession. So
how do we give meaning to contemporary leadership education that is clear about
the mystery of Being, and one that is rooted in interdependence rather than hyper-
individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than
hierarchy. Perhaps first by defining what contemporary leadership is not any longer.
How do we know? Because in a sense the future has already happened. In some
twisted, strange-looped kind of a way the present conditions can be said to be both
its culture dish and its new growth effects at the same time. A person will grow into
the same qualities they had as a family child, and so will a culture emerge from its
sense of collective intentions.
 23

Contemporary leadership is no longer about leading in the conventional sense

of assuming control and coercing others to work collectively towards predetermined
objectives. And it’s not about a few, privileged individuals working alone in cahoots
behind closed doors creating a template for others to follow. Nor is it just about
ensuring the alignment of individual and group tasks in support of some
predetermined mission, if that’s as far as it goes. Nice as all of this sounds in
principle, that’s really a job for “good management” teams not cadres of leaders.
Because true leadership is really something other than calculating the differences
between debits and credits. Which even I can figure out.
Contemporary leadership is not necessarily leading by determining the vision,
setting the missions, decomposing the objectives, ensuring task alignment and
compensating those who do our bidding. Contemporary leadership is more about
enabling an environment where we bring people together and engage them in
creating new possibilities for an alternative future. Things will change. So why not
change things for the better? The transformation of complex organizational
environments necessitates a renovation in our fundamental understanding of what an
organization is and can become. It won’t be a happy time for control freaks, humorless
numbers clowns, or big gorillas with PhDs from Harvard.

Peter Chiaramonte
razorsedge@me.com
www.adler.academia.edu/peterchiaramonte