​Analysis of Leadership Definitions and Biographical Leadership

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There are three parts to this week’s Critical Thinking Assignment paper.

Part I:

An important concept for this week’s study is that no single, standard definition of leadership exists. We can trace the history of how leadership has been defined and redefined by scholars and managers. Page III of this week’s lecture provides insight into an exercise that may be useful for individuals wanting to understand their own leadership definitions: constructing a biographical leadership explanation. Western (2013) [required reading] offered a personal example of a leadership explanation through the author’s lens; Western also describes the exercise as “locating oneself.”

Begin the Week 1 Critical Thinking Assignment by composing your personal biographic leadership explanation. You may use Western’s format or another that is supported by the literature or that fits your career purpose.

Place the biographical leadership explanation in Appendix A of the paper.

Part II:

Create an historical overview of selected leadership definitions by constructing a time-line figure illustrating how leadership definitions varied over time. The time-line will span three decades and include a minimum of three (3) definitions from different sources that are then positioned across the time-line.

Place the time-line and definition overview in Appendix B of the paper.

Part III:

Develop an analytic essay* exploring how your leadership explanation was informed by time and by different leadership definitions. That is, decompose and extract elements from your biographical explanation and determine if and where the elements might be related to the time-line and definitions.

Within the analytic paper, reference Appendices A and B.

Include a conclusion based on findings and insights related to what influenced your personal leadership assumptions and experiences.

Requirements:

  • Your paper should be 4 double-spaced, not counting the required title and reference pages and appendices.
  • Including introduction and conclusion
  • Please cite at least four scholarly sources.
  • Remember, you must support your thinking/opinions and prior knowledge with references.
  • In-text citation used throughout the assignment and APA-formatted reference list.
  • Please no plagiarism and sources should not be older than 5 years.
  • Include headings organize the content in your work.

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10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Dedication In the valley it was like a destroyed earth, It was like war, struggling wild manic chaos, Water bubbling made by man, Silent moving made by birds and waterfalls, The fungi was like a thyroid, https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/12!/4/2/8/4@0:60.0 1/3 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text A tangling fight winding up a tree. It was like a supply of nature breaking through. By Fynn, aged 8 I dedicate this book to Fynn, who continues to inspire me and who I miss so much. Also to Agata, with big love and huge thanks for the joy shared, encouragement and support during the writing of this book. This book will always evoke such happy memories of writing and walking in the woods and hillsides around Krynica, Poland, summer 2012. To all friends and colleagues who share my journey. To all I work with. My consulting and coaching work gives me privileged access to engage with people at all levels in organizations, who share with me their strengths, vulnerabilities and struggles. I work in diverse spaces and places, where I observe, listen and intervene, learning and feeding my insatiable curiosity, and putting theory into practice, and practice into theory. This book could not be written without their full engagement. Thank you all. Finally, to distributed leaders everywhere, often unrecognized and unacknowledged, who share the ethos of this book; striving for emancipation and to create a better world. © Simon Western 2008, 2013 First published 2008. Reprinted 2010 This second edition published 2013 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. All photographs by the author Artwork at beginning of discourse chapters by Maia Kirchkheli All other graphic design by Martyna Adamska Library of Congress Control Number: 2012954157 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4462-6989-3 ISBN 978-1-4462-6990-9 (pbk) https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/12!/4/2/8/4@0:60.0 2/3 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road New Delhi 110 044 SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 3 Church Street #10-04 Samsung Hub Singapore 049483 Editor: Kirsty Smy Editorial assistant: Nina Smith Production editor: Sarah Cooke Copyeditor: Elaine Leek Proofreader: Audrey Scriven Indexer: Judith Lavender Marketing manager: Alison Borg Cover design: Lisa Harper Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain by Henry Ling Limited, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/12!/4/2/8/4@0:60.0 3/3 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Why a Critical Theory Approach to Leadership? 1 Chapter Structure • • • • • Introduction Critical Thinking and Critical Theory (CT) Why Critical Theory Is Marginalized A Critical Framework: Four Frames of Critical Inquiry Conclusion: Critical Theory and Leadership Introduction This book takes a critical theory (CT) approach to leadership for four core reasons: 1 To establish a critical theoretical framework, supporting an individual’s process of inquiry into the theory and practice of leadership. 2 To contribute an accessible critical account of leadership, challenging ‘taken-for-granted’ (normative) assumptions and offering new insights into the underlying discourses and dynamics of leadership. 3 To contribute to the task of improving and rethinking leadership practice, taking into account contemporary social change, to benefit our organizations and institutions. 4 To situate leadership within an ethical and emancipatory framework, with the greater aim of creating the ‘Good Society’. Critical theoretical approaches work in two ways, the first being to scrutinize leadership, to offer an analysis of the deeper, less obvious ways in which leadership is theorized, practised and utilized to attain organizational aims. Secondly, CT has progressive intentions: it aims to create a better society by rethinking, rediscovering and reinventing leadership; bringing new theoretical resources to the challenges revealed through its critique. Critical theory can sometimes veer towards the first aspect, the scrutiny and deconstruction, with too little attention given to the reconstruction and rethinking of leadership. To be critical in popular terms has inferences of being negative, and in academia, where critical takes a different meaning, critiquing and applying critical theory can easily become focused on finding the flaws and revealing the oppressive forces within mainstream leadership. Adler et al. (2007: 14) write, ‘As with most countermovements, CMS1 proponents have been more articulate about what they are against than what they are for’. Critical theory then becomes a pathologizing activity rather than an emancipatory theory. This book is firmly placed in the emancipatory camp of critical theory, believing that critique is important when used to promote a progressive agenda, or, as Cunliffe (2008: 937) writes, ‘I believe the central thread is our interest in the critique of contemporary forms of knowledge, social and institutional processes and in generating radical alternatives’. To repeat Marx’s famous quote in his ‘Theses on Feuerbach’: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it’ (Marx, 1845/1978: 45). CT is a diverse body, as I will explore later. Some believe that only a radical critique is worthwhile, and that attempting to improve the workplace through a reformist agenda is ‘selling out’ to a capitalist system that is inherently unfair. This polarization of views strikes me as dualistic thinking that critical scholars themselves condemn. The CT task is both a progressive and a radical agenda. A reformist engagement with contemporary https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 1/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text managers and leaders achieves two things; firstly it can improve the situation on the ground (microemancipation); secondly it can work towards structural and radical change (macro-emancipation) by (a) educating and engaging practitioners in new possibilities beyond their current vision, thereby building a greater consensus for more radical possibilities of change, and (b) reformist engagement can also be used by critical theorists as action-research, to better understand the system in order to work out what a radical agenda might look like. This chapter will initially discuss what it means to take a critical approach, and then offer a critical framework that informs this book and can be used by practitioners to support their own critical inquiry. Finally, it addresses applying critical theory to leadership itself, acknowledging some of the challenges that are encountered. Critical Thinking and Critical Theory (CT) Critical thinking and critical theory are overlapping terms that require differentiating and clarifying for the purpose of this book. Critical thinking or a critical approach are generic terms which are often used loosely and at times indiscriminately and interchangeably with critical theory, but as Johnson and Duberley identify, there is more to critical theory than being reflective and critical: Whilst many researchers of management may consider themselves to be critical, in that they attempt to stand back from their work and interrogate their findings with a critical eye, this does not mean they are operating within a critical theory perspective. (2000: 124) To be critical is to take a more radical, reflective and questioning stance that doesn’t accept at face value, what is ‘taken for granted’ in a mainstream, positivistic or rationalistic perspectives. Fulop and Linstead (1999) write in the opening of their book Management: A Critical Text: This introduction outlines a critical approach to management that enables us to reflect on how we learn about management. It is designed to help us develop the intellectual rigour and knowledge to deal with the complex and multifaceted issues that arise in everyday work situations. (1999: 4) Their approach focuses on being reflective and developing a rigor of inquiry, which is one element of a CT stance but there are more. Calhoun (1995: 35) offers his perspective on CT: 1 CT critiques the contemporary social world looking for new possibilities, and positive implications for social action. 2 CT gives a critical account of historical and cultural conditions. 3 CT gives a continuous critical re-examination of the conceptual frameworks used (including the historical construction of these frameworks). 4 CT confronts other works of social explanation, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their blind spots, but then demonstrates the capacity to incorporate their insights for stronger foundations. These examples illustrate a use of CT which brings into play critical thinking from a social, historical and cultural perspective, taking a social constructionist and a discursive approach, i.e. questioning how reality is constructed and made sense of through processes of socialization, the use of language and historical influences. Finally, there is another tradition in CT that aims to use its insights to take an explicitly ethical position. Good Leadership and Ethical Leadership https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 2/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Perhaps the greatest differentiating point is that mainstream approaches (rational/positivist) attempt to improve leadership with the aim of making organizations more effective and productive, without reference to broader social and ethical concerns. Good leadership in mainstream thinking means effective leadership, usually with a ‘values perspective’, as an additional extra. For example, Bass (1998) says transformational leadership is also about ‘doing good’, yet without looking at structural power issues, and the systemic violence (Žižek, 2008) that occurs through corporate activity, whilst they take an individualist morality, ‘doing good’ is nothing more than a hollow claim. For example, transformational leadership claims to empower followers, yet under the scrutiny of CT transformational leaders aiming to create strong ‘cultures’ can end up with ‘cult-like cultures’ as a new form of organizational control, aiming to maximize productivity from these employees (see Chapters 7 and 12). Some mainstream scholars do take a more sceptical stance to leadership, but critical scholars Alvesson and Willmott (1996) claim that this sceptical approach has serious limitations because whilst it examines aspects such as power, it does so from an intraorganizational context, ignoring a broader social and political context. Individualistic leadership theories focusing on special personal traits such as charisma inherently support the idea of ‘special leaders’ who can motivate ‘followers’, thereby increasing productivity, and these leaders are rewarded with ‘special’ remuneration packages. This idea of leadership has led to chief executives’ pay rising in astronomical terms in the past 20 years. As Mintzberg (2012) points out, ‘Any CEO who allows himself to be paid 400 or 500 times more than the workers is not a leader but an exploiter’. These ‘super’ leaders receive huge bonuses rewarding them for short-term success and growth, following the neo-liberal agenda of ever-increasing productivity within liberal markets, decreasing regulation, increasing financial and trade liberalization, and reducing protection for the labour force. Short-term profiteering ignores developing more sustainable business growth, or ethical concerns such as humanizing the workplace and taking responsibility for a sustainable natural environment. Is this good leadership? There are many covert vested interests at stake in organizational life, such as power, identity and economic benefit, which is one reason why critical theory is marginalized. Bhaskar (2010: 107) explains: The oppressed have an interest in explanatory knowledge of the structures that oppress them. But their oppressors do not need to have that explanatory knowledge and it might be better for them if they do not. The sort of knowledge they need to have is best not called knowledge, but rather information or even data, and that is about how to manipulate events and circumstances and discourses. Good leadership in the workplace must mean more than increasing short-term share prices, and growth. Good leadership should also mean ethical leadership, and this is not just for altruistic reasons, it is also to promote sustainable success. One of the key points I wish to make is that critical theory is not an abstract construction useful only in academic circles, it is fundamental to successful organizational and social functioning, creating more humane institutions and a sustainable world. Why Critical Theory Is Marginalized To critique means to look at deeper, underlying questions, not just at the challenges raised by a particular problem. Business Schools, Management Science and the Corporate Agenda The basic assumptions behind much of leadership and organizational thinking emanate from business schools (Grey, 2004), which operate with two combined, underpinning biases: 1 The purpose of business is to maximize productivity and profit: Business schools take the position that is most likely to align with their key stakeholder, the corporate client, whose agenda is ‘more productivity and growth, with ever-greater efficiency, to maximize profit’. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 3/20 10/10/2017 2 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Management science: Business schools were founded on the premise of using scientific knowledge to improve productivity more efficiently, and this continues today, i.e. ‘management science’, dominated by technocratic values (Adler et al., 2007; MacIntyre, 1985). Business schools produce knowledge about leadership and organizations, training leaders to use this knowledge. Privileging management science as the method, (positivism) works on the assumptions that this knowledge is value-neutral, free from bias, factual and scientific. Yet the knowledge they produce is heavily biased towards a single focus, ‘instrumentalism’. In the instrumentalist approach to management and organization, the goal of profitability – or, in the not-for-profit sectors, performance targets – takes on a fetishized, naturalized quality. All action is then evaluated under the norms of instrumental means–ends rationality. Ethical and political questions concerning the value of such ends are excluded, suppressed, or assumed to be resolved. (Adler et al., 2007: 127) The corporate agenda aligns itself with the management science agenda, both aiming for the same results – greater efficiency and productivity – without questioning the wider implications for stakeholders and wider society. CT challenges both of these underlying premises, claiming that an organization has a social as well as a business purpose. Neither does it accept the premise that science (positivism) is neutral and free from bias. It questions political interests in any research being undertaken, it asks why certain questions are being asked and others not, questioning the taken-for-granted assumptions behind the research. Positivism claims to measure a world that simply exists: …people are taught to accept the world ‘as it is’, thus unthinkingly perpetuating it. CT thus sees positivism as pivotal in an ideology of adjustment, undermining our power to imagine a radically better world. (Adler et al., 2007: 138) CT responds by saying that the world is socially constructed, and shaped by discourse, and we must ask questions about what kind of world we are perpetuating, and what kind of world we can create. The task of critical theory is to study power and knowledge relations, to challenge dominating structures, and also to prevent leadership becoming another instrumental project, serving only to promote greater efficiency, productivity, profit, with little reflection on its wider impact on society. Critical theory has been successful in terms of theoretical influence, but remains marginalized, and there are concerns about its lack of impact on practice. Cooke (2008: 914) cites that only 1.7% of papers at the Academy of Management meeting were in the Critical Management programme. In a 2008 edition of the journal Organization the editors invited critical scholars to reflect on the future of CMS (Critical Management Studies – which includes organizational and leadership theory), and the results were interesting. Three dominant challenges stood out that contributed to the marginalization of critical theory. 1. An Elitist CMS Stookey (2008: 922) summed up this view, writing that critical studies challenge elitism whilst paradoxically being part of an ‘elitist enterprise’ itself, i.e. academia. She notes with concern that ‘a society dominated by elitism is fundamentally delusional and self-destructive’. The divide between critical theory and practice is a false dichotomy, perhaps one that is perversely enjoyed and perpetuated by critical scholars, making them an ‘elite’ group, who benefit from the status, comfort and salaries of the academy, whilst retaining an outsider ‘maverick’ status (Parker, 2002). CT scholars exclude practitioners with an (often unnecessary) post-structural and academic jargon, yet critical thinking is not in opposition to leadership but a prerequisite for competent leadership that promotes strategic, successful, sustainable and progressive change within organizations. 2. A Cloistered CMS: Theory before Practice https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 4/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text There was wide acknowledgement that CMS was also becoming a cloistered and self-referential entity that was consumed by theory at the expense of engaging with and having an impact on practice. Svensson (2010: 3) writes in Ephemera: Critical management scholars have been highly successful in publishing excellent articles, and many of them are amazingly productive … The hyper-productivity of critical management scholars, targeted at excellent journals, has turned critical management into an excellent institution, and many critically oriented scholars are employed because of this mastery in publishing excellent papers. This success in the academic and theoretical realm is contrasted with CMS’s impact on what happens in practice: CMS has had little or no impact on what organizations actually do ... there are some serious and fascinating issues being discussed within CMS, but they tend to stay within the cloistered boundaries of academic work and find little echo outside those who are already converted. (Parker, 2002: 115-16) Addressing the dissonance between theory and practice is a major concern for CMS scholars if they are serious about having emancipatory concerns, and contributing to social transformation as well as publication. 3. Diversity of Critical Studies Scholars sometimes speak of CMS as a singular, homogeneous entity, speaking with one voice, when it is actually a very diverse body. Adler (2008: 925) challenges the idea that there is a singular body of theory for CMS: In reality, there is a buzzing confusion and profusion, running the gamut from post-structuralism to labour process theory, from Derrida to Marx, from radical postcolonial feminism to moderate social democratic liberalism, from positivism to critical realism to social constructivism. This diversity needs to be recognized, in order to maximize the benefits of the potential breadth of theory and research that is available as a resource to understand leadership and organizational dynamics. Reversing the Marginalization of CMS These three factors add to the marginalization of critical theory. Critical studies therefore needs to find a new engagement with non-critical scholars and practitioners. Voronov (2008: 943) suggests four possibilities for critical scholars to increase their engagement with practitioners: • Focused critique – issue-based critiques focused on specific issues that speak to managers and leaders because they relate to real challenges. This offers critical theorists the opportunity to shape new discourses. • Engaged scholarship – creating knowledge that is both theoretically rich and practically useful, exemplified by participatory research. • Consulting – although objectionable to some CMS scholars, consulting can be an excellent way to gain and deliver critical insights into leadership practice’. • Critical action learning – ‘introducing critical elements into the action learning tradition’ (Reynolds and Vince, 2004). I would add business school executive education to this list. University-led training and development programmes are currently the domain of mainstream scholars, yet they offer many opportunities for critical scholars to engage and disseminate critical theory to practitioners, and to utilize practitioner knowledge and insight to inform their theorizing. Having worked in executive education, I believe it offers the potential to https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 5/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text work through normative assumptions, and some (though not all) executives will thrive and grow in such an atmosphere. Critical thinking and practice should not be alien bedfellows! A Critical Framework: Four Frames of Critical Inquiry These four frames of critical inquiry underpin the thinking in this book and offer a tangible framework to guide both practitioners and scholars: • Emancipation • Depth analysis • Looking awry • Network analysis Emancipation Ethics, Liberation, Autonomy, Sustainability, Equality and Justice The lens of emancipation is concerned with promoting justice, equality, ethics, a sustainable environment, liberation and autonomy. Leadership has a mixed reception in emancipatory movements; traditional social movements herald heroic leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky and Lenin (following populist notions of leadership), whilst new social movements such as feminism and the green movement often treat leadership with suspicion. This is for two reasons: (1) because the word leadership infers hierarchy and elitism and challenges the idea of autonomy and equality, and (2) leadership past and present has often distorted and created unjust power relationships that marginalize some and benefit others. For example, patriarchal and class-based leadership are still very present; male networks perpetuate the male leadership that dominates corporate/political life, and class opportunities offer resources and networks that keep an elite, wealthy class in leadership positions across society, thereby undermining meritocracy and social mobility. In the UK at the time of writing the political elite is dominated by males who went to expensive private schools: Cameron, Clegg and Osborne all went to private schools with fees now higher than the average annual wage. Half the cabinet went to fee-paying schools – versus only 7% of the country – as did a third of all MPs. (BBC News, 2011) In the USA, leadership also reflects social inequality. There has never been a female president, and, according to Stille (2011), ‘more than half the presidents over the past 110 years attended Harvard, Yale or Princeton and graduates of Harvard and Yale have had a lock on the White House for the last 23 years, across four presidencies’. These biases are being better addressed in some countries. Norway, for example, has been described by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women as ‘a haven for gender equality’, legislating to increase female representation in parliament and boardrooms. Taking a critical emancipatory stance is to try to increase representation at senior political and business levels (a reformist perspective) and also to offer radical leadership ideas that will address the wider social issues. In utilizing new social movement and feminist theory for example, CT aims to expand distributed and grass-roots leadership, drawing on different readings of what traditional leadership means, and mobilizing leadership in unexpected places. Theoretical Resources The emancipatory approach taken in this book draws upon eclectic ideas from diverse sources, including new social movement theorists, post-Marxist thinkers, e.g. the Frankfurt School, Habermas and Adorno, Alain https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 6/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, and autonomous Marxists such as ‘Biffo’ Beradi. Post-structuralists, such as Michel Foucault and the feminist Judith Butler, have also developed emancipatory agendas through their work: Foucault … taught us to be wary of the institutions through which we are governed. We must always beware of the possibilities that our own institutional arrangements will encourage the rise of new destructive forces inimical to the possibilities of our being free. (Dumm, 1996: 153) Post-structuralists help us understand that leadership, like power, is everywhere, not just residing at the top of a hierarchy. The CT task is not to condemn or remove leadership or power, but to scrutinize them, offering alternatives to autocratic and elitist leadership. Post-structuralist and discourse theory reveals how social conditions produce certain leadership approaches, and how leadership approaches reproduce social conditions. For Habermas (1984), communication is a key tool of emancipation or oppression, and Foucault’s body of work shows how discourses and language create a power–knowledge link (Foucault, 1980), revealing how our subjective selves are formed and governed by discourses which entrap us (Rose, 1990). Judith Butler shows how gender and identity are not as fixed as modernity led us to believe (Butler, 1990), and relating this to leadership, we see how fluid the concepts of leadership are, with new links being developed between leadership and identity formation. Habermas observed that increasingly the public sphere is administered remotely from individual citizens, diminishing their freedom and agency, and describing the ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’ (Habermas, 1984), where the individual subject is penetrated by bureaucracy, using the ideology of efficiency and rationality to justify this. Corporate leadership becomes part of this ‘colonising force’ and is most apparent when culture control is used rather than more obvious transactional or coercive controls (discussed in Chapter 11 on Messiah leadership). The Habermasian goal of critical theory is ‘a form of life free from unnecessary domination in all of its forms’ (McCarthy, 1978: 273). To summarize the emancipatory lens of CT: • Rationalism and knowledge must be linked to values and interest, if they are to be used as a force for emancipation. • Emancipatory CT challenges relativism, the postmodern claim that all points of view are of equal value. Leaders from elitist groups reproduce their hold on power, making their views privileged whilst less privileged groups are silenced. These hidden power relations ensure that not all views are of equal value. CT links politics, values and interests to knowledge to undermine relativism. • CT aims to reveal the power relations that exist within social structures, discourses and symbolic practices. It then focuses on how to change the practices that undermine liberty and how to find new ways to promote human agency and freedom. Depth Analysis Revealing Hidden Dynamics: Hermeneutics, Psychosocial Approaches, Discourse Analysis Depth analysis is derived from the methods of psychoanalysis and discourse analysis that look beneath-thesurface to discover underlying patterns, structures and influences that are not immediately obvious or easy to discern. Depth analysis challenges the dominant rational assumptions of leadership and organizational studies, and clearly makes a case for including the irrational forces of the unconscious: the emotions, herd-behaviours, group-think and other hidden forces that influence social dynamics. These human factors are not accounted for in computer-generated data-banks, or scientific rationalist accounts of organizational behaviour; yet the 2007 financial collapse shows that we must account for human factors such as greed, mania and herd instincts (Sievers, 2011; Stein and Pinto, 2011). Psychoanalytic Approaches Johnson and Duberley claim that psychoanalysis is perhaps the earliest example of a critical theorist method: https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 7/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Perhaps the prototype for critical science is psychoanalysis because it involves ‘depth-hermeneutics’ [Habermas, 1972: 218] in which the distorted texts of the patient’s behaviour become intelligible to them through self-reflection. In this fashion emancipation occurs as the patient becomes liberated from the terror of their own unconscious as previously suppressed and latent determinants of behaviour are revealed and thereby lose their power. (Johnson and Duberley, 2000: 120) Depth analysis is clearly linked to an emancipatory agenda through making the unconscious conscious, and revealing other hidden knowledge and power sources such as how discourses are created and influence us. The aim of depth analysis is to gain insight in order to disempower hidden forces, and enable us to form strategies to create change. This book draws on psychoanalytic theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion and Slavoj Žižek. There is also a long tradition of applying psychoanalytic thinking to organizations and leadership studies, emanating from the Tavistock Institute, utilizing object relations theory (Kleinian approaches), and now strongly represented by ISPSO (the International Society of Psychoanalytic Study of Organization). Scholars such as Manfred Kets de Vries, Larry Hirschhorn, Mark Stein, Burkard Sievers, Susan Long and Gabriel Yannis, amongst others, offer important contributions to the field. This work applies a clinical perspective to organizations/leadership; for example Schwartz (1990) and Stein (2003) apply a psychoanalytic understanding of narcissism to corporate culture, whilst Kets de Vries’ book The Leader on the Couch (2006) uses clinical psychoanalytic insights to study leadership and is probably the best known work in this field. However these authors do not always take a critical approach, and sometimes the work takes an intrapersonal and relational perspective at the expense of addressing wider social perspectives. The strong contribution they make is to reveal how depth perspectives of a leader’s personality and interpersonal relationships inform their leadership approach. Leaders can become dysfunctionally grandiose and omnipotent when followers treat them unconsciously like a saviour. Psychoanalytic concepts such as projection help explain how followers can idealize (or denigrate) leaders, projecting their repressed desires onto them. Leaders represent authority figures and can replicate ‘good mummy/daddy or bad mummy/daddy’ in the minds of followers, and this has implications when followers can become dependent on the leader rather than autonomous, thinking employees (Miller, 1993). To make interpretations from a psychoanalytic perspective means to draw upon our emotions and our subjectivity as researchers and observers. Drawing on the ‘self’ to make sense of one’s feelings in relation to another, or to a social situation, is off limits for positivist and rational approaches. These psychosocial methodologies are under-used and under-developed, and offer a complementary lens to positivistic research. There is a small but growing interest in psychosocial research. Professor Sasha Roseneil writes of her psychosocial research: …the psychosocial-analysis I carried out drew on principles from clinical psychoanalysis, in its concern to explore interviewees’ psychic reality, the non-rational, unarticulated, unconscious dimensions of the experiences they narrated, as well as the emotions and affects that they were able to formulate expressly in discourse. (Roseneil, 2006: 864) My training and background are in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. I spent many years as a psychotherapist and recently directed a Master’s programme in Organizational Consultancy at the Tavistock Clinic, studying the unconscious and emotional dynamics in organizational life, and the insights gained through this experience strongly influence this book. Lacanian psychoanalysis has become a popular academic resource in critical theory, drawing on linguistic and post-structural readings of Freud. Using psychoanalytic theory without reference to practice or the clinical method is, however, problematic. Bhaskar claims that he could ‘not use psychoanalysis as a potential science of emancipation without actually having experienced it’ (2010: 94). Freud’s theories went beyond individual analysis and he considered his most important contribution was to deepen an understanding of society and culture. In his book Civilisation and Its Discontents (1930/2002) Freud identified the frustrations of being part of a social group: https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 8/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text noting that the human animal, with its insatiable needs, must always remain an enemy to organized society, which exists largely to tamp down sexual and aggressive desires. At best, civilized living is a compromise between wishes and repression – not a comfortable doctrine. It ensures that Freud, taken straight, will never become truly popular, even if today we all speak Freud. (Gay, 1999) Freud’s work influences society today, Philip Rieff announced in The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966), and we find the ‘talking cure’ everywhere, in mutated forms such as counselling, therapy, coaching, social work, psychology. ‘Therapeutic culture’ (Furedi, 2003) has been pervasive in the past 50 years and this culture has also infiltrated leadership theory and practice (see Chapter 10 on the leader as therapist). Advertising and marketing campaigns now have integrated Freudian concepts into their thinking by relying on the unconscious to attract new customers through linking their brands to individual identity (Klein, 2000). Subliminal advertising is commonplace, drawing on Freud’s links between sex and power and his understanding of unconscious fantasy, hence the stereotypical advert of fast cars being linked to glamorous women, to appeal to the male desires and fantasies of having more phallic power. Turkle (2011) applies psychoanalytic insights as part of her analysis of humans and technology that provides rich data to try to understand social dynamics in hi-tech and virtual surroundings. Psychoanalysis, however, remains marginal within leadership, management and organizational studies, partly due to the positivistic and rationalist bias in management, which discounts complex understandings in favour of measurable outcomes. Discourse Approaches Depth analysis draws upon other critical theory methods, which investigate what happens beneath the surface in organizational life, e.g. discourse analysis, narrative analysis. Religious hermeneutic interpretation offers ancient methods of depth analysis, trying to uncover the meaning within holy texts. Foucault (1980) teaches us that power and knowledge are closely related, and that power is exerted through normative control: ‘the way things are done around here’. Rose (1990) draws on Foucault to show how our intimate selves are governed by social discourses, and this has many implications for leadership and workplace dynamics. To see beyond the established ‘natural order of things’ means to ‘unmask’ what is hidden. For example, many cultural assumptions are made about heterosexuality and marriage, and whilst these seem normal to many, from gay or queer perspectives, they are oppressive. Power is performed through Westernized ideals of the hetero-normative nuclear family, and those outside this framework are disciplined by social rules, either explicitly or implicitly (Butler, 2004). In this book four discourses reveal how normative expectations of leadership have changed over the past century. Discourse approaches to depth analysis are very popular in critical theory today; in leadership studies new insights through discourse analysis and discursive approaches come from scholars such as Fairclough (1995) and Collinson (2003). In summary, psychoanalysis, discourse analysis and other depth analysis techniques are employed in this text as a core CT method to help reveal how social and unconscious processes become internalized, embodied and enacted by individuals, social groups and organizations, and how language shapes our world. Leadership raises issues of the individual and the group; leadership and followership, power and authority, manipulation and control, and therefore depth analysis is vital to understand the processes that help develop models of successful leadership. Looking Awry Reframing, Short-circuiting, Disrupting the Normative Looking awry encourages leadership researchers and practitioners to disrupt the taken-for-granted, and look from a different place. To see something differently we have to look differently. If a critical approach is to offer a radical critique, and to find radical solutions, then looking awry is an essential frame from which to discover something new. Ž https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 9/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Žižek (1992, 2003) claims that a frontal view of an object or text offers a distorted and a limited perspective, rather than what is traditionally regarded as a clear view. To really see what is happening, he suggests the need to look awry and paradoxically take a ‘distorted’ view: The object assumes clear and distinctive features only if we look ‘at an angle’, i.e. with an interested view, supported permeated, and ‘distorted’ by desire. (Žižek, 1992: 12; emphasis added) Žižek (1992) describes how a change in the angle of a camera during film making can give a whole different perspective on the scene, and claims the observer also needs to bring their desire and subjectivity to the viewing rather than to try to take an objective neutral stance. This challenges rational approaches, and the Cartesian dualism (the subject–object, observer–observed, knower–known dichotomy). We become overfamiliar with the normative discourses which surround us; our individual and cultural scripts make the world familiar and recognizable, yet often we cannot ‘see the wood for the trees’. When we are ‘liberated’ from a particular way of seeing, new options then become available. This is not only an intellectual exercise but can also be a powerful change agent. When working as a family therapist ‘reframing’ proved a useful way for individuals and families to find new options to change patterns of behaving that they found destructive: In Family Therapy, Reframing is a technique developed by the Palo Alto Group. The therapist offers a description that gives the client a different way to look at their actions, hoping that this will enable them to see their problem differently and develop new options for actions as a result. (Weakland et al., 1974) Likewise within leadership training, reframing opens up new options for leaders so that they view their role and can see different options and ways to act or intervene. Short-Circuiting Žižek describes ‘short-circuiting’ as a process that brings new resources from different traditions, in order to see something new or hidden: Is not short-circuiting, therefore, one of the best metaphors for a critical reading? Is it not one of the most effective critical procedures to cross wires that do not usually touch: to take a major text and read it in a short-circuiting way, through the lens of a minor (marginalized) author, text or conceptual apparatus? … such a procedure can lead to insights which completely shatter and undermine our common perceptions. … The aim is to illuminate a standard text or ideological formation, making it readable in a totally new way. (Žižek, 2003: Foreword) To see beyond the obvious requires both new resources and also the ability to look and observe in new ways. This dual process of short-circuiting and looking awry provides options to reveal what was previously concealed within a dominant discourse. In this text I use theoretical, historical and experiential resources to short-circuit common perceptions; for example, drawing on theological resources and exploring religious fundamentalism as a lens to look awry at leadership (Chapter 7). Bringing my own subjectivity and desire to my work with leaders, as a coach and consultant, also provides me with rich data that I have used in this text. I make ‘disruptive interventions’ in my leadership development work; for example, asking leaders to undertake unusual observation exercises at airports or busy streets; to stop and observe the outside world like a video camera, recording everything they have seen, then to be like a mirror, observing their bodies, feelings, emotions and thoughts as they observe the outer world. I then coach and debrief them (sometimes individually or in groups) and offer interpretations about what they saw and also what they didn’t see, what their focus was. This exercise reveals feelings and insights, and tells them something different about their leadership and followership experiences, often something profound. For example, one leader observed pairs all the time: couples in love, couples arguing, two children, and on exploration he realized that he avoided teamwork, and needed to develop his team leadership capability if he was to develop his career. Another leader observed the technical apparatus of an airport flight announcing system, and reflected on how his focus at work was technical rather than on people; yet when we discussed his feelings, he revealed deep feelings of loss and sadness at the amount of time he spent away from family, on work assignments, and how he had to change roles to rebalance a dysfunctional https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 10/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text life–work balance. These interventions help leaders look awry at their work, put them sharply in touch with something that is not immediately obvious, and can have a powerful impact on their working lives. In this text I have also drawn from New Social Movement (NSM) theorists such as Alberto Melucci and Alain Touraine and other anthropologists, ethnographers and sociologists, who theorize how NSMs form and how they differ from traditional social movements. NSM theory provides new ways to look at leadership, as in these movements traditional leadership is not accepted, and de-centralized movements focus on ‘identity’ rather than on fighting for material gains. NSMs offer new ways to understand leadership in new organizational forms, such as developing networked and dispersed leadership or organizational matrix structures, for example. Leadership theorists have largely neglected this particular sociological and anthropological literature. Looking awry is to draw on new resources, to short-circuit them, and to place oneself as a reader/researcher or practitioner in a different place so that something new can perhaps be discovered. Network Analysis Actor-Networks, Ecosystems, Systems Thinking Manuel Castells (2000) describes the ‘Information Age’ and the ‘Network Society’, addressing how technology has impacted on contemporary society. Network analysis accounts for the ‘network society’ in which we live and work, and ensures that critical theory takes a systemic view of activity and leadership. Leadership is fundamentally an influencing activity, and to understand leadership we have to try also to understand what we are influencing. Many mainstream leadership perspectives are firmly rooted in modernity’s vision of the world, one of structures, hierarchies, clear divisions and boundaries. Yet in the postmodern/post-industrial world there is instability, fluidity and fast change, so that organizations are no longer clearly boundaried and ordered, if they ever were (Latour, 2005). Manual labour has largely migrated, and is surpassed in the West by cognitive or digital labour (Beradi, 2009). Global networks produce new forms of organizing and new organizational forms. Global flows create virtual worlds which are no longer peripheral but run our finance systems and global brands. The real and the virtual entwine in hybrid networks, and the contemporary workplace is interconnected and interdependent; Actor Network scholars (Latour, 2005; Law, 1993) inform us how organizations and the social world are better understood as networks of actors that are fluid and always changing. Actor Network scholars make the radical claim that both human and non-humans actors have agency in our networks, that we cannot understand the social world from a purely human-centric position. To understand leadership we must first try to understand how change takes place in organizations, and we achieve this only if we take a network and a systems perspective. Systems theory takes a holistic perspective and ecological view (Bateson, 1972; Churchman, 1968, 1979; Maturana and Varela, 1980, 1987; Naess, 1989; Von Bertalanffy, 1968). In the contemporary leadership and management literature Peter Senge (1994) is best known for his use of systems thinking and influential texts have also come from complexity theorists and integrative theorists such as Wilber (2000). Wheately (2006) wrote an informative account of ‘leadership and these new science’ incorporating these concepts and taking a network perspective: Our zeitgeist is a new (and ancient) awareness that we participate in a world of exquisite interconnectedness. We are learning to see systems rather than isolated parts and players. ... We can see the webs of inter-connections that weave the world together. (Wheatley, 2006: 158) One challenge to systemic, ecological, holistic and integrative theorists is that they often lack a power critique, and see systems thinking in terms of communication feedback loops without accounting for the real and discursive power issues that impact on any system (see Chapter 12, Eco-Leadership). Critical theorists refer to context as being hugely important, and argue that we must take account of power in networks, yet the bridge between theory and practice is very problematic. I draw upon my experience as a https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 11/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text family therapist and systemically informed consultant to apply systems thinking to the practice of leadership. The professional expertise developed through ‘clinical practice’ by family therapists offers a transferable and adaptable knowledge base to further develop the bridge between systemic theory and leadership practice.2 Leadership theory must develop a greater vigilance of the wider impact of leadership interventions taken. Network analysis attempts to address the complex social, political, economic and environmental challenges which are present in our organizations. Chapter 12 on Eco-leadership helps us to rethink organizations as ‘ecosystems within ecosystems’ and describes the new forms of leadership developing for 21st century organizations. Workplace networks are fluid, and employees are increasingly nomadic, moving between roles, project teams and virtual and real working spaces and places. The global and networked world offers new challenges and new opportunities; I coach and consult leaders using network analysis as a frame to help them think more strategically and more emergently. To be strategic, to think about the big picture, to understand change and the resistance to change, and to decipher how to influence organizations, leaders must first locate themselves in their own networks. Frames Summary These four frames, Emancipation, Depth Analysis, Looking Awry and Network Analysis, provide the basis for a critical approach to leadership and they also provide the four critical lenses from which leadership is viewed within this book. Box 3 Summary of Critical Frames https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 12/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 13/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Conclusion: Critical Theory and Leadership Applying critical theory to leadership demands that we identify some of the undercurrents, the historical and social trends that inform how leadership is thought about and practised. To achieve this we must look beyond the management and organizational leadership literature that draws too heavily on an ‘insider view’ and is saturated with rationalistic and individualist ‘heroic’ accounts of leadership. Box 4 offers some working assumptions on a critical approach to leadership. Box 4 Critical Theory and Leadership: Working Assumptions 1 Leadership exists within all forms of organization, whether this is overtly or covertly recognized. It is therefore important to understand how leadership works in practice. The task is to look beyond and beneath the norms and assumptions espoused about leadership in popular culture and the mainstream organizational literature. 2 Mainstream leadership assumptions and discourses reproduce the organizational power structures that already exist. Critical theorists pay particular attention to the discursive, systemic and structural aspects of leadership that privilege some and marginalize others. There is a tendency for organizations to drift blindly and unknowingly towards seductive but dangerous totalizing cultures. Revealing the role leadership plays within these processes and then to transform negative powerrelations is the task. 3 There is no leadership without followership and no leadership without power, influence and authority. Individual and communal autonomy and liberty therefore rely on organizations with nonauthoritarian leadership approaches. It is possible to take up leadership authority without being authoritarian. It is a utopian error to try to eliminate power relations. Critical theory attempts to make transparent and address (rather than eradicate) the relations between leadership and followership, authority and power. 4 Contemporary workplaces are increasingly important sites of social activity and community, replacing traditional communal structures such as the church. What happens in the workplace has a reflexive relationship with the wider environment. Understanding and improving the dynamics of leadership in the workplace is therefore essential to society in general. Reflexive learning between workplace leadership and socio-political leadership will have a systemic impact on governance and leadership across all social structures. 5 Critical theory, as well as offering a critique, strives to offer reformist and radical options that can create more humane workplaces, and contribute to building the good society. It is the task of this book to create theoretical frames to identify ways in which ‘leadership in practice’ can minimize power-relations that rely on control and coercion, and maximize the potential for emancipatory workplaces. Leadership is not inherently good or bad, it is potentially both. Ricoeur claims that Ethical Selfhood means ‘aiming for the good life with and for others in just institutions’ (Marsh, 2002: 224). Ricoeur’s statement guides us: leadership from a critical theory perspective is underpinned by an ethical stance. Leadership is to aim for the good life, to work with and for others to create the good society, and to lead and co-create just institutions. I will add a further ethical aim: leadership should also work towards protecting the natural environment. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 14/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Suggested Readings • Alvesson, M. and Wilmott, H. (1992) Critical Management Studies. London: Sage. • Bhaskar, R. (2010) The Formation of Critical Realism: A Personal Perspective. Oxford/New York: Routledge. Reflection Points • What does it mean to be entrapped by ‘normative assumptions’? • Why is it important to take an emancipatory position when adopting a critical stance? • Reflect on the key challenges critical theory faces when influencing leadership practice. Sample Assignment Question Briefly describe the four frames of critical inquiry, and choose one or more of these to explore an example of leadership practice you have encountered (this may be in the workplace, a social setting, or political leadership). 1 CMS – Critical Management Studies – a grouping of academics using critical theory to study management, leadership and all aspects of organizations and work. 2 Western (2008) offers an account of a systemic consultation to an organization, utilizing family therapy and other systemic techniques with the aim to distribute leadership and ‘democratize strategy’. What Is Leadership? 2 Chapter Structure • • • • Introduction The Idea of Leadership The Meaning of Leadership Conclusion: The Experience of Leadership Introduction Leadership is a contested term with multiple meanings and diverse practical applications. This chapter offers a brief overview, initially exploring ‘the idea of leadership’, and then explores the meanings we attribute to leadership, briefly scoping the main themes in leadership studies. There are many excellent resources that offer overviews of leadership but this book is particularly interested in placing leadership in its broader context, so I ‘begin at the beginning’, which is to explore our individual and collective ambivalent feelings https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 15/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text towards leadership. Exploring the idea of leadership from a psychosocial perspective reflects on our individual and collective emotional experience of leadership, showing how our feelings shape, how we theorize, perceive and enact leadership and followership. There is a deep longing and desire for leadership, symbolically played out in popular culture. Hollywood films and best-selling books mythologize leaders and are forever finding new leadership characters to feed our insatiable desire for heroic figures. The popularity of leadership is based on a desire to be led, to be saved, to be looked after, to be given meaning, and with the attractive subtext that seduces our egos:‘you too could be like them’. We have deep attachments to the idea of leadership, yet so often we also feel let down, overpowered, anxious, envious, distrustful, or even afraid of our leaders. We interpret and create leaders and leadership, depending on our ambivalent feelings towards the ‘object’ inside ourselves that relates to leadership. To ‘begin at the beginning’ is to acknowledge these strong emotional and ambivalent responses within ourselves as individuals, and collectively as social groups. Leadership cannot escape these emotional and unconscious responses, however rational we try to make it, because leadership sits at the heart of human desire and fear. From our infancy to our deathbeds, there is ambivalence: we desire to be led and also to be leaders. This ambivalence is expressed by Jacques Lacan in a story of psychoanalysis with a patient. • The psychoanalyst asks the patient on the couch: ‘What do you desire?’ • Patient replies: ‘I desire a master.’ • Psychoanalyst asks: ‘What kind of master?’ • Patient responds: ‘A master I can dominate.’ We desire to be looked after, cared for, and guided and nourished (to be loved and cherished, to find the perfect parent), and we fear losing our individuality and autonomy, or worse we fear being mistreated or coerced by others with power and influence. Our parents, teachers, bosses, religious and political leaders, all signify forms of leadership that carry these real hopes, dangers and emotional anxieties. History and personal experience teach us that leadership can be uplifting, benevolent and tyrannical; sometimes all three together. This chapter begins with psychosocial insights, exploring our conscious and unconscious ‘ideas of leadership’, because only with this understanding can we begin to make sense of the key meanings attributed to leadership in contemporary society. The Idea of Leadership Psychosocial Insights Leadership is created in our minds (individually and collectively), converted into social roles and positions, and internalized into identities. Leadership is a constant flux of psychosocial dynamics, enacted on the stage of life; power dynamics, individual feelings, collective identifications, herd behaviours, autonomy and dependency issues, courage and fear, unconscious fantasies, virtual communications, kindness and love, abuse and terror, politics and negotiations, the use and control of resources, manipulation and the strategic use of communications, influencing language and discourse, creating symbolic events, all and much more underpin the psychosocial dynamics of leadership. A mistake is to reduce leadership to the property of a heroic individual, to a set of skills or competencies or to a particular way of being. Leadership begins with an idea in our minds, and even when it becomes a social role, a reality so to speak, it remains essentially an idea that we are constantly and dynamically reworking, acting out and performing. Leadership is an idea we are constantly at work with, and play with. The Splitting of Leadership https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 16/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Leadership is often constructed as an ‘idealized’ form of human endeavour, in a tone that suggests a heroic beauty. The popular idea of leaders in the workplace is represented by key words such as strategic, future, change, passion, charisma, courage, integrity, authenticity and vision (this contrasts with a more mundane idea about management). Alvesson and Svenginsson (2003: 4) sum up the leadership literature: Contemporary writings usually frame leadership in terms of the visionary and heroic aspects, it is the leader’s abilities to address [by talking and persuading] the many through the use of charisma, symbols and other strongly emotional devices, the ambition being to arouse and encourage people to embark upon organizational projects. Hirschhorn (1999: 146) writes: A leader’s major role is to give us a dream. Without the dream there is no basis for us to mobilise the extra effort, attention and skill we need to achieve a goal fraught with risks. Many of us, perhaps most of us, would rather sit on the sidelines, do our daily work and hope that we can participate in the gains that others have sweated for. The dream, by contrast, excites us all. Leadership is often portrayed as a golden chalice, a most sought after object, yet on the other hand we take pleasure in decrying and bemoaning our leaders too. This idea of leadership as a ‘good object’ also has a shadow side, leadership as a ‘bad object’ that creates a splitting of leadership, reflecting our ambivalent feelings about leaders. Freud presented us with our conflicted selves, with the ambivalence that’s sits within us, revealing that we can have conscious feelings: ‘l love my Mother’ conflicted with unconscious feelings of ‘I hate my Mother’, and the latter is often repressed into our unconscious, as it is socially and personally unacceptable. The Return of the Repressed Psychoanalysis reveals that repressed unconscious material returns to haunt us. Leaders who are idealized beyond their capacity for goodness, with their shadow side being repressed, can end up self-destructing, either through becoming narcissistic and grandiose and behaving irrationally, or by simply making bad judgements based on their feelings of omnipotence and invincibility. Repression means that we experience our feelings, yet we are not fully aware of them and act on them in distorted ways. For example, if I repress feelings of envy and anger towards a ‘good leader’ I may unconsciously sabotage her at important meetings; alternatively, these feelings may make me overcompensate and become overly compliant, and super-positive about her, ignoring misjudgements and unable to offer constructive criticism. This latter state of being ‘super-positive’ is commonplace in leadership studies, where the ‘good object’ transformational leader is desired and acclaimed, yet the shadow side of leadership is either hidden or exported to others such as ‘boring managers’ (explored later on in the chapter). This splitting is not always obvious. Bass offers an example: Leaders are authentically transformational when they increase awareness of what is right, good, important and beautiful, when they help to elevate followers’ needs for achievement and self-actualization, when they foster in followers higher moral maturity and when they move followers to go beyond their self interests for the good of their group, organization or society. (Bass, 1990b: 171) This statement at face value seems uplifting and helpful, yet it reproduces the classic split between ‘idealized leader’ and ‘disempowered followers’. The leader has the charisma and influence to elevate followers, to move them beyond themselves, to foster in them a higher morality. The follower is the passive recipient, awaiting the charismatic leader to spark them into becoming a higher being (like the leader themselves). As a colleague whispered to me recently during a keynote speech by such a transformational leader, ‘It’s like being at church!’ https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 17/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Leadership splitting occurs between leaders and followers, managers and leaders, and between good and bad leaders. When leadership is spilt, we are either powerful leaders with agency or disempowered followers. Our leaders become saviours or villains (sometimes this is modified to become less polemic: ‘She’s a really good leader’ or ‘He’s hopeless but a nice guy’). Splitting leadership between good and bad can focus on a single leader who carries both parts of the split in our minds, or two characters can be involved; all the good projected into one leader, and all the bad into another. I observed Tony Blair’s leadership with great interest over a number of years, and noticed how he always had an alter-ego, a ‘disliked’ shadow, who took many of the negative projections leaving him to take the positive ones (Alistair Campbell, Gordon Brown, and Peter Mandelson all fulfilled this role for him). In a 2012 banking mis-selling scandal at Barclays bank, the reaction was a classic case of splitting: (a) demonize bad leaders, (b) call for new saviour leaders. Simon Walker, head of the Institute of Directors, was infuriated by the abusive treatment of small business in the banking scandal, saying ‘There is a serious failure of leadership of many banks and there should be a clearout of the leaders who created this mess’, while Sir Mervin King, Governor of the Bank of England, said ‘What I hope is that everyone – everyone – understands that something went very wrong with the UK banking industry and we have to put it right’; he then called for ‘leadership of an unusually high order’ (Pratley, 2012). In this case the CEO of Barclays, Bob Diamond, was pushed to resign only to be replaced by another senior insider from the bank, who self-evidently must have been part of the culture that caused the problem in the first place. A leader becomes a ‘bad object’ overnight, and is replaced by a ‘good object’ who immediately claims he will clean up the culture of the bank. The good sheriff rides into town as his corrupt predecessor is chased by the posse into the distant hills … our leadership narratives from Hollywood get played out in our corporations far too often! Leadership is written about objectively in rational, and scholarly, terms yet leadership stimulates primal emotions that are both conscious and unconscious, individual and collective. Cultural Leadership Scripts Each of us has personal conscious and unconscious reactions to individual leaders and we also have cultural scripts that we embody and act out collectively. In the USA the cultural script has strong resonance with the heroic, individual leader, striving to better themselves, to strive for a ‘free’ society, to fulfil the American Dream. This cultural script is seen in social movements (Martin Luther King), in media stars (Oprah Winfrey), in corporate settings (Steve Jobs), and it is also reflected in leadership scholarship. Transformational and charismatic exceptional leadership rhetoric emanates from and dominates the American market. In Europe a greater scepticism and ambivalence exists about leadership, perhaps due to recent catastrophes linked to despotic leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Franco; and this also may be due to cultural experiences: strong historical social and egalitarian inspired movements, such as socialism, the French revolution with its legacy of ‘liberty, fraternity, equality’, the trade union movement, social religious movements, and strong social democratic politics pursuing ideals such as the welfare state and public health provision. My personal observations are of a healthy scepticsm about leadership in Europe (critical theorists are much more prevalent in Europe than in the USA), but also a less generous attitude and more envy of individual success in the UK/Europe than in the USA. The pop star Morrissey from Manchester captures this in a song entitled ‘We hate it when our friends become successful’, containing the line ‘if we can destroy them, you bet your life we will destroy them’, and the UK press certainly relishes destroying leaders, whether political figures or football managers. Beyond Europe and the USA, leadership has many diverse cultural and historical narratives that inform how it is socially enacted, though with too much diversity to address here. Box 5 Power Corrupts but Projections Corrupt More https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 18/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Leadership and projective identification Psychoanalytic insights refer to regressed childhood experiences being acted out on the stage of adult life, as one explanation for this splitting. It suggests we seek the idealized parent figures in our leaders: we desire ‘a good mummy or daddy’ or conversely we transfer angry feelings onto leaders if we perceive ill-treatment from parents or authority figures from our past. Melanie Klein (1959) explains the notion of splitting and projection, how we take unwanted feelings and project them onto others. Our leaders are excellent receptacles for these projected feelings due to their roles as authority figures. We see in our leaders the aspects of ourselves we have projected into them, and we can feel very let down if a leader fails to live up to our idealized desires. The leader themselves becomes shaped by these projections, identifying with them, and so can feel persecuted by negative projections, by envious followers, or can become grandiose and omnipotent if they identify with idealized projections about how wonderful they are. It is often said that ‘power corrupts’, which I am sure is a truism for some leaders, but in my experience of working with leaders ‘projections corrupt’ more than power. How else can we explain the number of leaders who reach high office, and then lose the plot, acting in ways that are beyond rational understanding, and self-destruct. Bill Clinton in the White House, taking ridiculous sexual risks for example: this was not just abusing his power, it was beyond rational explanation for such an intelligent man to take such risks after all he had worked for. The only explanation is the unconscious one. My hypothesis is that Clinton over-identified with the positive projections from his admiring followers, internalizing these idealized projections, and became grandiose and omnipotent. Unconsciously believing he was beyond ‘normal’ scrutiny, beyond normal codes of behaviour, he regressed to a childlike and narcissistic state that led an inner voice to tell him, ‘I can do anything I want to and nobody can stop me.’ A leader can often receive good and bad projections: ‘She’s such a big head and she thinks she knows it all’ … ‘She’s fantastic, what she has achieved is amazing.’ Leaders attract and react to these projections, and one of the tasks of leaders is to try to take a mature position, not to be seduced by good projections, becoming grandiose and omnipotent, or not to be destroyed or dysfunctionally hurt by bad projections. To be a leader is to walk a tightrope, between two poles created by social and unconscious forces. ‘Leadership as an Attractor and Container of Projections’ Most leadership texts, coaches and developmental processes focus on leadership behaviours and how a leader projects their image outward, and less on how they attract and manage conscious and unconscious projections from followers. One of the leadership development activities I work with as coach is ‘Leadership as an Attractor and Container of Projections’. Exploring these processes is deep work, but vitally important for leaders and leadership teams. Individual leaders have an advantage over group or collective leadership due to the capacity for individual personalities to attract ‘good’ projections, where a ‘faceless’ collective body, for example a boardroom or political party, find it much more difficult. This explains how even though collective leadership may be taking place, a figurehead is chosen or is seen to be leading. Individual figureheads, even when they are not the most gifted leaders, are sometimes selected as they can galvanize positive projections and identifications that lead to a loyal followership (some claim that Ronald Regan was a classic example). This also explains how individuals can falsely believe they are, and be experienced by others as, the sole ‘heroic’ change agent when co-leaders are involved. An individual leader’s role and personality will attract projections from individual and collective followers, and it is these projections onto the leader that they then identify with. If they project ideas of intelligence onto the leader for example, they may give up their own intelligent thoughts and wait for the ‘wise’ intelligent https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 19/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text leader to come up with the answers. I have often facilitated boardroom meetings where this occurs. The leader also projects unwanted parts of themselves onto others in order to protect and sustain their identity, exporting negative elements onto others (Petriglieri and Stein, 2012). https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/26!/4/2/2/2/4@0:0 20/20 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text A leader’s ability to stimulate the positive projections of followers, to contain the negative ones, and not to be seduced or overwhelmed by either, is an exceptional leadership quality. Management vs Leadership I will now explore both the split and the overlaps between management and leadership. The terms ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ are often used interchangeably and both evoke multiple meanings. Managers demonstrate leadership and likewise leaders usually have managerial skills. Traditionally leadership is a concept largely used in social and political settings yet in recent years is has become very prominent in the workplace, taking an elevated status above management, as Bennis and Nanus (1985: 218) point out: Management typically constitutes a set of contractual exchanges … What gets exchanged is not trivial: jobs, security, and money. The result, at best, is compliance; at worst you get a spiteful obedience. The end result of leadership is completely different: it is empowerment. Not just higher profits and wages … but an organizational culture that helps employees generate a sense of meaning in their work and a desire to challenge themselves to experience success. Leaders and leadership have become a very sought-after commodity. Bennis (1986: 45) states that many American companies are ‘over-managed and under-led’, saying, ‘I tend to think of the differences between leaders and managers as those who master the context and those who surrender to it’. Leadership has been rediscovered in an attempt to address the contemporary social and economic conditions faced by organizations. Leaders are thought to possess more of the qualities to address the contemporary organizational challenges than managers. There are many articles discussing the managers versus leadership debate (Barker, 1997; Kotter, 1990; Zaleznik, 1992), but the general tone is similar: managers are more rational and controlling, and they relate to structure, stability and bureaucracy, whereas leadership is about passion, vision, inspiration, creativity and cooperation rather than control. Alvesson and Sveningsson (2003: 1436) note: Leadership is often defined as being about ‘voluntary’ obedience. There are assumptions of harmony and convergence of interest, and the leader seldom uses formal authority or reward/punishment in order to accomplish compliance [Barker, 2001; Nicholls, 1987; Zaleznik, 1977]. Levy says ‘in each individual you need to have the mind of a manager and the soul of a leader’ (2004: 3; cited in Jackson and Parry, 2011); management then becomes the earthly, material, rational aspect of organizing, whereas leadership becomes the heartfelt, soulful, spiritual aspect. Zaleznik (1992) separates leadership and management neatly, perhaps too neatly: A managerial culture emphasizes rationality and control. Whether his or her energies are directed toward goals, resources, organization structures, or people, a manager is a problem solver … It takes neither genius nor heroism to be a manager, but rather persistence, tough-mindedness, hard work, intelligence, analytical ability and perhaps most important, tolerance and goodwill. (1992: 126) Whereas leaders: Leaders work from high-risk positions; indeed, they are often temperamentally disposed to seek out risk and danger, especially where the chance of opportunity and reward appears promising. (p. 126) Others see the leaders as network builders, integrators and communicators, wedded to the ideas of cooperation (Alvesson, 2002). Bryman (1996) says that leaders have an integrative role: creating change and organizational culture through the transmission of cultural values. Much of the literature idealizes contemporary leaders, claiming they seldom use formal authority or means of rewards/punishment to accomplish compliance (Zaleznik, 1992). Yet in practice I observe that leaders use formal authority alongside influencing skills, demonstrating the blurring between leadership and management. Management as the ‘Other’ to Leadership https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/28!/4/306/2@0:10.9 1/13 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Management has assumed the derogatory ‘other’ to leadership. The manager has been relegated to an outdated, functionalist and mechanistic mode of operating more suited to the industrial age than the postindustrial workplace. Yet there is a fight-back, and Dubrin points to the need for management as well as leadership: ‘Without being led as well as managed, organizations face the threat of extinction’ (2000: 4). Mintzberg writes: Leadership is supposed to be something bigger, more important. I reject this distinction, simply because managers have to lead and leaders have to manage. Management without leadership is sterile; leadership without management is disconnected and encourages hubris. (2004: 6) Paul du Gay’s (2000) In Praise of Bureaucracy and Elliot Jaques’ (1990) article ‘In praise of hierarchy’ also challenge this general trend, which puts leadership in front of management in contemporary organizational life. Dubrin (2000) offers the following leader/manager dualisms: visionary as opposed to rational, passionate vs consulting, creative vs persistent, inspiring vs tough-minded, innovative vs analytical, courageous vs structured. Yukl critiques two-factor leadership examples – Task versus Relations, Autocratic versus Participative, Leadership versus Management, and Transformational versus Transactional leadership – and finds ‘These dichotomies provide some insights, but they also over-simplify a complex phenomenon and encourage stereotyping of individual leaders’ (Yukl, 1999: 34). Management is clearly the ‘other’ to leadership and helps define leadership by showing what it is not. Leadership is very clearly in vogue and ‘sexy’, and the hopes are that it will provide answers to the new era rather than manage the present. A.K. Rice is very clear that a manager must also be a leader because ‘any institution whose managers do not give leadership … is obviously in difficulty’ (Rice, 1965: 20). Rice, however, sees management as essentially rational and conscious, whereas leadership can also be exercised unconsciously. Rice identifies two tasks of leadership: a conscious task and an unconscious task. He is suggesting that leaders need to develop an awareness of their own conscious and unconscious roles. This implies that the leader has a conscious and manifest role relating to the work environment and task performance and an unconscious role to contain the emotions and expectations they have placed on them by the group. In this book I will not attempt to separate the manager and leader with surgical precision. I work on the assumption that managers will have some leadership qualities and responsibilities and vice versa. The idea of leadership in our conscious and unconscious minds underpins how we perceive and enact leadership. The Meaning of Leadership The next part of this chapter explores the different meanings we give to leadership. When listening to discussions about leadership in workplaces, people rarely explore what they mean by the term, yet Dubrin (2000) estimates there are 35,000 definitions of leadership in academic literature (Pye, 2005: 32). Kets de Vries notes a rapid increase in articles in the leadership bible Stogdills Handbook of Leadership, yet describes the contents as ‘plodding and detached, often far removed from the reality of day-to-day life’ (2006: 251). Yet in spite of so much interest and research, leadership always seems just beyond our reach. Leadership selection remains ad hoc and leadership development is subject to arbitrary methods and with ‘remarkable little evidence of the impact of leadership or leadership development on organizational performance’ (Bolden et al., 2011: 5). Annie Pye suggests: The continuing search for the Holy Grail, which seems to characterize interest in leadership, implies that research efforts are perhaps being directed at ‘solving the wrong problem’. (Pye, 2005: 31) Definitions of Leadership https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/28!/4/306/2@0:10.9 2/13 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Barnard (1938/1991: 81) identified that ‘lead’ is both a noun and a verb and therefore has a double meaning. The noun could mean ‘to be a guide to others, to be the head of an organization’, whilst the verb could mean ‘to excel and to be in advance’. Likewise, ‘leadership’ is used to describe social interaction between people and the term ‘leader’ is used to denote a person (or sometimes a group/company) who has influence over others (Northouse, 2004; Yukl, 2002). The term ‘leadership’ is also used to describe personality traits and behaviours and to denote the roles of individuals and collectives. Box 6 sets out the definition that has emerged from researching this book. Box 6 Definition of Leadership Leadership is a psychosocial influencing dynamic Leadership is not solely the property of individuals or groups, nor a set of competencies or skills, it more accurately described as a psychosocial influencing dynamic. • Psycho refers to the psychodynamics of leadership, referencing that it occurs both within and between people. Leadership (and followership) stimulate intrapsychic, unconscious and emotional responses within us, and inter-relational dynamics between us. • Social refers to the social construction and social dynamics of leadership. Leadership is more than a relational phenomena, it also references power and authority, control of material and symbolic resources, use of knowledge and technology. Discourses, history, culture and politics, i.e. the social field, must be accounted for in our understanding of leadership. • Influencing: leadership signifies a specific agency, which is to influence others. Influencing is a wide-ranging term, and leadership draws on a vast array of resources, from personality to coercive power to influence others. • Dynamic refers to the dynamic movement of leadership. It is never one thing, it is fluid not static, and cannot be reduced to skills, competencies, or a way of being. Leadership cannot be fixed; it moves between people as a dynamic social process. Organizing Leadership Different scholars have ordered leadership to try to help us organize it into categories. Northouse (2004: 3), reviewing leadership theory, identified four common themes: • Leadership is a process • Leadership involves influence • Leadership occurs in a group context • Leadership involves goal attainment Keith Grint (2005) identifies a similar four-fold leadership typology of leadership: • Person: who leads – traits and personality approaches • Results: what leaders achieve • Position: where they lead from – in front, alongside etc. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/28!/4/306/2@0:10.9 3/13 10/10/2017 • Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Process: how leadership works Jackson and Parry (2011) use five perspectives: • Leader-centred • Follower-centred • Cultural perspectives • Critical/distributed perspectives • Leadership as a higher purpose Leadership is framed in different ways and there are a multitude of leadership styles/approaches currently in circulation. Box 7 offers a few of the approaches available. Box 7 Leadership Approaches https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/28!/4/306/2@0:10.9 4/13 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text In this chapter I order leadership into the following perspectives and take a critical view of each: • Individual • Collective • Contextual • Followers • New leadership Individual Leadership Traits Competencies and Transformational Leadership The main body of leadership literature focuses on leaders as individuals, taking behaviours, traits and competencies approaches. These use a positivist theoretical framework and are critiqued as oversimplistic, reductionist and offering unrealistic solutions to complex problems (Barley and Kunda, 1992; Calas and Smircich, 1995; Casey, 1995; Tourish and Pinnington, 2002). Grint (2005: 14) claims we need to move beyond individualistic approaches and ‘put the –ship back in leadership’. Today the multi-million dollar business of leadership development tends to focus on developing leadership traits and competencies. There has been a long search to try to define which aspects of the personality (i.e. traits) make a good leader. Observations and studies of exceptional leaders try to identify which aspects of their personality enabled them to be ‘great leaders’, and examples such as courage, charisma, vision, fortitude were identified as traits to be exemplified. Another approach derived from cognitive behavioural psychology attempts to identify what leaders do, rather than what their personalities consist of. This functionalist approach aims to modify and develop a potential leader’s behaviour, in order to improve their leadership. Having identified the traits and competencies that good leaders have, individuals are trained and tested against this list to improve these behaviours or competencies. Manfred Kets de Vries finds the literature on leadership traits overwhelming and confusing but identifies some commonality in the findings: ‘conscientiousness, extroversion, dominance, self-confidence, energy, agreeableness, intelligence, openness to experience and emotional stability’ (Kets de Vries, 1994). As Kets de Vries points out, these traits are very open-ended and, when discussed, they open up a heated polemic as to the nature of what they really mean. The most common criticism of the trait/competency approach is that they offer ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches, defining universal competencies or traits, which all individuals must have if they are to be successful leaders. For example, a National Health Service Quality framework for leadership provided a competency framework for its leaders (see www.nhsleadershipqualities.nhs.uk). Bolden and Gosling (2006) critique this competency approach, pointing out that vast resources were spent on NHS quality and leadership competency frameworks. Sadly the competencies leaders across the whole of the NHS were expected to attain had very little research validity or linkage to practice as the competencies were derived from a small number of self-reported interviews from chief executives. How these competencies can universally be relevant to clinical leaders in surgery, nurse leaders, finance leaders and a multitude of others is a mystery. The most popular current individual leadership approach is transformational leadership. Transformational Leadership: ‘The Charisma Trait’ Gemmil and Oakley (1992) pointed to a resurgence in the 1990s of the ‘traitist’ approach, identifying charisma as an embodiment of this approach: ‘Charisma is the leadership trait most often examined by members of the “leadership mafia”’ (in Grint, 1997: 277). Gemmil and Oakley’s anti-leadership polemic names Bennis and Nanus (1985), Zaleznik (1989) and Tichy and Devanna (1986) as part of the new wave of leadership theorists drawing on the trait approach. Transactional leadership is often juxtaposed with https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/28!/4/306/2@0:10.9 5/13 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text transformational leadership, yet it still fits within the individualistic approach, but focuses on how leadership takes place through transactional behaviours rather than influencing skills. Collective Leadership Collective leadership can refer to team leadership, leadership as a process, or distributed leadership. Senior teams, project teams, and boards of directors work together in offering ‘collective leadership’; the process of leadership occurs between collective groups of people; and finally distributed leadership disperses leadership throughout organizations, creating a collective leadership approach. Pearce and Conger (2003: 1) describe ‘shared leadership’ as a dynamic interaction whereby the ‘objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals’. Some claim that leadership is essentially collective and not individual. Senge (1990) has defined leadership as ‘the collective capacity to create useful things’, and Collinson states, ‘In effect, leadership is the property and consequence of a community rather than the property and consequence of an individual leader’ (2006: 183). The word ‘Ubuntu’ crops up in leadership studies (Hickman, 2012); emanating from Africa, it relates to the interdependencies of the group and fits with the ideas of collective leadership. Team Leadership Collective team leadership provides a different level of containment and confidence than an individual leader, who is more likely to stimulate dependency responses from followers. Team leadership also provides more balance and working well optimizes the diverse capabilities of the group. Leadership as a Process Critical theorists claim that leadership is a relational and social process, rather than being the property of an individual or team (Collinson, 2006; Grint, 2005). This perspective shifts the emphasis away from elitism and hierarchy, but doesn’t yet offer many practical insights as to how leadership as a process can be worked with beyond a conceptual idea. Distributed Leadership Distributive or dispersed leadership are popular concepts and relate to the changing post-industrial work conditions that cannot be managed in a top-down, expert, command and control structure. Chapter 12, EcoLeadership, offers an in-depth view of distributed leadership for post-industrial organizations. Raelin (2003) argues that leaders should create environments that develop ‘leaderful’ organizations, where all are expected to be leaders in a collective endeavour. Daniel Goleman describes this distributive leadership as ‘every person at entry level who in one way or another, acts as a leader’ (2002: 14). Elmore agrees: ‘[in] knowledge intensive enterprises like teaching and learning there is no way to perform these complex tasks without widely distributing the responsibility for leadership among roles in the organization’ (2000: 14). Collective leadership distributed across an organization requires democratization, connectivity and collaboration. The advantages are a more alive, adaptive and energized organization; the disadvantages are that many leadership voices compete for airtime, and if power and leadership are really distributed, it can create a more conflictual organization than with a ‘dependent’ group of conformist followers. This latter point is not often aired in the literature yet it needs addressing. A healthy democracy cannot operate without opposition voices to those governing, and in organizations dissenting voices are vital for healthy and creative organizations. In my experience the gap between the rhetoric of distributed leadership and the actual practice of distributing leadership is wide. Distributing leadership means distributing power and control from the centre to the edges, and this creates huge anxiety, and real challenges at the top of organizational structures. Senior leaders face a paradox: they can no longer control from the centre, yet to distribute influence and power can feel highly risky, when they are accountable to the board and shareholders. Those companies and organizations that achieve distributed leadership operate with higher levels of trust and with a general belief in their shared goals than companies who wish to distribute leadership simply to gain market share or increase productivity. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/28!/4/306/2@0:10.9 6/13 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Another paradox exists. Sometimes it requires a ‘Messiah leader’, a charismatic and visionary individual or team, to drive change and create new collaborative cultures with distributed leadership. The challenge here is for the Messiah leader to initiate, provoke and stimulate change and be prepared to let go of power when successful: a difficult task! Contextual Leadership The Social Context of an Organization The essence of contextual leadership approaches is the acknowledgement that it is foolish to try to apply universal leadership approaches to non-universal, diverse contexts. Organizations have diverse structures and cultures, depending on the wider environmental, social, cultural and political contexts, as well as their product/outputs, client base etc. All have to be taken into account when reflecting on what leadership fits the context. Fred Fiedler’s Contingency approach (1967, 1974) attempted to rescue leadership theory from the simplistic notion of the ‘one-best-fit’ leader for all situations. Fiedler proposed that the leadership style would need to be different to fit different situations, i.e. it had to be situational and contingent. He attempted to find the optimal match between leadership style and situation. Critics challenge his research claims of success on the grounds that there has been a failure to replicate results and some of the results conflict with subordinates’ accounts of leaders (Bryman, 1986). Contingency approaches challenge the notion of the one-best-style leader for different situations yet they focus on the two-factor model of relationship- or task-centred leader. Taskcentred leaders focus on the task rather than people and are more directive. This approach suits certain situations, for example, in hierarchical organizations with unstructured tasks, whereas relationship-centred leaders are favoured in the majority of situations as they focus on people and participation. Unfortunately this offers yet another dualistic model, ‘relational or task’, that does not account for the complexity of understanding relationships, power and leadership from multiple perspectives. Contingency leadership is also critiqued for still treating followers passively, in spite of recognizing that different leadership approaches are required for different follower situations. The contingency approach attempts to address some of the social context issues faced by leaders but tries to package it into oversimplistic assumptions. Much more work is required in this area as a one-best-fit leadership style or an over-simplified contingency approach to leadership is still common practice. There are many factors to consider, such as functions and outputs. Within organizations there is a diversity of outputs and functions depending on the department; as different skills, training and cultures are required in different departments, so also are different leadership styles, structures and processes. Other factors are product and meaning. The product or output of the organization is very underestimated in the leadership literature, as it impacts on the leadership requirements and needs of that organization. For example, leadership of a public sector hospital differs from leading McDonald’s food chain or a global weapons manufacturer. Multinationals have found to their cost through the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions that underestimating diverse cultures can have a huge impact on success and failure. The output of the organization impacts on the technical and structural aspects of organizational life and also on the psychosocial dynamics of the organization. Hospitals produce different outputs to supermarkets, and also different meanings for workers, and user groups/customers: leaders must also address the question of meaning in an organization. Size Matters: Individuals, Teams and Mass Leadership Can we talk about a single leadership approach and refer to a small start-up company and a global institution? One leader requires an entrepreneurial mindset and the other, symbolic leadership skills, communicating to mass employees, and their market and stakeholder groups. The leadership task of a national president is different from that of a team leader. Showing leadership in a one-to-one mentoring session can be very effective and influential, but differs from leading a virtual project team. Some leaders excel when utilizing symbolic leadership to a mass audience, whilst their interpersonal leadership skills at a team level can be very poor. When selecting and developing leaders context matters, and leadership must always be ‘local and specific’. Certainly common features exist, and generic skills are useful, but leadership has to be considered adaptable to its environment, otherwise it feels like an imposition. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781446293300/cfi/6/28!/4/306/2@0:10.9 7/13 10/10/2017 Bookshelf Online: Leadership: A Critical Text Followers Without followership leadership doesn’t exist. Followership is symbiotic with leadership, and to understand leadership is to recognize how leaders and followers co-produce and sustain each other (Ladkin, 2006). Leaders and followers have tended to be seen as dualist opposites, with the main focus being on the leader. Through this dualistic lens followers have been presented both individually and collectively as passive objects, to be moulded, coerced and influenced by the leader. However, due to the rise in interest of dispersed leadership and autonomous teams, with post-structuralists deconstructing leadership, followership has gained importance and the dualistic approach is being challenged. Collinson (2006: Intro) cites a widening literature that insists that followers are integral to the leadership process: rejecting the common stereotype of followers as timid, docile sheep, these writers argue that in the contemporary context of greater team working, ‘empowered, knowledge workers’, and ‘distributed’ and ‘shared’ leadership, ‘goo...
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Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Running head: IMPROVING QUALITY IN HEALTHCARE

Improving Quality in Healthcare
Name
Institution

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IMPROVING QUALITY IN HEALTHCARE

Improving Quality in Healthcare
Improving health care quality in the United States is the effort conducted by the
government in ensuring that the patients can receive quality and adequate health care. But with
this objective, the healthcare industry is facing many challenges towards achieving the objective.
One of the methods of ensuring the quality of healthcare is through engagement of every health
care provider towards supporting the administration of quality and safety health care to the
patients. In ensuring that the quality and safety of care is administered, there is the need of
considering burnout which affects many health care providers and tends to diminish their
administration of quality care. Maintenance of teamwork within a healthcare institution has also
been found to reduce medical errors, decrease the healthcare-associated infections and higher
quality of newborn resuscitation which all tend to improve the quality of healthcare and patients
safety as required by the law (Tawfik et al., 2017). There is the need for ensuring modification of
teamwork and personal resilience of the health care providers for the effective provision of
quality, reliable and safety health care.
The biblical principle which applies to the context of the article is that there is the need of
an individual to rest after working. Healthcare providers need to have some time off from work
and rest to ensure eradication of burnout which is the cause of diminishing of healthcare quality.
From the Bible, "God created for six days; then He rested, not because He was tired but to set the
standard for mankind to follow," In this content the Bible explains that there is the need of an
individual to rest after work so that they can be able to regain back the energy that they lost
during work. Through resting, it will ensure that an individual can get energy and ensure that
they become effective when at work. Nurses need to get rest to avoid about to ensure that the
quality of healthcare is maintained.

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IMPROVING QUALITY IN HEALTHCARE

The information presented in the article is very credible as through teamwork of
healthcare providers it will ensure efficient administration of quality healthcare. Many errors that
occur in the administration of healthcare is due to over-reliance of certain individuals to provide
care. This has led to deteriorating medical services provided to the patients thus affecting health
care quality. Health care providers need to work as a team to tackle all the merging issues and to
use research and knowledge to come with ways of combating various diseases (Wallang & Ellis,
2017). Burnout affects performances of health care providers; therefore, there is the need of
having adequate personnel in every healthcare organization to maintain and improve quality of
healthcare.

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IMPROVING QUALITY IN HEALTHCARE

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References
Tawfik, D. S., Sexton, J. B., Adair, K. C., Kaplan, H. C., & Profit, J. (2017). Context in Quality
of Care: Improving Teamwork and Resilience. Clinics in perinatology, 44(3), 541-552.
Retrieved From:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jochen_Profit/publication/319256436_The_Quality_Improv
ement_Context_in_Neonatal_Intensive_Care_A_Qualitative_Study/links/5a01d82d4585152c9db
53da5/The-Quality-Improvement-Context-in-Neonatal-Intensive-Care-A-Qualitative-Study.pdf
The Holy Bible.
Wallang, P., & Ellis, R. (2017). Stress, burnout and resilience and the HCA. British Journal of
Healthcare Assistants, 11(6), 273-275.

Attached.

Running head: LEADERSHIP DEFINITIONS AND BIOGRAPHICAL LEADERSHIP

Leadership Definitions and Biographical Leadership
Name
Institution

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LEADERSHIP DEFINITIONS AND BIOGRAPHICAL LEADERSHIP

Leadership Definitions and Biographical Leadership
Introduction
Leadership is one of the concepts that has a variable definition of the true meaning of the
word. Many scholars have provided a different explanation of the word leadership which have
varied meaning depending on the profession of an individual. A Politician, manager, teacher,
parents and many other individuals are all considered leaders in different concepts.
Understanding and exploring the meaning of leadership help an individual to classify if a
particular person is a leader or not. An individual who can think critically and be in a position to
apply the critical theory in many of the decision that they make can be considered as effective
leaders.
Part I
Biographical Leadership Definition
Coming with an effective explanation of a leader requires integration of many
components that an individual requires to possess to be acknowledged as a...


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