Leadership: A Paradigm Shift

The purpose here is to advance a paradigm of leadership that requires nothing less than a total questioning the way that politicians, the media and more seriously the various centres and schools of leadership, management consultants, etc., have, over recent decades, devalued leadership to the extent that it has all but lost its meaning in a sea of ambiguity, contradiction, jargon, buzz words and pretentiousness etc.

What Leadership and Learning Pathways (LLP) does not offer are easy answers, just difficult, if necessary, questions. It does, however, call for a deconstruction of much of our present understanding of ‘leadership’ in which the focus is on ‘leader’, authority, management etc., rather than on the exercise of leadership itself. It asserts that much of the present understanding of ‘leadership’ that relies on the notion that ‘leaders’ and ‘leadership’ is somehow intrinsically linked is essentially flawed.

For many years now LLP has become increasingly concerned about the general absence of any philosophical and empirical rigour relating to our present use and understanding of the concept of leadership itself. Mention ‘leadership’, and the word invariably evokes images of leaders, particularly historical leaders, boards of management, heads of industry, of education and the public service sector, as well as leading political figures etc. Nevertheless, the aim here is to challenge this somewhat misleading, inadequate and thus ineffective picture of leadership and to replace it with a much more concrete, coherent and factual understanding that will greatly benefit development both at the educational, social and organisational level of human enterprise.

In order to move towards this ‘new’ paradigm we need to directly address

• The current, and flawed, notion of leadership by addressing its inherent contradictions that tend to lessen the possibility of any positive results that the exercise of leadership could bring.

• The tangled issue of leaders and leadership with the aim of disconnecting the former from the latter.

• The possibility of establishing a more authentic understanding of leadership that can be applied throughout social and organisational life for the benefit of all.

It should be of serious concern when the word ‘leadership’, a very positive expression, is so often associated with dictators, tyrants, incompetent leaders and administrators, greedy heads of business, bullying bosses etc. For if the application of leadership is somehow beneficial, and it is, how then can it be associated with impoverished governance?

Although leadership cannot, like beauty or quality, be precisely defined, nevertheless, it can be known. We can, in relation to social, or organisational, behaviour become aware of it, or of its absence.

Thus the purpose here is to establish the fact that leadership is not merely a word but an actually existing phenomenon that when adopted and exercised will have a positive influence on the life of our communities and of our organisations. Meanwhile, what we find in the management literature, and more particularly in the media, is evidence of an almost complete lack of understanding, as well as a general ambiguity and misunderstanding of 'leadership'.

There exists throughout the media generally, and the management and historical literature in particular, a misleading and therefore valueless notion of what leadership is all about. Much of the literature tends to confuse ‘leaders’ with ‘leadership’ just as management gurus and business journals mistakenly jumble ‘management’ with ‘leadership’.

We continually hear the phase: ‘The nation, or organisation, needs ‘leadership’ usually prefixed by ‘strong’, and usually translated as ‘strong’ leader. Or we may hear the call for ‘responsible’, ‘effective’, ‘purposeful’ leadership etc., a call that begs the question: ‘What then of ‘weak’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘ineffective’, ‘aimless’ leadership? Now while it is generally acknowledged that you can have ‘strong’ leaders, ‘responsible’, ‘effective’ and ‘compassionate’ leaders, you also find ‘weak’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘ineffective’, ‘callous’, ‘psychopathic’ etc., leaders.

However, if the concept of ‘leadership’ itself denotes something positive, and LLP argues that it does, then it cannot carry the prefix ‘weak’, ‘irresponsible’ ‘bad’ etc.

In relation to leadership it is not a question of a leader being strong or weak, good or bad, effective or ineffective etc., but whether or not they exercise leadership.

Some years ago the author Bryan Appleyard¹ writing about leaders and leadership made the classic mistake of equating Hitler with leadership when he wrote: “In the First World War Hitler never rose above the rank of corporal because his superiors considered him lacking in leadership. If the author meant that Hitler exhibited leadership qualities at any time of his career then he certainly does not recognize leadership, for if Hitler displayed even a grain of leadership, then leadership would have no worthwhile meaning, and its adoption would have no positive impact in the world. Simply by equating the tyrants and dictators of the past and present with leadership we render ‘leadership’ a chimera.

In any case, this search for some kind of strong and powerful ‘leadership’ is simply an exercise in nostalgia, a search for certainty in an uncertain world, not for leadership. It is for these reasons that there exists the need for a new concept of leadership, or a reassertion of a very ancient concept. Just as with the sciences, it is sometimes necessary to challenge the generally accepted meaning of a word in order to arrive at a meaning that encompasses a truer picture of the world as it really is. One such a word is ‘leadership’.

All the present emphasis on leadership, particularly those referring to ‘effective’, ‘strong’, ‘good’, to ‘situational’, ‘inspirational’, ‘invitational’ leadership etc., raises the philosophical dilemma of trying to explain what then is ‘ineffective’, ‘weak’ , ‘bad’, ‘non-situational’, ‘non-inspirational’, ‘non-invitational’ leadership? If leadership itself is by its very nature something positive, and it is argued here that it is, then any reference to effective leadership, or to strong leadership, etc., actually weakens our attempts to understand and adopt the beneficial and constructive role leadership can play in the real world of human enterprise.

Does it follow then that we can approach the word ‘leader’ in the same way? The obvious answer is, as we have seen, ‘no’. We do have effective leaders, we have strong leaders and good leaders but we also have ineffective leaders, weak leaders, and bad leaders. The appointment, election or imposition of a leader, even a ‘strong’ or ‘powerful’ leader, is no guarantee that success automatically follows. Indeed it is often the case that it does not, and in fact powerful leaders usually exacerbate an already problematic situation. The more powerful and authoritative the leader, or leading junta, the less power exercised by the mass of the people wherein exists real leadership, knowledge and power.

It is hoped that the areas of concern covered will help to cultivate a deeper understanding of the nature of leadership and its role in any overall development strategy.