Leadership has engaged the minds of sages and scholars since ancient times and through more than 100 years of scientific study. However, even after thousands of years of historic ponderings and decades of scientific studies on leadership, leadership's nature and definition remain elusive. Each ancient society developed its own definitions and understanding of leadership (Bass, 2008), while contemporary scholars and writers have added so many perspectives that some argue that defining leadership is near impossible (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2005).
Today leadership remains a “mysterious process” (Yukl, 2010, p. 1) with as many definitions as people who have attempted to define the concept (Stogdill, 1948). Each definition depends on the perspective of the definer and generally falls within categories like traits, behaviors, context, psychology, relationships, position, power, and all the above. A multitude of divergent definitions does not mean that any of them are wrong. Each provides a different perspective that helps illuminate various aspects of the same complex process.
Attempting to add yet another definition of leadership would not clarify an elusive concept, but exploring leadership through various perspectives might help provide insight into a complex phenomenon. In this paper, I will consider various understandings of leadership from ancient times through contemporary dialogues. Next, I will summarize the traditional and modern theories that have emerged through the scientific study of leadership. Finally, I will consider emerging perspectives that apply new discoveries in neurological psychology and complexity theory to gain a deeper understanding of leadership. Throughout, I will consider critical concepts against personal leadership challenges during 20 years leading customer and employee development programs in the high tech, manufacturing, and real estate sectors and 20 years in higher education instruction and administration.
I conclude with a discussion about the relevancy of scientific leadership research to practical applications. I argue that scientific knowledge does not translate into effective leadership but can enhance leadership effectiveness when combined with experience. This does not mean the scientific study of leadership is without merit. Findings from scientific research can provide leaders with insight, awareness, and tools to enhance their ability to influence others while giving followers knowledge about how to inoculate themselves from undue influence.
The greatest among you
The concept of leadership has likely engaged the mind of humanity since prehistoric times, with each society developing its own perspectives of leadership (Bass, 2008). Taoism proposed that leaders should act so that followers think success is from their own efforts. The Greeks believed that great leaders are just, wise, shrewd, and courageous. Confucian philosophy emphasized that leaders should set a moral example and use rewards and punishments to mold moral behavior. Ancient Egyptians believed that leadership consisted of not only leaders but also of followers. They then developed structures for enforcing leadership control over the followers. The Old Testament offered prophets, priests, and kings like Abraham, Moses, and David; these leaders represented a jealous God who rewarded and punished followers and non-followers based on their actions and beliefs. The New Testament presented moral and persuasive servant leaders like Jesus and Paul, who encouraged followers and non-followers to use their free agency to follow a benevolent God, who would repeatedly forgive them for their behaviors if they believed and repented.
Such varying historical perspectives influenced volumes of writings about great and infamous leaders. They shaped societies and civilizations and offered limitless maxims about what makes a great leader. The experience and wisdom of the ages remain influential in popular dialogues and literature and provide scholars with a rich resource of concepts to test through research.
The ideals of democratic leadership practice and recent writings on servant leadership ring familiar with ancient perspectives. In circa 600 BCE, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote that the leader must “place yourself below them. If you want to lead people, you must learn how to follow them” (Mitchell, 1988, p. 66). Later, Jesus would admonish that “The greatest among you will be your servant” (Matthew 23:11).
The nature within you
The scientific study of leadership started in the 19th century when researchers attempted to isolate the traits that make great leaders. From the trait perspective, leaders are great men who have innate abilities to control others. By the mid-20th century, the trait perspective had become “outmoded” (Bennis & Nanus, 1985, p. 170) for two reasons. First, statistical techniques did not validate its assumptions (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1991). Second, it failed to account for the situational and behavioral factors that influence leadership success (Yukl, 2010; Jex, 2002).
Researchers turned their attention to understanding the behaviors that contributed to effective leadership. The behavioral perspective isolates the actions that differentiate effective leaders from ineffective leaders so that research can be used to train leaders to use the best leadership style. Researchers could not identify a “best” research style because they tended to find that different styles work better for different situations.
The context around you
The situational theories that emerged in the mid-20th century reflected how different situations require different leadership styles. Situational leadership perspectives see that the situation defines the leader. Leadership emerges when an individual meets the needs of the situation. In the 1970s, Dansereau, Grain, and Haga (1975) offered a leader-member exchange theory, which proposed that leaders use different styles with different members within the same group.
James MacGregor Burns’ (1978) transformational leadership theory rekindled trait theory in the 1980s by offering a perspective that sees
- a transformational leader is an individual with a unique set of attributes for driving significant change in organizations and society, and
- a transactional leader is an individual with different characteristics for organizing tasks and people to accomplish goals.
Around the same period, scholars started to see leadership as an interaction between followers and leaders. This perspective produced followership theory, which considers the role that followership plays in good leadership (Kelley, 1996).TT
The interactions among your associations
Contemporary scholars recognize that focusing on leaders, characteristics, followers, behaviors, situations, or other variables as separate factors can provide a limited perspective of a complex phenomenon. Instead, understanding leadership may require exploring the interaction among leaders, followers, and situations (Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2005; Fiedler, 1964).
Historical, classical, and contemporary perspectives tend to focus on a leader who overcomes circumstances versus a leader defined by circumstance. In comparison, neurological psychology sees leadership as neither circumstance nor adaptation but as a symbiotic relationship among leaders and followers (Reicher, Platow, & Haslam, 2007). Through this relationship perspective, researchers shift their attention away from leadership as a top-down process to see a mutual interaction that influences leaders and followers. Emerging discoveries in systems theory, chaos theory, and quantum physics illuminate how the traditional and contemporary leadership models may be insufficient for portraying leadership in the complex and dynamic social systems of the 21st century (Wheatley, 2006).
Rather than attempting to understand leadership by isolating parts and identifying cause-and-effect, the new sciences offer a holistic perspective that attempts to understand leadership by seeing the associations within networks. Building blocks of leadership fade, and the unseen associations among different factors become the fundamental ingredient of leadership effectiveness. From this perspective, the concept of leadership becomes fully democratized, with a leader being any individual who influences others to change the world (Wheatley, 2006). This means that understanding leadership is no longer limited to analyzing the contributions of great people or the impact of infamous leaders, but is expanding to explore the influential role that followers have on one another and on leaders.
Hughes, Ginned, and Curah (2005) take this democratization of leadership to the point of platitude by proposing that “every one of us has to be a leader [to] make a difference” (p. 14). Wheatley takes this further by defining a leader as “anyone who wants to help… create change in their world” (Wheatley, 2006, p. 196). Wheatly then promotes training programs to teach individuals how to be activists for political causes.
Your faith
The new sciences offer insights into how individuals can influence societies by emphasizing the role of forces, waves, possibilities, and other intangible forces in social phenomena. Acknowledging the intangible invites scholars and practitioners to “give up predictability” and “facts” and to focus on “potentials” (Wheatley, 2006, p. 35).
Reminiscent of the ancients, the emerging sciences compel leadership scholars and practitioners explore leadership as “an act of faith” (p. 47).