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Leadership coaching is a method of learning and development. This brief describes a leadership practice that was effective in navigating culture when it became a relevant factor in maintaining a reciprocal leadership learning and development partnership. Using a community-based inquiry method, we utilized and examined leadership coaching practice as it attempted to support cross-cultural leadership learning and development that was running alongside an international development project in Kenya. Readers will gain a better understanding of a cross-cultural leadership coaching practice.

Through description and consideration of 12 models developed as part of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), a new model of successful school leadership is developed.

The paper is necessarily descriptive in nature. For the first time, 12 ISSPP models are described together, and these descriptions are then used inductively to create a new successful school leadership model.

The open systems approach adopted depicts schools as a continuous cycle of input-transformation-output with feedback loops that inform each stage of the cycle. The inputs are the variables that lead to transformation. The transformation stage is the actions or processes that individuals, groups and organisations engage in because of the inputs, and these lead to a range of student and school outcomes. Feedback loops connect the stages, and the whole model is open to the influence of five contextual forces: economic, political, socio-cultural, technological and system, institutional and educational.

Models are an important way to make sense of complex phenomena. A new model of successful school leadership, with an open systems approach, provides a different frame to consider the findings of the ISSPP and potentially allows the ISSPP research to inform practice and connect with other school leadership views in new ways.

As human resource development (HRD) seeks to develop organizations and unleash human expertise (Swanson and Holton, 2009), leaders should be encouraged to consider every employee as a complex individual with unique needs and aspirations. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of equity leadership (EL), which identifies individual employees’ personal and professional resource, relationship and opportunity needs in an effort to support employees in reaching their fullest potential in the workforce, therefore increasing positive organizational outcomes.

The theoretical foundations of EL are social exchange theory (SET; Saks and Rotman, 2006) and the ERG theory of motivation (Alderfer, 1969). SET recognizes the give-and-take relationship between leaders and employees, while ERG theory of motivation considers an individual’s personal and professional existence, relatedness and growth needs. The theories provide a foundation for EL’s definition.

EL posits that leaders’ attention to employees’ resource, relationship and opportunity needs in the workplace could result in a positive effect on the social exchange between leaders and employees. EL provides a framework for these exchanges to occur and for employee needs to be considered, thus resulting in increased employee engagement, productivity and retention.

EL can take a significant amount of time, especially when starting with new employees; however, the relationships and positive organizational outcomes provide justification for engaging in the leadership style.

This paper seeks to advance the field of HRD by defining EL, exploring the theoretical underpinnings of EL and providing actionable steps for leaders to put EL into action.

The nuanced theory of EL encourages organizations to evolve from the factory model of expectations to a model that considers the unique needs of individuals in organizations. Grounded partly in SET, EL promotes positive relationships between leaders and employees.

There are many leadership theories; however, EL, unlike any other leadership theory, uniquely considers the individual needs of each employee through consistent one-on-one conversations between the leader and individual employees to discover employee needs and also strives for positive organizational outcomes as a result of the social exchanges.

The purpose of this paper is to derive practical recommendations from Follett's conceptualization of the student-teacher relations.

The paper employs a narrative historical interpretation of Follett's speech, which was originally given at the Boston University in the late Fall of 1928, but for the first time published in 1970.

Follett's conceptualization of the teacher-student relation resonated well with the contemporary conceptualization of constructive-developmental theory of leadership.

The findings of this study should be interpreted with recognition that the single case study has inherent limitations in terms of generalization.

This paper offers unique practical recommendations for instructional methods of experiential learning based on reflection, problem solving and critical thinking, which are based on the authors' analysis of Follett's works and constructive-developmental scholarship.

Through his call to “reverse the lens” in leadership, Shamir (2007) helped trigger the emergence of followership theory as a new field of study in leadership research. While followership theory brings exciting new opportunities to leadership studies, it also introduces theoretical and conceptual challenges for researchers. In this chapter we address these challenges by showing how followership can be positioned fully within the leadership construct. We extend Shamir’s (2007) call for a balanced view in leadership by showing how followership theory adds new perspectives on the ways in which we can study leadership as a dynamic, fluid, relational process. The alternative views we present (e.g., position, role, identity, constructionist, and co-creation) approach leadership study from a range of paradigmatic perspectives that allow us to more fully capture the behaviors, interactions, relational dynamics, and processes through which leadership and followership are created and constructed. We conclude by reflecting on Shamir’s legacy as a scholar, and the contributions he made through his willingness to not only open his mind, but also to constructively challenge alternative perspectives and views.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between authentic leadership and team climate across 22 months. More specifically, three alternative causation models (normal, reversed, reciprocal) were tested.

The longitudinal study was conducted among 265 Finnish municipal employees (87.5 per cent women, mean age 48.4 years). The participants completed a questionnaire three times: at baseline (T1), about 14 months after baseline (T2) and about eight months after the second questionnaire (T3).

The cross-lagged analyses based on structural equation modelling lent support to the reversed causation model more than the normal causation and reciprocal models. More specifically, team climate at T2 predicted authentic leadership across eight months at T3. Thus the study suggests that positive team climate (i.e. vision, participation safety, task orientation, and support for innovation) may foster authentic leadership in the long term and not vice versa.

The findings suggest that − besides improving team climate and authentic leadership themselves – team climate should be improved in order to enable authentic leadership to develop and flourish. It is important to emphasize that in forming the team climate employees are active agents and not passive targets.

The study is among the first to test different causal models regarding authentic leadership and team climate. From the theoretical viewpoint, the findings suggest that follower-centric theories of leadership merit greater attention in the future.

Despite the increasing importance of shared leadership, researches examining its relations with vertical leadership, a complementary source of power, has been scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to extend the authors’ knowledge on this little-known topic by analysing vertical and shared leadership interactions in a change management project.

A qualitative content analysis based on nine semi-structured interviews with top and middle managers, and a dataset of documents including corporate reports, a Road Map book and presentations was carried out, analysing the reciprocal leadership relationships by using an extended framework, which includes directive, transformational, transactional and empowering behaviours.

Both in radical and incremental step, vertical as well as shared leadership interacted, showing their reciprocal need to deal with change. Leadership approaches and behaviours, conceptually and empirically distinct, even if highly related, are complementary sources that shape a constant compromise, according to the contextual demands of the project, to face change.

Further studies could strengthen the generalizability of the findings that suffer for the qualitative method. Moreover further studies could extend leadership interactions beyond leader-change management team relationships to the top-bottom levels of the organization. Contribution to theory is mainly twofold. First, findings highlight that for every specific change phase, both radical and incremental ones, different gradients of vertical and shared leadership are required. Second the authors found that leadership behaviours could be contrasting, requiring the ability to perform the multiple roles and behaviours in a well-balanced way in order to deal with the contextual demands of the change project.

The paper includes implication for developing and training leaders, as well as followers, to have effective and multiple leadership skills and be able to apply them in different contexts, both by switching from vertical to shared, and vice versa, and by having the capability to respond with appropriately behaviours to a wide range of situations, that could also be mixed and opposing more than linear.

The paper fills a gap in research about the interactions between vertical and shared leadership dynamics, through a qualitative study, during a change management project.

The purpose of this paper is to examine knowledge sharing with external partners within the China context, demonstrating that paternalistic leadership combined with the resulting reciprocal relations between leaders and employees are accountable for knowledge transfer with external partners based on social exchange.

This study collected data at two time-points and obtained 391 usable observations for hypothesis testing using questionnaire surveys administered to the managers of major Chinese companies.

Empirical analysis of employees at major Chinese firms shows that paternalistic leadership may encourage perceived reciprocal support from employees that results in smooth knowledge sharing with outsiders in the form of voluntary helping behaviors.

This study expects that both scholars and practitioners will gain answers on how to best encourage employees into contributing toward relationships with external stakeholders within the China context. One valuable point in this study is demonstrating that Chinese firms’ benevolent leadership promotes human relationships and thereby long-term relationships with alliance partners, while their moral leadership promotes ethical trust between alliance partners. These factors may accordingly further increase knowledge sharing opportunities with external partners.

The paper aims to introduce the reciprocal expectations (RE) approach to co-leadership and outlines the complex environments within which public services operate.

A case study of two government departments is undertaken to apply the RE approach within a public services context.

The application of the RE approach to co-leadership resulted in the mending of broken relationships, thereby providing the basis for stable, effective government, and restoring Ministerial confidence in the government departments.

Strong and effective co-leadership can be achieved when attributes of trust, honesty, and clear expectations are facilitated and mutually adopted.

The organizational context of elected and professional leaders in government is complex, unique, and requires special attention. The RE approach is original, and the case studies contribute to the knowledge of co-leadership and the benefits of the RE approach to good governance practice.

The benefits of authentic leadership for followers have been thoroughly researched, but the effects on leaders’ well-being remain unclear. To address this research gap, the authors hypothesized reciprocal relationships between authentic leadership and work engagement as well as emotional exhaustion.

The hypotheses were tested in a German sample with leaders from different work sectors using a cross-lagged panel design with a time lag of 14 months (N = 137 at T1; N = 217 at T2).

Well-being significantly predicted leaders’ engagement in authentic leadership at the second measurement point, whereas the reciprocal relationships were not significant.

Drawing on the Conservation of Resources Theory, possible processes underlying the observed impact of leaders’ well-being on their leadership behavior are discussed. The present research provides evidence that well-being constitutes a crucial basic resource for leaders to engage in constructive leadership behaviors such as authentic leadership.

This study contributes to the literature by uncovering the causal order linking authentic leadership and leaders’ health.