Search results

Increasingly, organizations are faced with complex challenges stemming from integrating societal change into business. These challenges create new demands for leadership. The paper aims at more clearly identifying these leadership demands and possible courses of development.

Based on an exploratory, multi‐method program of research at the Center for Creative Leadership, this paper reports on cross‐national data from 157 practicing managers to uncover the patterns that exist between the societal context, organizations, and the changing nature of leadership. Specifically, the paper addresses the following questions: What skills do individual leaders need to be successful in the future? How is leadership at the organizational level different today, and what will it look like in the future? Are there differences between the US and non‐US populations in their view of organizational leadership? What is the current capacity of organizations to accomplish leadership?

Results demonstrate a shift in the practice of leadership from more traditional, individual approaches to more innovative, collaborative approaches. Further, the comparison of non‐US with US data shows that non‐US populations expect more innovative leadership approaches/philosophies in the future.

The implications for research are discussed in terms of expanding the definition of leadership, while implications for practice are framed within the context of emerging approaches to leadership development.

This paper will be of value to those practicing leaders, researchers, and development specialists who are interested in exploring the frontiers of leadership in times of paradox and complexity.

What style of leadership is most effective in a particular situation with a specific group of followers? How do leaders best motivate followers in achieving goals? Although important questions, before we may come to fully understand the how and what of leadership, in this brief I suggest that we reflect upon a more basic leadership question. In the context of a paradigm from the work of the late educator and social critic, Neil Postman (1931-2003), I explore the question, “Why does leadership exist?” For when we reflect upon the answer to that question, we may gain further insight into ourselves as leaders, which may enhance our understanding of what good leadership looks like and how we might best achieve it.

As the world struggled to come to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, over twenty scholars, practitioners, and global leaders wrote brief essays for this curated chapter on the role of global leadership in this extreme example of a global crisis. Their thoughts span helpful theoretical breakthroughs to essential, pragmatic adaptations by companies.

This chapter is about physicality in virtual space, where one generally does not expect to find any physicality according to research and literature. Here, working in virtual space includes interactions and cooperation through the mail, internet, Skype and video-conferencing. The authors use their own experience of collaborating and leading in a virtual project team. Their own personal accounts, impressions and insights reveal a story of organizational cooperation where physicality matters for developing relations and leadership in virtual space. The piece reveals how an aesthetic consciousness of self and others intensifies in virtual communication, especially in relation to the senses of seeing and listening. For instance, the authors describe perception of the self is possible on SKYPE in a way that is not possible in face-to-face meetings (allowing one to realize if one is not dressed ‘properly’). They argue it is important to identify the physical ‘digital self’ and realize the challenges of being fit to operate across time zones, having personal and public boundaries blurred, as well as the heightened sensitivity to imagine what is left out in a virtual relationship. The examples illustrate what kind of sensuous cues become central in virtual communication. The chapter brings forth the need to sensitize to the physicality and to develop skills to perceive and act on it.

The purpose of this study was to compare the perceptions of Mexican and US employees about effective and ineffective managerial behaviour.

A qualitative multiple cross-case comparative analysis of findings obtained from two past emic replication studies of observed effective and ineffective managerial behaviour carried out in Mexico and the USA respectively was conducted.

Notwithstanding the significant cultural variances between Mexico and the USA underlined by various cross-cultural studies, the findings suggest that Mexican and US employees perceive effective and ineffective managerial behaviour in a very similar manner.

While the results of the study suggest that culture may not play a significant role in the way people perceive managerial and leadership effectiveness, the authors suggest that more replication studies with larger and more balanced gender samples using different methods need to be performed in both countries.

The findings of the study may be relevant for human resource development professionals in both countries when providing training to expatriates for international assignments. Reinforcing the set of managerial practices that are perceived as effective in these two countries and emphasizing those practices that may be particular to Mexico and the USA respectively, could lead to an improvement in the performance of Mexican executives managing in the USA and US executives managing in Mexico.

This paper compares managerial behavioural effectiveness between Mexico and the USA.

This chapter explores the potential of appreciative inquiry for doing empirical work on leadership. We use a framework that matches a constructionist theoretical lens, an appreciative and participative stance, a focus on the work of leadership (as opposed to leaders), and multiple methods of inquiry (narrative, ethnographic and cooperative). We elaborate on our experiences with narrative inquiry, while highlighting the value of doing narrative inquiry in an appreciative manner. Finally, we suggest that this particular framework is helping us see how social change leadership work reframes the value that the larger society attributes to members of vulnerable communities.

This paper aims to extend the consideration of distributed leadership in health-care settings. Leadership is typically studied from the classical notion of the place of single leaders and continues to examine distributed leadership within small teams or horizontally. The purpose is to develop a practical understanding of how distributed leadership may occur vertically, between different layers of the health-care leadership hierarchy, examining its influence on health-care outcomes across two hospitals.

Using semi-structured interviews, data were collected from 107 hospital employees (including executive leadership, clinical management and clinicians) from two hospitals in Australia and the USA. Using thematic content analysis, an iterative process was adopted characterized by alternating between social identity and distributed leadership literature and empirical themes to answer the question of how the practice of distributed leadership influences performance outcomes in hospitals?

The perceived social identities of leadership groups shaped communication and performance both positively and negatively. In one hospital a moderating structure emerged as a leadership dyad, where leadership was distributed vertically between hospital hierarchal layers, observed to overcome communication limitations. Findings suggest dyad creation is an effective mechanism to overcome hospital hierarchy-based communication issues and ameliorate health-care outcomes.

The study demonstrates how current leadership development practices that focus on leadership relational and social competencies can benefit from a structural approach to include leadership dyads that can foster these same competencies. This approach could help develop future hospital leaders and in doing so, improve hospital outcomes.

This paper aims to describe the development of a wholly new model of transformational leadership and its applications in practice.

The paper provides a description of a wholly new, inclusive model of transformational leadership and the way in which it can be applied in practice, in the context of embedding good leadership within the culture of an organisation and ensuring “best practice” in 360‐degree feedback.

The paper finds that the Transformational Leadership Questionnaire (TLQ)™, which is both gender‐ and ethnicity‐inclusive measure of “nearby” leadership, differs fundamentally from the kind of “heroic” models that have emanated from the USA and which have dominated the literature. Comparative data are presented of the mean scores on the TLQ, based on direct reports' ratings of their line manager, across a wide range of public sector organisations, including local government, the NHS, schools, and two central government agencies. Patterns emerge in areas of strength and developmental need, and the implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the impact of leadership behaviour and its effect on the psychological safety and well‐being at work of staff.

The following needs are identified: ‐ to adopt a model of leadership that is relevant to the needs of organisations in the twenty‐first century; to embed good leadership practices at all levels; to ensure that, when 360‐degree feedback is given, it is done so in a way that conforms to the principles of ‘best practice’.

The following model of “nearby” leadership that is described is relevant to leaders at all levels in public and private sector organisations. It points to the consequences of poor leadership behaviour, and the need for the adoption of a model of leadership that is relevant to the needs of the twenty‐first century.