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Leading change oftentimes comes down to creating the conditions to shift the status quo of an organization, community, or nation. In the case of the pan-African movement, this is about a shift of the status quo continentally. We look back and learn how these changes took place, we study the impacts, the moves that allowed people to emerge differently, to lead effective change. The outcomes of leading this effective change often point to a shift in the status quo. That shift in how people organize and led change gets written in history books. In this scenario, we have the unique opportunity to examine these cases as emergent, hearing firsthand accounts of those individuals, people, organizations, and communities that are shaping the movements. This is that account of how leadership is conceptualized, redefined, and practiced by emerging actors across the continent today.

“Action without thought is empty; thought without action is blind” (Kwame Nkrumah). Nkrumah's sentiments describe a practice of leadership that is intentional and disrupts arbitrary borders and dividers to build a strong pan-African movement. Emerging actors today are leading change on the African continent by shaping a new vision and framework for African leadership. By understanding their stories, we deepen understanding of this framework.

In this chapter, we will share the stories of three individuals (chapter co-authors) who are exercising leadership at the intersections of grassroots organizing and political engagement, and in doing so, who are seeking to shift the status quo. Each practice-based account offers insight and firsthand accounting of how a rising generation is redefining leadership at local, regional, and transnational levels.

The value of the liberal arts and humanities has increasingly been called into question on multiple fronts. Attempts to bridge the practical and liberal arts through forms of civic professionalism have been gaining traction in larger spheres of influence. This article outlines the results of a deliberative civic engagement forum (n = 42) that created a space for community members from business, education, and non-profit sectors at the National Conference on Service and Volunteerism, to consider the role civic leadership education and development has in liberal arts and humanities programs. The forum was intentionally designed to have participants consider the role of the liberal arts and humanities in redefining the purposes and process of democratic engagement through a lens of civic leadership education and development. This forum was able to gather a group of people from sectors that do not normally speak to the intersection of leadership education and the liberal arts.

An attempt is made to redefine educational leadership and to create a new “practical theory” of educative leadership which is of relevance to all concerned with the management of education. The approach, techniques and early outcomes of a research project in Australia designed in 1985 and mounted in 1986 to create the new “theory” are reported.

The dominant view of laissez-faire leadership has so far been avoidant or regarded as zero leadership. Consequently, it has been suggested that laissez-faire leadership is likely to lead to negative consequences in subordinates’ performance and attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to argue that this conventional view is biased from the start as it is burdened with the concept that laissez-faire leadership is non-strategic and therefore implies negative consequences. This paper further argues that to be able to unveil the real outcomes of laissez-faire leadership, focus should shift to the behavioral aspect of laissez-faire leadership, or non-involvement of a leader/leadership.

This conceptual presentation and presented propositions could stimulate the examination of laissez-faire leadership in more balanced ways.

Shifted focus to the behavioral aspect of laissez-faire leadership, or non-involvement of a leader/leadership allows this paper to explore possible positive outcomes, especially with consideration with dynamics of time. While extant studies about laissez-faire leadership have been partial to negative consequences, this paper explores different contexts in which laissez-faire leadership could be positive.

This paper is one of the first attempts to tease out possible outcomes of laissez-faire leadership, which could be not just negative, by adapting the behavioral aspect of non-involvement of a leader.

Hesselbein developed the concept: “leadership is a matter of how to be and not how to do.” Joseph later provided instructional content based on the concept and helped operationalize it for consumption by practicing leaders. This paper leverages their work in illustrating how leadership-as-a-way-of-being (LWB) can be a teaching model for emerging millennial leaders in a dynamic news media undergoing a chaotic transition. It provides a way to rethink newsroom organizational structures that no longer accommodate the needs of this generation. We focus on the “being” element of leadership as it speaks directly to a new introspective view of leadership that values transparency and is necessary for innovation over mere efficiency.

This chapter examines the impact of adopting a global strategy upon leaders’ roles and identities in an engineering consultancy firm. Drawing upon process and social practice perspectives on leadership; our results explain leaders’ resistance to changing practices despite major process changes as due to the threats to their identity caused by the new role requirements to implement a global strategy. Our emerging process and social practice model of leadership highlights the complementary nature of process and practice change, creates a distinction between good and malign ambiguity in professional services firms and has implications for regulating the pace and timing of major changes which impact upon professional identities.