College students as catalysts for social change: a case study

Leadership Theories

Burns in his classic 1978 study Leadership, discusses the distinction between transactional and transformational leadership. In transactional leadership, the leader-follower dynamic is one where a transaction is made in the relationship where both parties gain. This is more of a traditional relationship model such as that between an employee and employer. Transformational leadership involves assessing follower’s motives, raising their level of motivation and helping them to reach their fullest potential.

Other researchers that have looked at transformational leadership include Bennis and Nanus (1985) and Kouzes and Posner (2002). Bennis and Nanus (1985) interviewed 90 leaders and they came up with four common strategies used in transformation. The first is that transforming leaders have a clear vision of the future state of their organizations. Secondly they were social architects with shared meanings that transformed the organization’s values and norms. Third, transforming leaders were able to create trust, and, fourth, they used creative deployment of self through positive self-regard (Bennis & Nanus, 1985). Bass & Riggio (2006) propose that the popularity of transformational leadership may be due to emphasis on intrinsic motivation and follower development. This relates closely to what SLP does in developing followers and helping students realize their own motivation through discovering what they are passionate about.

Kouzes and Posner (2002) developed their model by initially interviewing 1,300 managers in private and public sector organizations. They came up with five fundamental ideas for exemplary leadership. They are: model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act and encourage the heart (p. 9). The two authors stress that the five practices of exemplary leadership are available to everyone and are not reserved for those with “special” ability.

This concept of “special ability” might be seen in the theory of charismatic leadership as first presented by House (1976). Charismatic leadership is a trait based leadership model. House suggested that charismatic leaders act in unique ways that have special effects on their followers. The personal characteristics that House proposed charismatic leaders have include being dominant, having a strong desire to influence others, being self-confident, and having a strong sense of one’s own moral values.

Since charismatic leaders advocate change and, thus, challenge the status quo, they are likely to be strongly resisted by defenders of the status quo who are in positions of substantial power. Also, since social change is difficult to accomplish, a great deal of determination and persistence is required on the part of change agents. (House & Aditya, 1997, p. 7)

Robert Greenleaf’s (1991) work on Servant Leadership also promotes this concept of transformation and encouragement. Servant leadership has been cited by the SLP founders in my document review and interviews. Greenleaf (1991) proposes that the following questions be asked by Servant Leaders.

Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will he benefit, or, at least, will he not be further deprived? (p.7)

The ten characteristics of servant leaders are listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community (Spears, 2004). Spears (2004) explains how servant-leadership also supports a non-hierarchical structure.

In countless for-profit and non-profit organizations today autocratic, and hierarchical modes of leadership are yielding to a different way of working--one based on teamwork and community, one that seeks to involve others in decision making, one strongly based in ethical and caring behavior, and one that is attempting to enhance the personal growth of people while improving the caring and quality of our many institutions. (p. 7)

SLP also moves away from hierarchy in their Core Model attempting to enhance the personal growth of students.

Another theory similar to Servant Leadership that looks at the whole person is that of spiritual intelligence. Zohar (2005) discusses three types of intelligence that of the mind, heart and the spirit. He uses the commonly known IQ, or intelligence quotient and then the EQ or the emotional intelligence quotient. The EQ comes from the work of Daniel Goleman (2005) in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. The third is the SQ or spiritual intelligence.

Spiritual intelligence is an ability to access higher meanings, values, abiding purposes, and unconscious aspects of the self and to embed these meanings, values, and purposes in living a richer and more creative life. Signs of high SQ include an ability to think out of the box, humility, and an access to energies that come from something beyond the ego. (Zohar, 2005, p. 48)

Zohar (2005) summarized the twelve principles of spiritually intelligent leadership.

1. 
   The first is self-awareness, knowing what you believe in and value and what motivates you.
   
2. 
   Living in and being responsive to the moment, which is a sense of spontaneity.
   
3. 
   Being vision and value-led which entails acting from principles and deep beliefs and living accordingly.
   
4. 
   When an individual is able to see larger patterns, relationships and connections and has a sense of belonging Zohar refers to this as Holism.
   
5. 
   Compassion, which leads to a quality of “feeling-with” (p. 49) and deep empathy.
   
6. 
   Celebration of diversity that includes valuing other people for their differences.
   
7. 
   Field Independence which is standing against the crowd and having one’s own convictions.
   
8. 
   Humility is “the sense of being a player in a larger drama, of one’s true place in the world” (p. 49).
   
9. 
   The tendency to ask fundamental “why” questions because of the need to understand things.
   
10. 
    The ability to reframe-to stand back from a situation and see the bigger picture or to see a problem in a wider context.
    
11. 
    Positive Use of Adversity includes the ability to learn and grow from mistakes and setbacks.
    
12. 
    A sense of vocation-feeling called upon to serve or go give something back.
    

Much of traditional leadership has been based on a hierarchical model. In this traditional model, individual gifts are often lost. There appears to be a move away from hierarchy as seen in the work of Margaret Wheatley (1999) when she refers to this as the “era of the rugged individual replaced by the team player” (p. 39). Wheatley also talks about an entire systems approach and moving from a chain of command to a web of influence. Howe (1996) also addresses this concept of moving away from the individual-as-leader toward leadership teams. Avolio (1997) advocates that what we are witnessing is the advent of more dispersed leadership rather than less leadership. In the 1996 report, Democracy At Risk, it was stated “Organizations will have to be flattened…the new model of leadership is collaborative…teamwork and collaboration will work better than command and control” (quoted in Pierce & Johnson, 1997, p. 8). Leadership has moved from “self-directed” teams (Manz & Sims, 1993) into “shared” leadership. Spillane (2004) talks about a distributed leadership perspective that recognizes that there are multiple leaders and those leadership activities are widely shared within and between organizations. This shared leadership team is evident with the SLP Core Model and seems to resonate with this age cohort of college students. Some of the millennial characteristics of teamwork and the web of influence influenced by the networked era contribute to this as well.