Search results

Leadership scholar Margaret Wheatley (2006) observed that “Each of us seeks to discover a meaning to our life that is wholly and uniquely our own. We experience a deepening confidence that purpose has shaped our lives even as it moved invisibly in us. Whether we believe that we create this meaning for ourselves in a senseless world, or that it is offered to us by a purposeful universe, it is, after all, only meaning that we seek” (p. 134). At a small, private liberal arts institution in the southeast, educators attempt to traverse the complexities of chaos and meaning by integrating film into many facets of the curricular and co-curricular leadership learning process. This article highlights the background, pedagogy, and impacts of this integration and the bridge thus created between the in- and out-of-class experiences for students.

Leadership scholar-practitioners seldom need to be sold on the benefits of working together. Rather leadership educators want to know how to teach adult leadership scholar-practitioners how to work together across differences. The aim of this paper is to guide leadership development practitioners on how to nurture leadership that can address the complex problems the changing global arena demand of us today and into the future. We argue when preparing adult leadership scholar-practitioners, using adult learning theories and paying attention to the interdisciplinary roots of the field of leadership might lead to better learning and engagement with real world challenges. In this paper we present a leadership development model we call interdisciplinary leadership. First, we discuss the interdisciplinary roots of leadership. Second, we describe interdisciplinary leadership as a tapestry – an intricate combination of identities, practices, and outcomes used to prepare people to address complex problems. Finally, we describe the mission, structure, curriculum, and instructional strategies that can be used by leadership educators when applying interdisciplinary leadership. This model acknowledges the identity, practices, and outcomes needed to develop scholar-practitioners of leadership and provides practical techniques to help leadership educators prepare leaders to work together across differences to address complex problems.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge how we have traditionally thought about organisations and introduce two frameworks to enable us to understand how change in organisations might be facilitated better.

The paper discusses organisations as complex adaptive systems and uses complexity theory to inform two new frameworks for facilitating organisational learning and change.

In order for organisational learning to occur we need to change our mind-set of how we see organisations and to think of learning not just as individual but also as generative “communicative action” that emerge out of collaborative relationships.

The frameworks proposed are grounded in organisational learning literature and the experience of the author. The proposed agenda for organisational learning has yet to be acted upon and evaluated.

The frameworks can be used to enhance understanding of learning and change in organisations. The agenda for enabling organisational transformation identifies key steps to put the ideas developed in the paper into practice.

The approach advocated for use within organisations is one of empowerment and collaboration rather than top down direction.

The paper introduces new frameworks and a practical agenda to bring about organisational transformation through work-applied learning.

This paper addresses the challenges associated with defining and conceptualizing leadership amidst the plethora of theoretical constructs and definitions of leadership and proposes a model for developing transcendent servant-leaders. Based on a review of the literature, three categorical levels of leadership are outlined and discussed that describe the motives that drive leaders, their means of influence, and the outcomes they strive to achieve at each level. These levels include everyday leadership, effective organizational leadership, and transcendent servant leadership. Having delineated these leadership levels, a holistic model for leadership development and education that facilitates the transcendence of effective organizational leaders and ensures their sustaining power of influence is outlined and described.

This practice paper describes how leadership education faculty and students at Virginia Tech have facilitated change through the use of appreciative inquiry (Ai) at the departmental level, program level, and project level. Appreciative inquiry has been found to be a useful tool for leadership educators, as its foundation in social constructionist philosophy aligns with contemporary leadership and learning theories. This paper outlines (a) the philosophy of Ai as it applies to organizational development (b) illustrates Ai practices associated with a five-stage model, and (c) highlights three examples that can be used as models for leading change in a variety of organizational situations. The authors suggest that leadership educators are uniquely positioned to serve academic communities as facilitators of change by bridging theory and practice in pursuit of new ways of knowing and working together.

In the fast pace of the 21^st century there is a demand for effective leaders capable of handling the internal and external changes occurring in our organizations. This paper seeks to inform the reader because change is natural; it is constant; it is inevitable. But, what constitutes effective leadership is the question? The main purpose of this paper is to offer 10 recommendations toward effective leadership that are outcomes of an eclectic leadership approach – Facilitative Social Change Leadership Theory (FSCL). The FSCL approach is a melding of Social Change Theory, Social Change Leadership Theory, and Transformational Leadership Theory as well as the work of Tichy and DeVanna.