6 Strategic Leadership
to leaders whose followers in a given organizational context feel a magnetic
attraction to them, so charisma is not a fixed personality trait.
Other scholars have published numerous studies to show that leadership effec-
tiveness is contingent on situation or circumstance, an insight that has become a
common assumption in the scholarly literature and in many spheres of practice.
Fiedler (1993), for instance, has shown in many studies that the task-oriented
style of leadership seems more effective when circumstances are less orderly or
verging on a crisis, while a more relationship oriented style fits better when condi-
tions are more normal. As Clark Kerr and Marian L. Gade (1986) have suggested,
effective presidential leadership in colleges and universities is highly situational
since it depends on the right match between circumstance, individual, and insti-
tution. A hero in one institution could be a failure in another.
As we shall explore throughout this study, leadership recently has been differ-
entiated both theoretically and practically from the possession of formal authority
and personal attributes. Many scholars have focused on the tasks or practices of
leaders, what some would call a behavioral orientation. More important than
what leaders are or the positions that they hold is what they do. They do such
things as define purpose, envision the future, set high ethical standards, and renew
the organization under many different circumstances (J. Gardner 1990; Kouzes
and Posner 1990).
Perhaps the most widely shared understanding among contemporary theorists
is that leadership is primarily a relationship between leaders and followers. The
relationship is interactive and involves a variety of social processes, practices, and
engagements through which followers respond to the influence of leaders, and
leaders attend to the needs and values of their followers. My concerns for leader-
ship will center precisely on the development of a collaborative and interactive
method of strategic leadership as a systematic organizational process. Though
I by no means exclude a focus on the significance of authority, nor a concern for
the skills, styles, qualities, and practices of leaders, the components of strategic
leadership as an interactive form of direction setting and decision making will be
our central preoccupation.
GOOD TO GREAT: A CASE STUDY IN LEADERSHIP
In order to gain an understanding of the changing interpretations of the phe-
nomenon, it will be useful to look briefly at the findings of one influential analysis
of leadership in business, the widely read book by James Collins (2001), Good
to Great. Using long-term superior performance in earnings and stock apprecia-
tion as indicators of success, the book attempts to find the characteristics that
differentiate good companies from great ones. The work’s findings about leader-
ship are striking because they are counterintuitive, at least in terms of popular
expectations. The author offers a typology of leadership with five levels of talent
and effectiveness that culminate in the motif of the executive leader who builds
greatness into an organization. Yet, ironically, the leaders of the great companies