The Phenomenon of Leadership 11
always a gritty affair that engages leaders in a perpetual process of responding to
conflict and change. They expend considerable energy in motivating, persuad-
ing, influencing, and manipulating others to join them in responding to tension
and change; or they may use more assertive methods to enact their purposes.
Historical experience shows that leaders will use a large range of harsh sanc-
tions, the logical end point of which is coercion and violence, to achieve their
goals. Where leadership ends and domination begins becomes a compelling and
complex issue of historical and ethical interpretation.
Leadership and Empowerment
In the contemporary scholarship on leadership, there is often an emphasis
on the ways that the leadership relationship leads to the explicit empower-
ment of followers. In political contexts, of course, empowerment is a central
feature of democratic systems. Increasingly, however, the meaning of the word
has broadened. It now refers as well to the ways that leaders seek to place more
decision-making authority and responsibility in the hands of individuals and
teams throughout the organization. The focus is often on ways to improve pro-
cesses that are best understood by those closest to them. Empowerment in this
sense often opens other doors of human development and personal fulfillment,
for it leads to the creation of ways to improve the motivation, decision-making
skills, and capabilities of the total workforce or community. When work takes on
a deeper sense of purpose, people become far more engaged in their responsibili-
ties (George 2003). As success is achieved, they develop more self-confidence,
optimism, and self-respect (Messick 2005). Leadership at this level appears to
touch a person’s sense of identity and self-esteem, so it triggers a range of strong
intrinsic motivations for achievement and for effectiveness in working with
others (House and Shamir 1993).
The more decisions are dispersed, the more individuals and groups become
directly accountable for their performance. The roles of leader and follower
become fluid, as individuals and groups both respond to the influence of oth-
ers and exercise their own leadership. Leadership scholar Gill Hickman makes
a point that has special relevance for academic communities: “Individuals move
from participant to leader or leader to participant based on capabilities, expertise,
motivation, ideas, and circumstances, not solely on position or authority”
(1998, xiii). Leadership becomes a disposition and a process that is incorporated
into the workings of the organization.
In an influential study of adaptive leadership, Ronald Heifetz focuses on some
of the complexities of placing responsibility in the hands of constituents that
they may prefer to avoid, a phenomenon that is common in academic com-
munities. He emphasizes the leader’s role in focusing, analyzing, diagnosing,
and interpreting challenges to the group’s values and effectiveness that have to
be faced. The leader’s task is many sided but must take into account Heifetz’s
counsel to “Give the work back to people, but at a rate they can stand. Place