32 Strategic Leadership
good administrative systems and controls, especially in today’s complex organizations.
Administrative leaders often think and act in these terms, while many of their
faculty colleagues are far more sensitive to the procedures and protocols of col-
legial decision making, which is reinforced by its own system of professional values
and norms. Academic leaders who understand and respect those norms are able
to motivate change through collaborative processes. Other leaders in academic
communities are especially concerned with the values and expectations of the
organization’s culture, its symbolic frame. By drawing on its stories, metaphors,
norms, rituals, and traditional practices, they make sense of the world and influ-
ence others to move in a common direction.
Leadership Styles: Using Multiple Frames of Interpretation
It is worth emphasizing that interpretive frames are not just a way of under-
standing organizational experience, for they also shape decisions and actions. If
we regard the world as essentially political, for example, we shall act on it in those
terms. Since organizations cannot, in fact, be reduced to a single dimension, leaders
will be more effective to the extent that they can master the skills and cogni-
tive abilities both to understand and to make decisions with regard to multiple
frames and dimensions. In interviews with presidents of thirty-two institutions,
Bensimon (1989) has shown that most presidents—about two-thirds—conceive
of their responsibilities by combining two or three of the leadership orientations.
This greater conceptual complexity seems to be associated with experienced presi-
dents who may have served as chief executive in more than one institution, as well
as those who serve in the larger and more complex four-year universities.
Interestingly, as we focus on frameworks of interpretation, we shift our atten-
tion away from seeing leadership primarily as formal authority toward the cogni-
tive capacities and orientations of individuals. In turn, these characteristics relate
in various ways to the needs and values of other participants in the organization,
so they become aspects of a reciprocal process of leadership. Because of these
multiple characteristics, we can think of the frames as contributing to particular
styles of leadership.
From the perspective of leadership education and development, it also becomes
clear that gaining awareness of one’s own orientation to the tasks of leadership
is a valuable form of self-discovery. It provides insights about self and circum-
stance that help a leader to understand the characteristics of his or her strengths
and weaknesses, problems, and frustrations. Most importantly, the process of self-
awareness can initiate steps to correct imbalances in order to create a more inte-
grated method of leadership.
INTEGRATIVE LEADERSHIP
Our discussion of the frames of leadership has suggested that leaders with only
one or two sets of cognitive abilities will find it hard to respond effectively to the