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as a process and an applied discipline. Returning to some of our earlier themes,
we note again that we are still conditioned to think of leaders as exceptional indi-
viduals who hold substantial positions of power, generally because of the unusual
qualities or qualifications they possess. Though the weight of modern scholarship
centers on quite different notions of leadership, on an everyday basis we tend to
reflect within inherited habits of thought. As a consequence, we doubt claims that
some aspects of leadership could be a process and a discipline, when it seems so
manifestly to be a matter of special abilities and characteristics. If a discipline, it
could be taught and learned.
Even those scholars who vigorously endorse the study of leadership do not
necessarily intend to establish the case that it is a discipline of practice, as opposed
to one of reflection. They advance the claim that leadership can be taught as
a method of inquiry, as a “multidiscipline,” as “leadership studies,” which in itself
is controversial (Burns 1978, 2003). Although it may be implied in the work of
a number of scholars, it is quite another thing to argue that we can teach explicitly
for the exercise of leadership as a discipline of decision making.
Yet, as I have tried to show, strategic leadership is a way to integrate practices,
methods, insights, and knowledge about leadership into an applied discipline for
the exercise of leadership. To be sure, authority and the attributes, expertise, and
practices of leaders should be understood as the conditions on which strategic
leadership depends and the resources it needs to be effective. To use a common but
helpful distinction on which we shall rely, strategic leadership can function only if
these necessary conditions are satisfied. Yet necessary are not sufficient conditions
and it is many of the latter that strategic leadership provides as a discipline and
process of decision making.
Resources: Authority, Talent, and the Tasks of Leadership
We can illustrate the dimensions of the relationship between necessary and
sufficient conditions with reference to authority, a topic we have considered on
several occasions. To be sure, strategic leadership in colleges and universities
depends on authority to be successful. Yet since leadership is a reciprocal process
that finally depends on the consent, involvement, and commitment of a broad
cross-section of a campus community that enjoys substantial decision-making
autonomy, authority alone cannot constitute leadership. We can see it as a critical
resource for leadership (Burns 1978).
A similar relationship between necessary and sufficient is evident in the way
a wide variety of talents and characteristics that are associated with leaders actually
function within a leadership process. The capacity to communicate and to inspire,
qualities of courage and tenacity, ability to resolve conflict and solve problems,
and the possession of expert knowledge and experience are the kinds of attributes
one finds in leaders. These characteristics, again, are clearly necessary but not
sufficient for leadership. For without a value centered structure within which to
orient them to a common task, and to fulfill a high purpose, they can become