262 Strategic Leadership
distorted and disoriented. If the defining goal of leadership becomes the power
and self-aggrandizement of the leader, then these valuable personal resources can
become the snares and delusions of a demagogue or dictator. A defining com-
mitment to fulfilling human needs and possibilities shows itself to be essential to
leadership, serving as a moral criterion for the process. The criterion helps us to
differentiate the special characteristics and dynamics of leadership as a discipline
of purpose, not just of power (Burns 1978, 2003.)
In a similar way, the recent emphasis on the practices and relational processes
of leadership represent an important resource, but one that needs to be supple-
mented by the system of a discipline. Many contemporary theorists suggest
practices that involve sensitivity to the needs and values of followers, the require-
ment to develop a vision, and willingness to challenge standard practices (Kouzes
and Posner 1990). All these tasks are indeed facets of the leadership relationship
and conditions of its effectiveness. Yet, without a more structured intellectual
framework and systematic process in which to set them, they can become a loosely
related list of individual acts and practices that lack connection. They can easily
be overtaken by the press of events, forgotten in the crush of institutional business
or lost in the urgencies of implementation.
THE STRATEGIC INTEGRATION OF LEADERSHIP
We can see some of these same patterns of relationship in returning to a topic
we reviewed earlier concerning the various frames or styles of presidential leadership
in colleges and universities: the political, administrative, collegial, and symbolic.
We learned that each of them offers a vital perspective for understanding and
exercising leadership, yet none of them is adequate to the task of integration if it
functions in isolation or sequentially.
Strategic Leadership and Political Leadership
To illustrate, consider the capacity to persuade, to create coalitions, to reward
and punish, to splinter the opposition, to use power creatively and at times coer-
cively, all of which are the stuff of classical political leadership. These are tools
that are required in any organizational context, and many colleges and university
leaders depend on them as tactics and skills required for much of their effective-
ness. If campus relationships turn hostile or adversarial, the political, and/or the
administrative frames of leadership often become dominant because they offer the
safety net of authority. There may be no other choice.
The process of strategy itself requires political deftness in its development and
operation, for it has to be inserted into a real world of political relationships and
patterns of influence. Moreover, strategy, if carefully done, becomes in itself a
powerful vehicle of political legitimacy. It is highly collaborative, uses information
transparently, and focuses on issues and tasks through collegial methods. By its
very existence, collaborative strategy makes its own political statement that the
academy’s most important values of process and substance matter. It empowers