12 Strategic Leadership
and develop responsibility by putting pressure on the people with the problem”
(1994, 128).
Leadership and Positions of Authority
These comments on empowerment make explicit an important theme about
authority that has substantial implications for the exercise of leadership in insti-
tutions of higher learning. Academic professionals carry much of the authority
and responsibility for leadership in various units and activities—schools, depart-
ments, committees, programs—spread throughout the organization. Given our
description of leadership, we can see clearly why those who hold positions of
formal authority such as president, dean, or chairperson are not thereby neces-
sarily the only leaders, or even the most effective leaders, in academic organiza-
tions. Based on this understanding, it is perfectly consistent to say that a person
can be the titular head of an organization, but not the leader of it. Under some
circumstances, such an individual might be better described as an authority
figure, a manager, a figurehead, or a paper shuffler. At one extreme, they may
function as autocrats who glory in imposing their will on others, or at the other
pole as mere figureheads who cannot make decisions. Conversely, individuals
with little formal power or authority may play vital roles in leadership. The
exercise of leadership can be found at every level of an institution’s formal
hierarchy, especially in academic communities where authority is diffuse and
widely dispersed.
We should not, of course, rush to break the link between leadership, power, and
authority. Effective leaders are often known by their ability to use their administra-
tive, legal, coercive, and symbolic power responsibly and effectively (cf. Hughes,
Ginnett, and Curphy 1995). The capacity to do so is no mean accomplishment but
is dense with organizational and moral significance. Both designated and other kinds
of leaders also gain power informally by means of relationships, talents, expertise,
and political skills. As we shall see more than once, the critical question for leader-
ship in colleges and universities becomes the way power, authority, and influence are
exercised to define and to achieve common purposes. Governance is one thing and
reciprocal leadership is another; but those who have been granted authority have
the opportunity and the responsibility to transform it into interactive leadership. As
we shall see, embedding strategic leadership processes throughout the organization
is one of the ways to accomplish this transformation systematically.
Transactional and Transforming Leadership
As we continue to explore the nuclear elements of reciprocal leadership, we will
do well to pause over an important distinction between transactional and trans-
forming leadership. First articulated in Burns’s groundbreaking 1978 study Leader-
ship, and reformulated in his 2003 book Transforming Leadership, these concepts