18 Strategic Leadership
self-understanding, broadened professional experience, and a larger repertoire
of skills.
Yet any assessment of the capacity of these programs’ success in developing the
attributes or methods of engaging, relational leadership requires a careful sorting
out of their actual goals and practices. They must serve a larger end if they are to
reach the heart of leadership—which is to mobilize and motivate the members of
an organization to enact shared values and purposes.
Much of the burden of our argument goes toward showing that an important
dimension of reciprocal leadership can be taught and learned as a process and
discipline of decision making. We have tried to go beyond the common effort to
list the characteristics of exceptional leaders as the primary way to understand
leadership. In his compelling account of authentic leadership as the chief execu-
tive of a major corporation, Bill George relates, “In my desire to become a leader,
I studied the biographies of world leaders, as well as great business leaders of my
era, attempting to develop the leadership characteristics they displayed. It didn’t
work” (2003, 29).
To be sure, there is no leadership without leaders; yet many of the skills and abili-
ties of leaders become effective dimensions of leadership only as they are woven into
a more encompassing process of decision making oriented to the fulfillment of the
purposes of the organization. In the context of a relational theory of leadership, we
can see the skills and talents of leaders in a new and dialectical perspective. Until
the capacities of leadership are woven into the realization of shared purposes and
commitments, they are resources waiting to be defined and given content. Unless
the leader’s abilities carry and inspire a larger meaning than individual virtuosity,
they do not meet the tests of leadership as a reciprocal process oriented to values.
At the same time, engaging and intentional leadership cannot be sustained without
the hard and effective work of skilled leaders whose competencies and qualities are
necessary, but not sufficient to inspire commitment to shared purposes.
THE CONTEXT FOR THE DISCIPLINE OF
STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
These reflections allow us to anticipate the possibilities of a formal and sys-
tematic process of strategic leadership. As a structured, collaborative method and
discipline of decision making, it can be taught and learned. Like all processes
and disciplines, it will be practiced more effectively by some than others. As we
shall see, it requires integrative and systemic thinking, quantitative reasoning,
collaborative decision making, effective communication, sensitivity to narratives
and values, and a capacity to work in structured group processes. As suggested by
our analysis of the attributes of leadership, these are not abilities that everyone
has in the same measure, but each step in the total process is part of an applied
discipline that can be learned.
Perhaps the most promising possibility for a systematic process of leadership is
its use by those who have been charged with strategic decision-making respon-
sibilities. As we turn our inquiry in this direction, we shift our attention to the