{"id":28866,"date":"2022-09-15T13:04:01","date_gmt":"2022-09-15T20:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=28866"},"modified":"2022-09-15T13:04:01","modified_gmt":"2022-09-15T20:04:01","slug":"leadership-status-its-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leadership-status-its-complicated\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership Status: It’s Complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"

My research for my project necessitated me to articulate a definition of leadership. That task proved challenging because there are thousands of definitions. The sheer number of definitions makes it obvious that leadership cannot be reduced or simplified. Beyond trying to define it, leadership also gets applied in real and diverse ways. Leadership never takes place in a vacuum. There always exists a culture and a context in which any form of leadership takes place. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Letter From Birmingham Jail<\/em> sought to answer critics by explaining the context of his actions that led to his imprisonment. Without understanding the context, leadership proves an easy target for faultfinders.<\/p>\n

Many approaches to teaching leadership, especially in America, teach as though leadership can be defined within certain parameters of performance, traits, and personality. Simon Western and Eric-Jean Garcia challenge that understanding of leadership in Global Leadership Perspectives: Insights and Analysis<\/em>. The two premises of this management book seek to \u201callow leadership to speak with different voices\u201d and \u201cto open up new spaces for leadership to speak, reflecting historical, cultural, economic and sociocultural influences.\u201d[1]<\/a>The book contains two main sections. The first section collects insight from twenty different countries, sharing unique traits that shape the current leadership culture there by those residing there. The second section provides an analysis of the first section, seeking commonalities and differences. The authors rely on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, \u201csearching for \u2018symptoms\u2019 of leadership\u201d[2]<\/a> in each country profiled. The Lacanian approach seeks to reveal \u201cwhat unconscious dynamics determine and shape leadership.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

In the analysis, common and uncommon factors and patterns of leadership are defined. The authors use the phrase \u201cinsider-leadership\u201d to refer to \u201ccommon leadership factors, present in the dominant theories and practices found in Western literature.\u201d[4]<\/a> Most of that Western literature comes from prominent business schools at leading universities and influential publications. A fascinating part of the authors\u2019 analysis explores \u201coutsider-leadership,\u201d which searches for leadership traits that are uncommon and not found in the dominant thinking and practice of leadership.[5]<\/a> These existing expressions of leadership often get overlooked or ignored due to their disconnection from the dominant discourses. Analyzing the outsider-leadership looks \u201cfor gaps, for what is left out, what is lacking, and what is left over, \u2018the remainder.\u2019\u201d[6]<\/a> The lack \u201cpoints to what Lacan calls \u2018the Real\u2019, which is unnameable and yet points to a subjective truth.\u201d[7]<\/a> The reality of effective leadership cannot always be reduced to principles or even words. It simply exists and works in the real world.<\/p>\n

The authors break down leadership traits into four discourses. The titles for the discourses include Controller, Therapist, Messiah, and Eco-leadership.[8]<\/a> In addition to placing countries within a discourse, the authors identify the uncommon traits of all twenty countries studied. South Africa\u2019s outsider-leadership (unique) trait they call \u201cparalysed (sic) leadership\u201d due to recent and past history.[9]<\/a> Recent readings of Mandela and Tutu give ample illustrations to support the label and the reason for it. In our upcoming Advance, it will interesting to get a first-and view of that dynamic. America receives a diagnosis of \u201cmelancholic leadership\u201d due to a collective loss of the American Dream.[10]<\/a> Current polarization betrays a collective culture of denial about what has been lost, making people discouraged without a conscious sense of why.<\/p>\n

Of the four discourses, America scored the highest on \u201cmessiah\u201d leadership. This leadership form possesses charismatic leaders who create strong cultures. Anecdotally, I agree with that on a national level and a church level as well. We have recent examples of this leadership type from the ballot box to the pulpit. From my journey in pastoral ministry, the influence of John Maxwell, Bill Hybels, the Willow Creek Association, and others, pointed to a style marked by strength, vision-casting, and culture creation. Rather than a personal application of those principles, imitation often resulted instead. As some church leaders discovered, you can find yourself up a Willow Creek with a Hybels. In recent years, we have witnessed falls by high-profile ministry leaders that I would put in the \u201cmessiah\u201d leader category. The result? What the authors attribute to the nation as a whole, I would apply to the church also. A current state of melancholy aptly describes the American church culture.<\/p>\n

So, what is a leader to do? Using the author\u2019s term or discourse, the future points toward \u201cEco-leadership\u201d incorporating networks and a decentralized leadership model. Connection with other leaders and groups can lead away from the Christian celebrity culture toward a united effort to make the name of Jesus famous. Eco-leadership is \u201cabout realizing that twenty-first century organizations are better understood as interdependent and interconnect eco-systems.\u201d[11]<\/a> The church should not merely understand that principle biblically as part of its identity. It could also lead the way in making it real.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Simon Western and Eric-Jean Garcia, Global Leadership Perspectives: Insights and Analysis <\/em>(Los Angeles: SAGE, 2018), 267.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 5.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 182.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., 186.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid., 191.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Ibid., 252.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ibid., 259.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Ibid., 198.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My research for my project necessitated me to articulate a definition of leadership. That task proved challenging because there are thousands of definitions. The sheer number of definitions makes it obvious that leadership cannot be reduced or simplified. Beyond trying to define it, leadership also gets applied in real and diverse ways. Leadership never takes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2357,2358,2198,2348],"class_list":["post-28866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-garcia","tag-jr","tag-king","tag-western","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28868,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28866\/revisions\/28868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}