I was very interested to read Northouse’s (2019)\u00a0 evolution of leadership definitions over time, as it was evident that they were birthed out of a sense of where culture was at the time. As culture has shifted, so too has leadership style and the recognition of leaders. However, there were commonalities that were identified and I appreciate his very simple definition:<\/p>\n
“Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of<\/em>\u00a0 individuals to achieve a common goal” (pg. 5).<\/em><\/p>\n The fleshing out of this definition really resounds with me and my current understanding of leadership. I view leadership as a process of developing shared vision and supporting others towards achieving our goals. I have learned that developing people and organizations takes time and space. My role as a leader is to keep the process moving forward – continuing to dialogue with people and holding everyone to account for their own growth and the advancement of our goals. In a process oriented framework followers have a voice and can see that their opinions are heard and valued and the results are therefore much more satisfactory. Once a goal has been achieved, then all in the organization has a “we” sense of accomplishment.<\/p>\n This is very much in opposition to the view that leadership equals power. Power comes from a positional view of leadership and to me, it seems that a leader needs to demonstrate power when they have no relational equity with their followers. They must demand their own way in order to get things done, and to establish themselves as the one in charge. I believe that this creates a hierarchy structure which makes it very difficult to develop a shared vision in the organization and have followers who are invested.<\/p>\n Influence, then, in a power relationship would come from a root of fear. A follower would be compelled to respond out of a fear for what the consequence would be if they did not comply. However, in a process focused leadership relationship, followers feel valued, a part of the process, contribute their ideas, and their involvement would come as a result of devotion to the leader and commitment to the cause.<\/p>\n The process of leadership increases in challenge as the size of group increases. In a small group, a leader can use mechanisms to include followers in the process of developing shared vision. Everyone can have some input and their ideas can legitimately be implemented quickly. However, as a group increases in size, more layers of management needs to be installed for the efficient functioning of the organization. At that point, perhaps there could be some process leadership amongst the senior managers, but I wonder how followers farther down in the organization can feel part of the process? Is there a point at which the process of leadership has to change, dependent on the size of an organization?<\/p>\n Northouse, P. (2019). <\/span>Leadership: Theory and practice (8th ed)<\/span><\/i>. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was very interested to read Northouse’s (2019)\u00a0 evolution of leadership definitions over time, as it was evident that they were birthed out of a sense of where culture was at the time. As culture has shifted, so too has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":344,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ldrs500","category-unit-1","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/344"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/leadinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}