Relationship

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Leadership
INTRODUCTION
Plans do not implement themselves; people implement them, and these
people are called leaders. Leaders create transformational change by
leading organizations, communities or whole societies from one era to
the next. Mapping the future is one thing, and a very important thing,
but futurists aspire to influence the future as well. Sometimes they
advocate for a preferred future, acting as leaders themselves; more often
they help others realize their aspiration to accomplish something of
significance. While many futurists are more comfortable in the role of
provocateur – and that is a valuable and necessary role – sometimes they
need to go further and be more proactive by stimulating action – or
watch their research and insight put on the shelf to gather dust.
Thus, the curriculum here explores leadership, both from the
perspective of helping students’ understanding of how leadership works,
so that they can more effectively influence leaders, as well as under-
standing what it takes for them to become effective leaders themselves.
HISTORY
Leadership has fascinated scholars going all the way back to Thucydides
(The Peloponnesian War), Plato (The Republic), Sun Tzu (The Art of War),
Plutarch (Lives), and Machiavelli (The Prince). Academic studies of leader-
ship date back to the 1930s, and they often overlap with management
studies because they do not distinguish between authority, management,
and leadership. As a result, the literature on leadership is vast – large
enough to fill a small library by itself. The Library of Congress, for instance,
has over 450 titles containing the term “leader” or its cognates. Tens of
P. C. Bishop et al., Teaching about the Future
© Peter C. Bishop and Andy Hines 2012

2. 226 Teaching about the Future
thousands of journal and popular articles about leadership have also been
published. Wikipedia lists 230 degree programs on leadership1
just in the
US. So the topic is too extensive to summarize completely here.
The study of leadership is characterized by eras in which particular
research agendas were popular. After almost a century of study, how-
ever, no research agenda has proven to be completely satisfying in
providing a complete understanding of leadership.2
Era 1. Traits
The first approach was simply to try to distinguish what characteris-
tics made leaders different from followers (non-leaders). Leaders were
defined as the individuals who were in positions of authority; followers
as those not in such positions.
Numerouslistsweredeveloped–intelligence,birthorder,socioeconomic
status, child-rearing practices, capacity, achievement, responsibility, par-
ticipation, status. The list goes on. In the end, however, the differences
between leaders and followers were not strong enough to be sure that
there was any real pattern.
Era 2. Situation
Researchers then turned to the situations or context that leaders found
themselves in. The purpose was to decide which personality traits were
appropriate for which situations. Hersey and Blanchard (1977) proposed
a theory of leadership that depended on two dimensions: the com-
petence and the commitment of the followers. Situations range from
low competence and commitment, which requires close supervision,
through medium levels, which requires high levels of support, to high
levels allowing large-scale delegation.
None of these approaches, however, produced strong results.
Researchers were not able to empirically support which traits were
appropriate for the different situations.
Era 3. Effectiveness
The third attempt changed the focus from traits to behaviors – not what
leaders were, but what they did – to be effective. Part of that approach was
to distinguish leadership styles. One of the most common distinctions
1
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_studies.
2
The historical treatment is based on a “History of Leadership Research” com-
piled by SEDL (formerly the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory) in
Austin, TX, see http://www.sedl.org/change/leadership/history.html.