Leadership Unleashed: Leadership = Change

This post continues our exploration of the Social Change Leadership Development Model. For an overview of the model (and an explanation of what is meant by “social change”), please see the previous post from September.

As you can see in the figure below (source: http://www.leadershipstudy.net/ir-theoretical-model.html), the Social Change Leadership Development model is grounded in change. The purpose of this piece is not to summarize the various theories and concepts of change. There are many resources that do that and a few can be found below. The purpose is to help you begin to think about your relationship to change as a foundation for understanding this model.

The purpose of leadership is coping with or creating change, which distinguishes it from management (Kotter, 1990). The purpose of management is to deal with complexity, to bring stability, order and efficiency to the work of the organization such that participants and stakeholders can do their work, have their expectations met, etc. It involves tasks like planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, problem solving, and so on. Managers may create change, but it is normally incremental change in service of bringing order or stability. For example, a school board may solve a problem of how to ensure continuity as board membership changes by creating a resource book and systematic training that each new member participate in. This is valuable, but is not change that will fundamentally alter the way the organization functions or set the direction for future progress.

Leadership is different from, but complementary to, management in that its purpose is to both cope with and create change (Kotter, 1990). Leadership is concerned with setting a vision, motivating others, aligning systems and people and other important tasks that create and facilitate more comprehensive change. Generally, the change facilitated by a leader is transformative, meaning that it doesn’t answer a question or solve a problem so much as alter which questions are asked or how problems are perceived or conceptualized. To use the school board example above, transformative change would involve conceptualizing the impact the school system should have on its community, including which values the school system wants to exemplify, and then aligning the various resources and systems so that vision comes to reality. Both leadership and management are necessary for any organization to function and both can be accomplished by the same person.

It is important to understand how critical change is to leadership in order to understand subsequent posts in this series, in which we will explore how leaders create that change. In other words, creating transformative change is the foundation on which the leadership house is built. Understanding these ideas – the change agent nature of leadership and how leadership is distinct from management -- is critical to your growth as a leader.

How do you respond to change in your organization?

How do you create change in your organization?

What helps you to respond to or create change? What tools do you need?

How can we create environments where everyone can lead (create change) in some aspect of their work?

How has your perception of change grown or evolved over the course of your career?

Some change resources are:

Allen, K.E., & Cherrey, C. (2000). Systematic leadership: Enriching the meaning of our work. Washington, DC: University Press of America

Boyce, M. (2003). Organizational learning is essential to achieving and sustaining change in higher education. Innovative Higher Education, 28(2), 119-136.

Kotter, J. P. (1990). What leaders really do. Harvard Business Review, 68(3), 103-11

Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.