Maori Leadership in Governance - Unitec

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3.0 International perspectives on leadership and governance 3.1 Introduction Developing leadership is a complex and uncertain process. It’s a phenomenon that every one has an opinion on but no one can agree what exactly it really is. Bernard Bass (1990) has famously observed that, “there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define it”. Best estimates indicate that we can find well over 5,000 different definitions of leadership in the burgeoning leadership literature. Judging by the number of books on leadership that are currently on the market, there has never been greater interest in understanding and acquiring leadership skills. For example, Grint (2005) notes that there were 14,139 items relating to ‘Leadership’ on Amazon.co.uk on October 29, 2003. On January 17, 2006, just over two years later, this had increased to 19,625 items. The hunger and quest for leadership knowledge appears to be insatiable. It would appear that the more we learn about leadership the more we realise what we have and want to learn. However, for the purpose of this report, addressing the entire contents of this large body of literature would not be particularly useful. This section will scope the international terrain for some of the ripest fruit for nurturing successful Maori leadership and corporate governance. While recognising its importance to the broader Maori community, this report will only focus on developing strategic leadership and corporate governance. This was recognised by Materoa Dodd (2004) when she suggested, “strategic leadership is key to creating Maori social and economic development success.” As good strategic leaders will nurture leadership within others, both within their organisation and the wider community, it is envisaged that developing these leaders will lead to enhanced leadership throughout Maoridom. In this section you will find some of the current key debates on strategic leadership and corporate governance and will explore: • leadership and strategic leadership; • strategic leadership development; • corporate governance; • strategies to integrate leadership and governance. __________________________________________________________________ Hui Taumata Leadership in Governance Scoping Paper 12
3.2 Leadership and strategic leadership 3.2.1 Leadership A widely used definition amongst leadership scholars is that leadership is “the process of influencing the activities of an organized group in its efforts toward goal setting and goal achievement” (Elkin et al, 2004). There are three key components of this definition that are worth emphasising: it is an interpersonal process between one person and a group; you cannot have ‘leaders’ without ‘followers’; and the criterion for effective leadership is goal achievement. It is especially important to see leadership as something that is produced and jointly created by leaders and followers. Leaders obviously play a central role in initiating and fostering this relationship, but we should not lose sight of the important role that followers need to play in creating leadership. Grint (2005) suggests that leadership has traditionally been understood in four quite different ways: • Leadership as Person: is it WHO ‘leaders’ are that makes them leaders? • Leadership as Results: is it WHAT ‘leaders’ achieve that makes them leaders? • Leadership as Position: is it WHERE ‘leaders’ operate that makes them leaders? • Leadership as Process: is it HOW ‘leaders’ get things done that makes them leaders? In his view, each of these ways of thinking about leadership is valid and potentially useful. However, the fact that we look at leadership in these different ways goes some way towards explaining why we have so much trouble explaining leadership, trying to understand it and trying to teach or reward it. Paradoxically, the importance of leadership tends to be both over-estimated as well as under-estimated (Jackson & Parry, 2001). On the one hand, we tend to exaggerate the importance of a leader’s interventions at either end of the success or failure spectrum. When things are going either very well or when they are going very badly we look to leaders for the causes when perhaps extenuating circumstances beyond the leader’s control might have been more significant. This attributional process has been dubbed the ‘Romance of Leadership’ by Meindl et al (1985). One school of thought suggests that we over-emphasis the importance of individual leaders and an individual might step up and display leadership characteristics or step back and let someone else take the lead depending on the moment. In this way, leadership is broadly distributed amongst organisational members who gain their platform to lead due to their unique perspectives, capabilities, and knowledge (Pearce and Conger, 2002). Additionally, the constantly evolving organisational context impacts significantly on leadership. In fact, Perrow (1970) put forward that ‘leadership style is a dependent variable… the setting or task is the independent variable’. This suggests that leadership will be extensively shaped by organisational characteristics. __________________________________________________________________ Hui Taumata Leadership in Governance Scoping Paper 13
Page 1 and 2: Scoping Paper: Maori Leadership in
Page 3 and 4: 1.0 Background and setting the scen
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Page 7 and 8: d) able to handle difficult situati
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Page 21 and 22: structure that encourages open and
Page 23 and 24: 3.5 Strategies to integrate leaders
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Page 33 and 34: This review thoroughly examines all
Page 35 and 36: 2) The Hui Taumata Taskforce should
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