KNOWLEDGE, BELIEFS, AND IGNORANCE

I want to revisit a topic I addressed early in this blog.  As stated in the explanation shown just above this posting, this blog is, in part, dedicated to introducing a mental construct.  Early on, I described a construct as a perspective one has on some topic of concern.  I used the notion of a family to illustrate; that is, if I mention family, you have an entire array of knowledge, beliefs, emotions, attitudes, and values you harbor about your family or families in general.  You might, to varying levels of specification, add a narrative about your family or families.  Such narratives can summarize the contents of the construct and serve to give one boundaries; that is, a sense of what belongs to the construct and what does not.  The media exploits this with standard story lines we see in films, plays, TV shows, novels, and the like.  All of this is entertaining because it relates to your construct concerning family. 

As with family, we carry around constructs about all those things with which we deal, such as our town, our schools, our work, our nation, etc.  This also pertains to the subjects we studied in school.  As a matter of fact, constructs are important parts of academic subjects.  In the sciences, constructs take on the term theories – or if the knowledge is less reliable, models.  I pointed out that for most people, I suspect the construct one holds in a particular subject is some form of the dominant construct that “rules” in a given field.  For example, in biology the construct or theory of evolution is dominant unless you happen to be a particular presidential candidate.  Whatever construct is dominating the field at a given time serves to provide an overall explanation for the subject; it provides potential answers to problems that can then be tested (hypotheses and hypothesis testing); and, as such, provides direction to the efforts of those engaged in furthering that field’s findings.  In the natural sciences, fields are by and large governed by one overarching construct.[1]  But in the fields of the social sciences, this is not the case.

When we consider the social sciences, since our ability to predict is so lacking, we have contending constructs.  One particular field that shares in this plight is the teaching of civics and government and this state of affairs spills over to all of social studies.  In this blog, I have dedicated a lot of space to reviewing three constructs concerning the study of civics.  They have been the natural rights construct, the critical theory construct, and the liberated federalism construct.  I have reviewed the debates concerning the relative merits of these perspectives and have made a case for the adoption of the liberated federalism construct.  But in all of this, a central concern has been the demands of truth telling.

In my earlier treatment of this topic, I cited Plato’s distinction among knowledge, belief, and ignorance.  Knowledge is what we reasonably hold as the truth beyond question; ignorance occurs when we don’t know something, and belief consists of all those things we hold to be true but about which we have some level of reservation.  I wrote back then that I knew I was currently typing the words that appeared in the posting, I didn’t know what I was going to be doing the next day at that time, and I believed there was going to be a next day (a belief that turned out to be true).  This is important to what I am addressing here because the notion of constructs is about truth telling, to the degree we can tell the truth.  Ultimately, all we hold to be true is our version of the truth, our construct of that truth.  There is a truth out there, but we have limited ability to discern what that truth is; we construct a version of it.  So it is with our views of government and politics, the subject matter of civics.  And what this blog has spent effort in conveying is that there are three constructed perspectives of what government and civics are and about what they should be.

Let me illustrate this with an example (as I did in the earlier posting).  As I describe the example, you might feel I am straying a bit.  Bear with me; I’ll get back to it eventually.  Since the terrorists attacked us on September 11, 2001, there has been in the media and among ourselves a certain level of anxiety.  It has to do with tolerating the non-Judeo-Christian tradition of Islam.  Let me admit to a bias.  I believe that we, as humans, are wired to distrust the other, the foreign, the “not us.”  If true, such a proclivity will affect how students view governance and politics in a pluralistic society and, therefore, have an effect on how they will see the content of civics classes.  This proclivity might have been useful in our ancient past when resources were scarce and boundaries between peoples were necessary for survival. 

Let me point out that I did not write I know this proclivity is at work; I wrote I believe that humans are so wired.  I use the word “believe” on the advice of Plato described above.  Remember, belief is somewhere between knowledge and ignorance.  I believe that we have a bias toward not trusting strangers or people not like ourselves.

The problem within this example, of course, is that in modern life, with its high degree of interdependence, such a fear, distrust, or downright dislike of Islam can be highly disruptive and counterproductive.  Yes, it is also unjust.  Therefore, good citizenship, in a civilized country, should include beliefs and actions that combat such disruptive biases.  This includes an appropriate civics education.  Good civics instruction should, by extension, encourage beliefs and actions reflecting functional levels of tolerance if not downright affection for varied modes of living.  Therefore, to the extent that we express or act upon our natural fears and related prejudices about the other, the foreign, the “not like us,” we are failing to provide good civics instruction.  A healthy view of Islam is that due to numerous factors, among the Islamic world there is a minority who wish us ill, but that minority should not lead us to blanket the whole of Islam and its adherents with discrimination.  Such a reaction will only make matters worse on both practical and moral grounds.

There is another element at work here.  History gives us ample examples of how people’s tolerance has been affected by how well their economy is doing.  Recently, we went through very trying economic times since the financial crisis of 2008.  But to quickly cite the most obvious historical example of how economic conditions can affect levels of tolerance, it would be post World War I Germany.  It is accepted historical thinking that those challenging conditions led to the rise of Nazism.  With the backdrop of worldwide depression and then galloping inflation, Adolf Hitler found eager ears for his message of hate and extreme nationalism.  What we can experience in such times – more recently the fear factors after the 2008 financial crisis – are social realities treading on potentially dangerous ground and social conditions, and their histories can eloquently demonstrate the importance of effective civics education.[2]  Civics should be that part of the curriculum that addresses any leanings among the populous that express hatred for minority groups, alien groups, and their corresponding beliefs, such as their religions.  I highlight this concern because it relates very closely to the overall argument I present in this blog – it adds a very relevant context.

To get back on topic, the very deficiency of not having a unified theory or construct in civics education can be exploited.  This lack can be an illustration of this very sense of how reality can be viewed by different perspectives.  It can illustrate how the diversity of views and beliefs – no matter how much they are held as knowledge – exist in a student’s social environment.  This applies to academic subjects, religions, cultural narratives, and the like.  Constructs are just that; they are constructed versions of the truth and unfortunately, the vast majority of our teaching does not highlight this factor enough.

I believe the above illustrates the importance of civics education.  Let me summarize.  How we view our government and political world is guided by the relevant constructs we hold concerning government and politics.  If that construct has a poor relationship with what is truly real – it is inordinately filled with poorly founded beliefs – and if those misconceptions are generally held, we can, under the “right” conditions, be led down a dangerous path.  While the US is not close to such drastic conditions, the Nazi example illustrates how serious this can be.  As it is, our current presidential race gives one pause.  Therefore, that part of our school offerings that addresses the relevant issues should be regarded as important – the health of our society depends on it.

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[1] In the field of physics, there are two contending theories:  relativity to describe and explain the large cosmos and quantum mechanics to describe and explain, as best it can, the molecular and atomic world.  The quest is to devise a unified theory for all of physical existence.

[2]The Ed Show, MSNBC, shared a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center that the number of extreme right wing militant groups spiking as of March, 2013.

POWERFUL MOBILIZER

In my evaluation of the several constructs this blog has presented, I’ve used Eugene Meehan’s criteria.[1]  Those criteria were developed to analyze social science theories and models.  The criteria are made up of eight elements:  comprehension, power, precision, consistency or reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, and control.  I used the criteria to look at the three mental constructs I claimed can be used in choosing content for a civics curriculum.  Those three are the natural rights construct, the critical theory construct, and the liberated federalism construct (a.k.a. federation theory).  Each element of the criteria has a question which can be asked of any theory, model or construct; for example, using the criterion, comprehension, one can ask:  does the theory, model, or construct explain as many phenomena which are related to the area of concern as possible?  In my evaluation, given that I was concerned with a construct not to conduct academic research, but for curricular purposes, I added the criteria abstraction level and motivational level.  In this posting, I want to focus on one of Meehan’s criterion.  I am looking at power and revisiting the question:  does federation theory control its explanatory aspects by being valid and complete in its component parts and in the relations between those parts?

Using power, one can ask whether federation theory’s support of communal strategies is functional; that is, do groups that are noted for having viable bonds of partnership experience more efficacious performance?  This blog has dedicated a lot of space to describing these modes of operation.  I just completed a series of postings that reviewed change strategies that pick up on this view.  Those would be normative-re-educative strategies which I contend are based on federalist principles and values.  In short, I want to address whether such an approach is powerful.

Hahrie Han has recently looked at this concern.[2]  She conducted research on the effectiveness between transactional mobilizing and transformational mobilizing among community based organizations.  Transactional mobilizing relies more on reward and punishment strategies while transformational mobilizing relies on altering the attitudes, perceptions, biases, and even values of people to become active and effective community workers.  This latter technique gets at issues of legitimacy, reference, and expertise rather than punishments and rewards.  Using observations and interviews, she took a highly in-depth view of members in two national organizations.  The main independent variable was the level of engagement one could detect among the chapters of these organizations.  She distinguished high and low levels of engagements.  She then tested whether transactional or transformational techniques could be associated with each level.

Han found that transformational mobilizing was associated with high level engagement.  Most interesting is that the chapter that opted to develop transformational strategy was deemed more successful than the chapter that attempted to find talented and interested individuals as their main approach.  While in using transformational techniques was more expensive – especially in terms of time and effort – the results were characterized by organizational workers who exhibited higher levels of self-motivation for longer periods of time.  The organization’s “mobilizers,” who were charged with recruiting and used the transformative approach, would “allow people to self-select the level of activity they desire … [Organizers] seek to transform people’s interests as they recruit them for action.”[3]  In Han’s accounts of how each of the two types practiced recruitment, transactional mobilizers would seek those workers who would come to the organization ready to function.  On the other hand, transformational mobilizers would invest a great deal of time using one-on-one techniques to train and mentor individual workers so they could develop those leadership skills that could then operate independently within communal arrangements.  This “training” would emphasize the emotional and cognitive elements of a worker’s perspective.  In short, it would be of a normative-re-educative type of strategy.  A noted difference between the two approaches is that the transactional mobilizer type is more successful if highly talented and self-motivated personnel are recruited initially.  It also demands less time and effort to implement.  If people are self-motivated and can see themselves as determining such factors as time, they can be very productive at low costs; i.e., contributing to higher productivity.  Otherwise – and what is usually the case – higher levels of engagement are secured by implementing transformational mobilizing strategy.  In addition, while relying on promoting a communal sense and social capital, there is the added benefit that related attitudes, emotions, and values which are akin to healthier citizenship are enhanced.

I believe this research attests to the power of federalist values.  As such, it adds to the supportive literature that helps warrant the implementation of federation theory in our efforts to develop civics education curriculum.

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[1] Meehan, E. J. (1969). Explanations in social science: A system paradigm. Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press.

[2] Han, H.  (2014).  How organizations develop activists:  Civic associations and leadership in the 21^st century.  New York, NY:  Oxford University Press.  AND thanks to Michelson, M. (2015).  Political Science Quarterly, Book Review, Fall, pp. 559-560.

[3] Ibid., p. 15.

IS THE LOVE REAL?

Why are we so in love with democracy?  I think our most ardent concern over the question of whether we should be a democracy or not is the vision of the most notorious examples of non-democratic regimes.  Images of Nazi atrocities or stories of Stalinist Russia are conjured up in popular media – films, books, magazine articles – and that is probably what first comes to mind if the question of supporting our democratic government is voiced.  A second point is the whole defiant strain we might harbor; we just want to have a say in what we collectively are going to do.  Or stated another way:  no one is going to tell us what to do!  The implied notion is that we, united, are in charge.  So it’s not just a matter of fearing those nightmarish potentials of dictatorship, but the prideful sense that we are responsible enough to determine these things.  And yet how many among us avoid political talk or keeping up with the news in order for us to be viable in any role we might assume in this process of collective decision-making? 

One of the current conditions I have cited in this blog to justify shifting our current views of civics content is that currently we have sufficient data to conclude that too many of us choose to ignore knowing and/or participating in this process.  This is true from the act of voting to writing to government officials or otherwise voicing our standing on questions of governmental policy or pending laws.  If you ask the average American if we should just leave the process of devising and deciding public policy to the experts, most would respond, of course not.  Yet, in actuality, that is exactly what seems to take place most of the time.

My advocacy of federation theory, in part, has been that the content we choose to present young people in secondary school, under the dominance of the natural rights construct, has basically led to a detached disposition toward policy formulation and implementation.  In its overly structural approach and amoral (not immoral) normative posture, our civics and government classes go a long way in promoting this hands off attitude.  In a recent academic study by Paul Burstein[1] we have more evidence of this indifference.  In this study, there are a couple of takeaways that are worth considering.  Let me explain.

Burstein basically asks the question:  do citizens of our democracy get what they want from their government?  He asks this in terms of policies and bills that are being considered for passage.  He breaks down the question in terms of both what regular folks want, as measured by opinion polling, and in terms of the activities of organized interest groups.  What he found, to me, is a bit surprising.

To begin with, as indicated above, he distinguishes between policy proposals and proposed bills in Congress.  By designating Congress, the study is about national issues and proposals, not local or state concerns.  He makes the distinction between policy and bills because policy proposals are expressed in a variety of ways among different bills.  So to add to the study’s clarity, he identified 60 policy proposals as expressed in a much larger number of bills.  He then analyzed the process by which the proposals were handled by asking and investigating how public opinion polls and lobbying behaviors promoted, fought against, or otherwise reacted to the proposals.  Of the sixty policy proposals, public opinion polls were silent on 40% of them.  Of the 60% that had polling information, Congress seems to abide by public sentiment 50% of the time.  As for the “silent” 40% percent, there is no reaction to whether the proposals should be considered, much less as to whether the policy proposal should be adopted or discarded or adopted in a modified fashion.  As for soliciting the attention of interest groups, they responded to only three of the 60 proposals.  Again, the indifference is sufficiently palpable.

If my math is right, only 30% of the time is Congress giving the public what it wants – at least as indicated by studying these 60 policy proposals.  Does this reflect a reality in which we can claim we’re deciding what we want done?  I can hear the reaction:  most of those proposals are probably technical in nature and for the most part are marginal concerns – a matter of tweaking some governmental program or such – and, therefore, it is understandable that most people would not be concerned. 

As a matter of fact, Burstein points out that pollsters are going to ask the public only about issues that are the most salient at a given time.  And yet, at what level of indifference can one say:  people, you need to pay more attention to this stuff.  I would say, given the obvious levels of overall disfavor our government presently experiences – a recent poll found 70 percent of the electorate thinks the nation is going in the wrong direction – you would at least believe that if the current batch of proposals is not important enough to garner our interest, we could think of another set of proposals that would address our current concerns.  Not only can one judge current levels of involvement not sufficient, but that where there is public reaction, such as interest group attempts at influencing Congress, Congressional members seem significantly unimpressed, at least as measured by their voting behavior.  Of course, any study that basically treats all interest groups as equals is bound to find these kinds of results.  Not all interest groups bring to the table equal numbers of political assets.  These assets take the form of money, votes, or expertise.  I would hypothesize that when such numbers are taken into account, “public” input does make a difference as to whether a proposal will eventually materialize as public policy in either law, regulations, and/or judicial decisions (whom you hire as your solicitor does matter).

This past judicial term, the LGBT community gained a big victory in the courts.  With the Supreme Court holding state and local laws prohibiting gay marriage as unconstitutional, the decision is paving the way to allow such unions across our land.  But is this the most democratic way to get “democratic” outcomes?  Usually, when this question arises, one gets into the semantic discussion as to what democracy means.  Let me, for my purposes here, just claim that an essential attribute of democracy is that everyone is treated equally before the law when it comes to essential institutions such as marriage.  Meaning:  the state cannot point out a segment of the population for a discriminatory policy such as prohibiting gay couples from getting married.  So, under such a view, the court’s decision is correct.  But wouldn’t it have been more democratic if the jurisdictions where such prohibitions existed would have decided, on their own, to rescind such provisions in the law?  I think so.  Why?  Because it would have more readily reflected a consensus – more of a case of the people getting what they want.  I add this case because it further illustrates how our democratic zeal is less than our communal expression.  If our citizens were more effectively educated in ways of joint decision-making – from the most local issue to the most national or international concerns – would our back and forth be more productive and less apt to hold on to parochial prejudices?  I add this question to help drive the point that democratic participation is enhanced when it reflects an active electorate.  And if this be true, then we need to look to our schools to do a better job of making the case for knowledgeable participation by our youth.

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[1] Burstein, P.  (2014).  American public opinion, advocacy, and policy in Congress:  What the public wants and what it gets.  New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press.

THE CONTEXT OF CHANGE

Let me finish with my sentiments on change and transformative leadership.  Over many postings, I have been describing and explaining what I consider are the factors affecting organizational change.  Early on, I contextualized these postings as a concern for school efforts to potentially institute changes in their civics curriculum content.  For those of you who regularly read this blog, you know that one of my overarching goals is to promote a curricular view of what civics content should be.  Over the years, I have made the case that the present civics curriculum choices have been guided by the natural rights construct.  I have also suggested that that construct should not hold such a central role, but that curriculum workers and teachers should adopt another construct, federation theory.  To make such a change, those who teach civics and government should view their subject matter from a different perspective.  Since we are talking about a social concern, how we view government and politics – how we view the content – can and often does reflect how we see and feel about how we get along with others.  I am always taken aback by how little most people appreciate how political our lives are.  Politics transcends government and is an element of just about every segment of our social lives.  There is politics in families, at church, at the workplace, at the supermarket; you name the social setting and chances are that politics is involved.  In all of these places, questions of who gets what, where, and how are bound to emerge.  Basically, the question I have been dealing with in these postings dedicated to change theory and leadership is whether those decisions are to be made by someone in charge using such managerial assets as rewards and/or punishments or be a general process by which those involved share in the responsibility to identify, plan, and implement the solution for political problems.  In general, I would claim that if the problem is limited in terms of the number of people affected or the issues are more superficial than those central to the organization, perhaps a “person in charge” can lead a staff to institute needed change.  But if the number of people is significant and/or the issue(s) is (are) either foundational or central to the organization’s mission, then a more “we the people” approach seems to be necessary to achieve satisfactory results.

Why?  Because, as with the case of changing curricular content and the way people see that content, this type of change is not a simple “do this instead of that” solution, but it is “see it this way instead of that way” and “feel about it this way instead of that way” type of change.  For this sort of organizational change – transformative change – rewards and punishments will not lead to a change of mind or heart on the part of those who need to change their behavior.  What is called for is a normative change and that is achieved only by effective re-education.  Therefore, a normative-re-educative strategy needs to be implemented.  This has been identified by change experts as a type of change strategy that agents are trained in to be able to advise organizations in their efforts to institute such change.

Change studies seem to indicate that the distinction between subordinates (changed-for) and leaders can be a contributing factor in whether the leader will have an impact on how change efforts are seen by the changed-for.  If the leader is seen as a reflection of themselves – the leader is just one of us – then the leader is likely to have less of an impact.  Further, if the staff is manned by self-motivated and self-confident individuals, then messages from the leader will have limited effect on the perceptions and behaviors of subordinates.[1]  This is a bit ironic.  The goal of normative-re-educative strategies is to get the planned-for to exhibit self-motivated initiatives, but to do so within the overall efforts of the group.  It can be, that if a staff is populated with such self-assured people, it is likely that an active and dynamic oriented culture prevails in such organizations and the potential of such transformative change is not such a big deal, but instead is the continuous modus operandi.  Two comments here:  how exciting it is that such a possibility exists and I have never been a member of such a school staff nor have I run across it.

And with that, I conclude for now my comments concerning change.  As I mentioned in an earlier posting, this whole area of change is fascinating and worth our study.  This is so not only in terms of curricular change, but also in terms of political study in general.

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[1] Wyle, D. C. (2013).  Transformation leadership:  When is it redundant?  Academy of Management Perspectives, 2013, Vol. 27, No. 2, see http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amp.2013.0064 .

OCEAN’S FIVE

Taking up the theme of transformative leadership, this posting will review what research has found to be the type of person who is likely to be a transformative leader.  That is, the following is a list of personality traits that are associated with the leadership style we can categorize as transformational.[1]  Five traits are particularly strong in their association:   extraversion, openness to experiences, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and, in a negative relation, neuroticism.  Let me share descriptive information about each.

Extraversion has two main attributes, affiliation and agency.  Affiliation is the need of a person to be involved and/or belonging to social groupings.  This is not so much to feel association with particular groups, per se, but the emotional desire of belonging for its own derived satisfaction.  Agency, on the other hand, is a need/desire to act independently.  These two “drives” are a bit at odds with each other, but the person in question works out a cohesive meld of the two so that this personality trait of extraversion provides a strong motivator to lead and to lead in a transformative way.  This trait was found to have the strongest relationship to transformative leadership – among the factors listed – in the cited study by Bono and Judge.  The trait is a source of inspiration in the leader-follower relationship.

Transformative leaders are not shy and do not avoid new experiences.  Instead, they seek out experiences.  Again, this trait is made up of two attributes:  creative expression and emotional responsiveness.  These elements entice the leader to develop a “big-picture” perspective of an organization and what it is attempting to accomplish.  As such, the trait helps a leader avoid tunnel vision or a parochial view of what his/her organization is about.

Transformative change, change that calls for people to either place higher levels of importance on some values already held – and by implication, place lower levels on values held more dearly – or to adopt new values.  This is likely to be challenging for a person who is going through some process of change in which this upending of values is demanded.  It helps greatly for such a person to be led by someone he/she finds agreeable or likeable.  That being the case, it is not surprising to find that agreeableness, as a personality trait, is found to be positively related to successful leaders, particularly for transformative ones.

The fourth personality trait is theorized to be an influence on good leadership due to its consequence.  That is, conscientiousness does not have a direct influence on how one is perceived as leader, but it pushes a leader to be a disciplined hard worker and to do what the job demands.  The ways this dynamic unfolds has many aspects, but overall, transformative leadership calls on a leader to be obsessive over details concerning the needs of individual followers, emotional interactions between followers, and the needs of the organization, including the demands on those in authority.

As I indicated above, the fifth is a trait a leader definitely does not want.  Neuroticism is a negative personality trait if one aspires to be a transformative leader.  Medical News Today associates the following mental states with neuroticism:  guilt, envy, anger, and anxiety.  The main reason why a person suffers from neuroticism is its anxiety producing quality, especially when it comes to meeting productivity demands.  Not only does this trait hinder productivity initially, but it also tends to induce the lasting effect of lowering self-confidence and lowering self-esteem overall.  This is a far cry from the leader who instills confidence in others as a reflection of his/her own self-confidence.  A person with a neurotic trait is likely to shy away from leadership roles.  Instead, what one wants in a leader, especially a transformative one, is emotional stability, which is in short supply if the person is suffering from significant levels of neuroticism.

Simone T. A. Phipps[2] has come up with the clever designation for these “big five” traits:  OCEAN – openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism/emotional stability.  In my next posting, I will add a few more thoughts on this topic of transformative leadership and supportive personality traits.

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[1] See Bono, J. E. and Judge, T. A.  (2004).  Personality and transformational and transactional leadership:  A meta-analysis.  Journal of Applied Psychology, 89 (5), 901-910.  Access:  http://m.timothy-judge.com/Judge%20and%20Bono%20personality-TF--JAP%20published.pdf .

[2] See http://www.academia.edu/4116237/THE_INFLUENCE_OF_PERSONALITY_FACTORS_ON_TRANSFORMATIONAL_LEADERSHIP_EXPLORING_THE_MODERATING_ROLE_OF_POLITICAL_SKILL .

TRANSFORMATIVE IS AS TRANSFORMATIVE DOES

In my last posting, I posed the question, often repeated:  can a person be trained to be a good leader or is a good leader a genetic wonder; that is, is he or she born with the character or personality traits necessary for good leadership?  By a good leader, I am writing about one that can be classified as a transformative leader.  I have described, in previous postings, what transformative change is and, of course, a transformative leader is one who leads a group of people in transformative change.  I want, in this posting, to add a bit of substance to that category of leadership.

In doing so, I will be using the ideas of Bernard M. Bass.[1]  He identifies four general goals or conditions (dimensions) for what he calls transformational leadership.  They are:  idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation.  Each of these is instrumental in creating an encounter between leader and followers in which both leader and followers raise the other in a somewhat social spiral of higher levels of motivation and morality.  Let me add a quick word of explanation for each of these conditions. 

Idealized influence takes place when the leader is able to demonstrate what his/her aims are by his/her own behavior.  It is behavior that “walks the talk,” sort of speak.  This tends to solicit from followers a high degree of admiration.  The second condition, inspirational motivation, is simply the ability of the leader to inspire and motivate.  I would say this is the attribute of good leadership that some might consider inbred – some have it, some don’t – but whatever it is, noted leaders such as Gandhi, the Roosevelts, Churchill, all had it.  You might have had such a leader in your experiences, finding yourself being inspired by such a person in your workplace or church or some other group setting.  I remember, as a very young person, being moved in this way by John F. Kennedy.  Together with idealized influence, inspirational motivation is what is generally considered charisma.  The third condition is individualized consideration.  This is the ability of the leader to convincingly express concern for the needs and wants of followers.  The more such a concern can be expressed at the individual level, the better.  The fourth condition is intellectual stimulation:  the ability of the leader to motivate followers in a particular way.  That is, he/she persuades followers to study and independently create or invent ways to tackle whatever the concern of the group is.  This, in turn, leads to higher levels of proficiencies on the part of the followers.  With these four conditions, the leader will be able to lead his/her group to implement change, institute new patterns of behavior, and/or view and feel differently about what the group has been doing.[2]

In terms of actual actions, these leaders undertake behaviors that logically fall from such sought after conditions.  Generally, they express expectations to followers that communicate a belief in the followers’ abilities; that they can perform productively given the goals of the group.  The notion is:  if the leader believes that followers can do their best, they, in turn, will be motivated to exceed their current level of performance.  The followers are empowered by such leadership to become loyal, high achievers.  This general state is actualized by a leader who insists and expects followers to be self-directed, self-motivated; regularly reminds and promotes moral standards that logically fall from the mission at hand; emphasizes those concerns that have high priority; encourages moral maturity on the part of followers; works to establish an ethical environment by, among other actions, sharing readily his/her relevant values; counts on followers to cooperate with one another; exerts leadership in consistent ways that, among other things, reflects his/her personality; counts on reason to persuade; makes every reasonable effort to provide needed instruction; regularly reminds followers of the ideals the collaborative effort is attempting to realize; and even seeks choices for followers to pursue as opposed to cutting off options.  I’m sure there are other general behavior patterns to assist a leader becoming transformative, but here is a working list with which one can begin.

My next posting will look at the type of person who exhibits these transformative qualities.  I will add, before ending this posting, that whether transformative leaders are born or made, I think all of us can work on adopting some of these behaviors in our everyday interaction with others.  If nothing else, such attempts would bring us closer to becoming more federalist.

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[1] [1] For overview of Bass’ ideas see http://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/59330_Chapter_7.pdf .

[2] To read an academic approach to viewing these factors, see Bono, J. E. and Judge, T. A.  (2004).  Personality and transformational and transactional leadership:  A meta-analysis.  Journal of Applied Psychology, 89 (5), 901-910.  Access:  http://m.timothy-judge.com/Judge%20and%20Bono%20personality-TF--JAP%20published.pdf .

BORN TO LEAD?

An age old concern with leadership is whether leaders are born or made.  Is it a matter of being born to the right parents genetically or into the right nurturing environment?  My exposure to that literature indicates that there is a bias toward believing they are made.  This has the democratic quality which leads one to believe that anyone can become an effective leader.  A pioneer in the field of transformative leadership, James MacGregor Burns,[1] assumes that whatever the source of the related skills, they center on a perspective leader being able to initiate change through the example of his/her behavior.  And further, that dynamic reflects not an assigned set of behaviors, ones the person can turn on and off depending on the circumstances, but actions emanating from the leader’s personality.  So, whether such a trait is a product of genetic makeup or one that is acquired through training, what a transforming leader has to project is just him/herself.  Through these skills, the leader communicates that he/she is dedicated to enhancing a higher level of motivation and morality.  The leader cannot do this if he/she is “buying” or threatening in order to solicit compliance on the part of the followers.  Burns saw transactional efforts – those based on reward or punishment – as counterproductive given the goals of a transforming leader.

In terms of exemplifying that which is sought after, the leader is promoting an espoused theory openly and definitively.  In cases when a theory-in-use varies from what is espoused – and reality will sooner or later demand some level of variance – a transforming leader is as honest as the situation allows in whatever decisions and actions he/she takes.  But even in these situations, the leader, in order to keep the mantle of a transforming leader, decides and acts in such a way as to advance the interests of the collective, be it a school, some other workplace, a community, or some politically defined jurisdiction.  This form of leadership is, in my opinion, necessary in order to institute a normative-re-educative change strategy.

My only concern with Burns’ argument is that he does not apply a moral test to the aims and goals of a transforming leader.  In his theorizing, he disconnects the methodology of a transforming leader and what he/she is trying to accomplish.  Under Burns’ perspective, Mao Zedong and Martin Luther King both are considered equally effective transforming leaders.  I understand Burns’ thinking on this, but as an advocate of federation theory, I judge Zedong to have been a despicable leader who accomplished some good, was conscientiously motivated but, given the levels of suffering and damage he and his leadership caused, would not be at the pinnacle of transforming leaders.

Picking up the work of Burns was Bernard M. Bass.[2]  He introduced the term transformational to replace transforming (I use each interchangeably).  Bass was concerned with the psychological mechanisms that operate in order to allow transforming leadership to succeed.  Particularly, he introduced a means of measuring this form of leadership.  That is, since transforming leadership relies on the acceptance and reactions of followers (the planned-for), Bass identified a list of indicators of such acceptance.  This included levels of trust, loyalty, admiration, and respect.  Of course, since all of these are not directly observable, being that they are states of mind, one can only speculate as to their existence and strength by what followers say and do.  But usually, these reactions and their accompanying behaviors are the results of followers observing the level of effort and dedication the leader exhibits.  This is beyond what the followers expect.  In addition, the leader not only talks and acts to advance the self-interests of those involved, but also is able to communicate a transcending endgame that has some inspiring and emotional laden accomplishment or mission.  This, in turn, provides an identity to the follower such as I’m a civil rights worker or I’m a union man.  So what might be considered here is a leader who instills an idealized influence which could be observed as charisma.  This is in addition to motivating followers to become intellectually stimulated and to seek, on their own, newer ways of doing things to help guarantee overall success in achieving the change being sought.  Unlike Burns, Bass was willing to accommodate transactional strategies in a transformational effort.

Coming up, I will look in more depth at the various transforming attributes, strategies, and distinguishing characteristics.

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[1] Burns, J. M.  (2003).  Transforming leadership.  New York, NY:  Grove Press AND Burns, J. M.  (1978).  Leadership.  New York, NY:  Harper and Row, Publisher.

[2] For overview of Bass’ ideas see http://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/59330_Chapter_7.pdf .