A River Runs Through It:A Metaphor for Teaching

Leadership Theory

John S. (Jack) BurnsWhitworth College

About the Author: John S. (Jack) Burns is an Associate Professor in the School of Education atWhitworth College, in Spokane Washington, where he coordinates the InterdisciplinaryUndergraduate Minor in Leadership Studies. He has been teaching leadership studies since 1985,and has developed leadership studies programs at two institutions. He has been a Director of anEisenhower Leadership Program Grant, and has published several articles on leadership education.He received his Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from Washington State University.

Executive SummaryLeadership educators are some of the best teachers around when it comes to creatingexciting, effective experiential learning opportunities, which teach students

leadership skills. Where the curriculum and instruction falls short is when we try toteach leadership theory. Some courses and programs even omit theory as part of thecurriculum. This article explores a new instructional metaphor for teachingleadership theory. The metaphor has been an effective tool for helping studentsunderstand the historical development of leadership theory as a foundation for theleadership skills they are learning.

42

To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what onedoes, and to speak without knowing what one says.

Fontenelle

Good leadership is a channel of water controlled by God, he directs it to whatever ends hechooses.

Proverbs 2 1: The Message

Theory is not a Four-letter Word!

Students who take leadership courses are excited about the various practical skillsthey are likely to learn, and the experiences both in and out of class they will have toreinforce their learning. Indeed the leadership educators I know are some of thebest teachers I’ve ever observed, creating experientially based courses which

generate incredible energy and motivation for learning. Most students however, donot want to explore the theoretical underpinnings of leadership. Who can blamethem? Our culture is geared to the pragmatic. Outcomes are what matter most.Students have little interest in learning about our scholarly debates over definitionsof leadership and they similarly discount the importance of theory.

It is not just college students who act as if theory is a four-letter word, something tobe avoided in pleasant company. Professional development programs and workshopsoften deliver training in immediately useful and practical leadership skills withoutplacing those skills in a theoretical framework. Theory is not perceived as

important or useful.

Leadership educators may be partially responsible for this perception. Manyleadership educators have risen to our positions because we have been excellentpractitioners who can enthusiastically and effectively communicate about our skills,not because we have demonstrated we have a thorough understanding of leadershiptheory. Either because we may have little theoretical training ourselves, or becausewe know students intensely dislike this &dquo;dry&dquo; part of our curriculum, the leadershipcourses we design often slight instruction about leadership theory.

The challenge then for the leadership educator is to teach not only leadership skillsbut to inform those skills with leadership theory. When skills are wed to theoriesthat inform them, students have the opportunity to continue to make theory drivenrefinements to the application of their skills in our constantly changingenvironment. Indeed theory is not a four-letter word! Knowledge of theory iscrucial for those who desire to conduct leadership in a world that is in a constantstate of change. Understanding the theoretical context of leadership may be themost important &dquo;skill&dquo; we can offer students, even if it is presently the least

glamorous element of our curriculum.

A New Instructional Metaphor

Throughout history various philosophical, political, and social influences have

forged schools of thought or theories about how we think about the interactionbetween leaders and followers. These schools of thought have each influenced ourcontemporary definitions of management and leadership. Organizing this literatureand helping students make sense of it is a pesky, but rewarding task.

43

Over the more than 15 years I have been teaching leadership studies I have

experimented with several different instructional methods to organize and teachstudents about the historic influences on the evolution of leadership theory. I

dabbled with &dquo;great person&dquo; theories, taught about trait theories, and finally settledon teaching about the various leadership &dquo;schools&dquo; of thought that influenced thedevelopment of leadership theory. For a number of years I found using a gianttimeline from Moses to the present was helpful for placing the key individuals whocontributed to the development of a particular school. The timeline had severedrawbacks however, as it was rather confusing, and a timeline makes it difficult todemonstrate the continuous influence of many of these schools. Instead of graspinghow each epoch’s school was influenced and flavored by the preceding schools,students were prone to see each succeeding school as a discrete development, andsubsequent wholesale abandonment of earlier ideas.

In the fall of 1998, I was team-teaching an introductory leadership course and thetheory unit was coming up. At that time, I was also reading David James Duncan’sThe River Why?. No doubt influenced by Duncan’s book, I began to think of theevolution of leadership theory using a river metaphor. We abandoned the traditionaltimeline instructional methodology and taught the theory unit experimenting with ariver metaphor. I have refined it over subsequent semesters, and it has proven to bea powerful instructional tool in both courses and workshops.

A river is an amazing thing. When we casually observe a river, it appears to be afixed, constant, feature of the landscape. Yet, when we really study a river we canbecome captivated by its wonderful complexity. Every river has a source, itsheadwaters. Beyond the headwaters, rivers move through canyons and channels,growing under the influence enriching tributaries with their own unique origins.We see that the water continuously responds to the influence of the channel inchaotic patterns. The river’s course is constrained by its channel, but the channelitself is constantly changing as the river wears on it. In some places, the current maybe forced around obstructing rocks that refuse to erode, or diverted to false channelsthat lead to swamps, or it may seek tranquillity in deep coves and bays. Tributariesfeed into it, become part of its identity, and develop the properties of the river as itcontinues its journey to where yet another tributary adds its contribution until atlast the river escapes its bed and rushes into the sea.

Standing on the bank one can be swept away by a current of questions about theriver. Where did all of that water come from? How long did it take for a particulardrop of water to get to this place? Where is it going? What will be its purpose?What is going on deep beneath the surface?

I like this metaphor because it helps to give length, depth and breadth to ourthinking about leadership theory. When we study the historical development ofleadership theory we can begin to understand its chaotic currents. The river

metaphor helps us examine important questions about leadership theory like: Wheredid it come from? What can we learn from the innumerable influences that give itthe properties we observe today? What trends and patterns are emerging now?How will theory influence the implementation of leadership skills?

44

The Leadership River

We will begin our journey by doing a brief fly-over of the Leadership River Systemin order to get a general picture of the main features of its course from beginning toend. The first thing we notice is that unlike most rivers that trace their headwatersto tiny springs or snowcapped peaks where an ever growing trickle races downsteep drainages into deep valleys that feed and grow the river gradually, the

Leadership River has different beginnings. The headwaters of this river are twohuge high plateau lakes separated by a very tall but narrow mountain range. Eachlake’s outlet is a large river, one named the Government Fork and the other theCommerce Fork. Soon after these forks leave their respective headwater lakes theyare fed by a couple of invigorating tributaries and then these twin rivers slowlymeander through deep channels cut through a vast elevated and desolate plateau.Finally, centuries later, the Government Fork and Commerce Fork merge to formthe main channel of the Leadership River. The pace of the river picks up as it leavesthe plateau and begins a comparatively rapid run (about 120 years on our timeline)to the sea, gaining strength and force from the contributions of a series oftributaries. Before it reaches the sea, it splits again into two distinct branches. Theupper branch flows into a series of deep fjords, which spawn thin waterfalls thatcascade into the sea. The lower branch, which is the main channel of the LeadershipRiver tumbles over a great waterfall and appears to become completely transformed.The waters from a deep coastal lake soon enrich it and then it flows gently to thesea. Once in the sea the river takes on a new identity, one that is deeper, morechaotic, and more unfathomable than anything before it was. Its secrets however,could hold a key to profound knowledge about leadership and its purpose. The

investigation of this sea is the next great challenge for leadership explorers.

Government Fork

Now that we have completed our fly-over, lets examine this river system in detail.Community Lake is the first of the headwater lakes. It is the source of theGovernment Fork, and it represents the ageless needs humanity has to effectivelymanage and administer human communities.

Divine Right and Power Schools

The Government Fork is almost immediately joined by an influential stream, theDivine Right tributary. The Divine Right school posits the theory that society is ahierarchical arrangement whereby certain members, by birthright, and/or becauseof some innate quality, and/or through some kind of divine mandate, are ordainedwith the right or responsibility to lead the rest of the society. Leaders are usuallyreplaced either at death, by abdication, or through contest (usually revolution, butsometimes election) where the survival of the fittest ordains the victorious leader.

A River Runs Through It

46

The influence of this ancient current in the Leadership River can be seen throughhistoric and biblical examples including Moses leading the Children of Israel; Plato’sideas about philosopher kings; the feudal kings and lords of the European dark ages;the ageless laws of primogeniture which ensure the orderly inheritance of birthright;the more recent social Darwinism that reinforces classism; and our contemporarycultural deference to leaders who have been to the &dquo;right&dquo; schools or who come fromthe &dquo;right&dquo; families, like the Kennedy, Gore, and Bush families in the United States.The Divine Right school would define leadership as anything a leader does as afunction of their &dquo;ordained&dquo; position.

Just a little further downstream, an angry, raging tributary crashes into theGovernment Fork and the turmoil it creates produces a reaction in the water thathas such a pervasive influence that at times seems to completely overwhelm theriver’s character. This angry tributary storms out of the Power Mountains andgives rise to the Power School of Leadership and Management. Power theoryinsists that the successful utilization of power from any available power base will not

only propel a person into a position as a leader, but it will also serve to sustain theperson in their position. Machiavelli, writing around 1500 was this theory’s mostable early observer. In The Prince, Machiavelli advised that the primary job of theprince was to first become and then remain the prince by whatever means it took todo so. It did not matter if the prince had to break the peoples’ silly &dquo;moral&dquo; laws likemurder or perjury. The highest and only moral obligation for the prince was toretain the position as the prince! If the prince could rule by giving the peoplegraces, that was acceptable, as long as the prince killed someone every once inawhile just so the people wouldn’t cultivate rebellious thoughts, thinking the princewas too soft. Similarly, the prince was advised not to be too cruel or the peoplemight believe death would be a preferable release from their oppression, and theywould thus have nothing to lose and everything to gain if they were to rebel.

Other philosophers have examined power. About a century after Machiavelli wroteThe Prince, Thomas Hobbes observed the savage wars of Europe and wrote that lifewas &dquo;solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.&dquo; He believed that people’s desire forpower over other people was such that they would simply kill each other off unlessthey agreed to give up some of their power and allow an all-powerful dictator(Leviathan) to rule over them. In the late 1800’s the German Fredrich Nietzschewrote about man’s &dquo;will to power.&dquo; He identified the Hero and the Herd. The Heroclass is those very few humans who become rich with power, who can use their

power and are not influenced by the herd mentality. The Herd is the masses of

humanity who are influenced by and subjected to the rules of society. They areunable to become masters because they do not choose to effectively use their power.

Power theory defines leadership as the effective use of power by the leader. Theabusive use of power from this school is the application of power for the expresspurpose of controlling people-no matter what the cost. Abuse of the power spawnedfrom this influential stream can be observed as the Leadership River runs its course,especially in some of history’s darkest moments. Ready contemporary examplesabound including dictators, politicians, corporate despots, crime bosses, down toyouth gang leaders and playground bullies.

47

The Commerce Fork

Trade Lake is the second of the headwater lakes and it is the source of theCommerce Fork. Trade Lake represents the various economic and business needsthat have been around since humanity discovered it could engage in the exchange ofvalued things. As the Commerce Fork begins its long journey through a highplateau it is almost immediately infused by a tiny stream from the melted waters of aglacier peak that caps the mountains that separate the Government Fork from theCommerce Fork. The glacier is the same one that feeds the Divine Right tributaryon the Government Fork. Similarly, a few miles downstream a boiling brookcascades into the Commerce Fork originating in the same snowpack that generatesthe Power School tributary on the Government Fork. Thus, water samples from theCommerce Fork also reveal a significant influence from the Divine Right and PowerSchools in the practice of economic activity.

For centuries, the Commerce Fork slowly meandered through an unchanging highplateau. Societies that were arranged around hunter/gatherer economic

arrangements gradually gave way to agricultural societies. These early societieswere rigidly hierarchical and there was very little social mobility. The rigid socialorder was unquestioned and was assumed to have been divinely mandated. To

ensure the stability of these societies power was concentrated at the top of thehierarchy. As agricultural societies evolved, most people were peasants boundgeneration after generation to a powerful feudal lord’s land. Often, the tiny middleclass, those who were in the non-agricultural trades, would also hold the sameoccupations generation after generation. Masters of particular crafts controlled

entry into the trades. In this system, the job of the master was to teach a skill or acraft to handful of apprentices (often younger relatives). The job of the apprenticewas to obey the master, learn all that could be learned, and eventually &dquo;hang outtheir own shingle&dquo; by opening their own shop, or taking over the master’s operation.In this system with a limited span of control between masters and apprentices, therewas no need for professional management to handle productivity issues. Indeed,until about two hundred years ago most economic activity was still dominated bythe system of masters and apprentices and lords of the manor and peasants whoworked the lords’ estates.

The Management Canal

The gradual rise in the economic influence of the middle class ignited a wholesaleshift in societies as well as the way commerce was conducted. The creation and

exchange of capital, banking, expansion of trade beyond national/feudal borders andthe radical change in the means of production of goods provided a mighty catalystfor change in societies of Europe and North America. The industrial revolution,which began slowly in the late 1 with century, quietly shifted the production of goodsfrom the small shops of master craftsmen to ever-larger factories. Eventually hugeindustrial complexes were built in growing industrial cities and large numbers oflaborers moved from rural areas and across national borders to live near the urbanfactories. Labor now performed new kinds of jobs like &dquo;feeding&dquo; raw materials intoprocessing machines, or they joined the multitudes on the assembly lines of theemerging mass production era of manufacturing. The increased span of control inmanufacturing also generated a critical demand for a new kind and class of worker,the professional manager. The industrial revolution is the source of the

Management Canal, the single most important tributary of the Commerce Fork.

48

The Management Canal is such a huge tributary it totally subsumes the CommerceFork, radically changing the entire character of that river.

The Confluence of the Government and Commerce Forks-The LeadershipRiver

Shortly after the industrial revolution, the Government and Commerce Forks mergeand their confluence forms the main channel of the Leadership River. Because of thehuge augmentation from the Management Canal, the Commerce Fork is much

larger when the Government and Commerce forks unite. The managementinfluence on the newly formed Leadership River is profound from the 1800’s untilthe late 20th century. The management tide overwhelms the entire river, includingthe deeply submerged government current. Terms like statesman and servant of thepeople are pushed deep below the surface as new mainstream terms like politicalboss and campaign manager are invented.

Scientific Management School

Near the beginning of the 20th century, the Scientific Management tributary can beobserved as it makes a controlled descent from the glaciers on Science Mountain. Itbecomes a catalyst for a major chemical reaction as it merges with the LeadershipRiver. Much as Aristotle had taught in ancient Greece, scientists believed naturecould be observed and understood, and more importantly, man might even tamenature. During 1800’s scientists and engineers increasingly produced &dquo;miracles&dquo; intheir laboratories discovering the sources of diseases and medicine to cure them,increasing human understanding about the physical world, and inventing all kindsof technological marvels that increased human efficiency at work by harnessingsteam and electricity. Because of all of these astonishing achievements in a relativelyshort span of time, popular faith in science began to skyrocket.

The industrial revolution was rolling under a full head of steam by the end of the19th century. Conditions were prime for blending ideas about professionalmanagement with the scientific method. Frederick Winslow Taylor is credited withthe product of the combination of these two powerful systems: the invention ofscientific management.

In scientific management, production is dissected into small sub-units of effort. Themanager’s job is to understand the essential components of the production process,develop comprehensive lists of procedures to implement each component, trainworkers to perform each individual task, monitor the workers’ performance, anddevelop incentives to improve performance and ultimately productivity. In this

scheme, the management assumption is that workers are analogous to the machinesthey work with. Good management is simply a matter of continuously fine-tuningthe entire system to make it increasingly productive. Tighten a pulley, grease a fewbearings, give a small reward to a worker for meeting a quota, all of these

management functions served to make the components of the industrial machine,including its workers, more efficient. Though more humane at the beginning of thetwenty-first century, Scientific management is still with us. Total QualityManagement is just one contemporary example of the application of scientificprinciples to the management process.

49

Human Relations School

In the early 1920’s as the river winds past the Folks Mountains, a pleasant hotsprings becomes the source of the Human Relations tributary, which warmlyenriches the Leadership River. Unfortunately, most scholars do not give MaryParker Follett credit as the founder of the Human Relations School of management.That honor is, in my opinion, erroneously given to Elton Mayo, a Harvard scholarfrom Australia who led the team that conducted the famous Hawthorne experimentsbeginning in the late 1920’s. Years before Mayo began to publish the findings of theHawthorne experiments; Follett was doing wonderful work with groupshumanizing both the industrial and civic sectors. She was also an importantbusiness consultant up to her death in the early 1930’s (Boone, & Bowen, 1987).

None-the-less, Mayo’s Hawthorne Studies provide the commonly acknowledgedinitial documentation about the importance of peer influence on production, as wellas the human needs of workers. The Hawthorne Studies signify an importantturning point in the management literature from treating workers like cogs in agiant machine to treating them like people with very human needs and aspirations.Douglas MacGregor, writing in the 1950’s, developed a management notion calledTheory X and Theory Y. Theory X managers were found to be more like thescientific managers of old who had minimal regard for employees, didn’t trust them,believed they were lazy, poorly motivated etc. MacGregor found that when

managers held those kinds of beliefs about employees, their management style wascontrolling and autocratic. Theory Y managers had different ideas about employees,believing they were capable, motivated, industrious, curious, and had exceptionalability. Theory Y managers were far more collaborative, far less controlling andautocratic. Theory Y more closely reflects the ideas of the human relations theoryof management (Boone, et al., 1987).

If we were to take water samples from the Leadership River in the 1950’s, we wouldfind the influence from the Management Canal of the Commerce Fork continuing todominate the flow. The undercurrent from the Government Fork emerged brieflyduring World War I, the Great Depression and World War II, but in the 1950’s, itonce again dropped deep below the surface in a river seeking its course through therich history of the expansion of the modern industrial world. The Power Streamcontinues to cause turmoil in the current and thundered to life when the Scientific

Management tributary joined the river. The warm waters of the Human Relationstributary however, seem to gradually overtake the Power Stream as it eventuallysubmerged and found more subtle ways to manifest itself

One Best Way School

Scientific Management, the Human Relations Movement, and the paradoxicalTheory X and Theory Y caused a great deal of turbulence in the river. These

competing currents boiled their way to the surface trying to be recognized as thebest way to manage. In the midst of this turbulence as the river begins its charge tothe sea, part of the river will become lost in a swamp caused by a narrow man-madeinlet that is actually a false channel. Some theoreticians proposed that One Best Wayof management could be discovered and taught and set about constructing a newchannel for the river, attempting to divert the flow to conform it to their theories.Beginning in the 50’s and as late as the 80’s, people were advocating a &dquo;best&dquo;

50

management style or theory. Robert Blake and Jane Mouton are perhaps the mostfamous of the One Best Way theorists.

Blake and Mouton developed the Managerial Grid. On the horizontal axis of the9X9 cell Managerial Grid they would plot an organization’s need to orchestrate thedetails of production, or task orientation. On the vertical axis they would identifythe organization’s concern for human relations issues. The objective for Blake andMouton was to diagnose where the organization stood on the grid and recommendsteps to move the organization to the 9,9, &dquo;Team&dquo; position on the grid. Blake andMouton, and others who developed similar ideas about the best way to manage hadsignificant professional success as authors and business consultants, even whileother scholars were busy refuting their claims of a single best way to manageorganizations (Hersey, & Blanchard, 1988).

Situational Leadership School

The majority of the Leadership River is not diverted into the One Best Way Swamp.It continues its course and especially in the 1970’s it picks its way through theSituational Rapids, a series of rocks in the river that separate it into four differentchannels. Situational theorists assert that in different kinds of circumstancesdifferent kinds of management styles are appropriate. Victor Vroom teamed firstwith Phillip Yettin and later with Arthur Jago. These scholars developed andfurther refined a decision tree to assist managers as they determined an appropriatemanagement style to employ based on the decision before them. Robert Housewrote about Path/Goal theory, a theory that examined the follower job satisfactionin relation to the amount of leader direction based on whether follower tasks werestructured or unstructured.

However, Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard gained the most notoriety as

situational theorists. Hersey and Blanchard indicated there are four leadershipstyles: Telling, Coaching, Participating and Delegating (Note: Some of Hersey andBlanchard’s terms have changed with subsequent editions of their book. For ourpurposes, the terms used above provide a good basic understanding of their theory).Each of Hersey and Blanchard’s four management styles is appropriate when used inthe proper context. An assessment of follower willingness (confidence) and abilitydetermines which management style is appropriate. For example, a busload of armyrecruits requires a manager who demonstrates low concern for people and high taskorganization or the &dquo;Telling&dquo; management style because the recruits right off thebus have low willingness (low confidence) and low ability to do the job of soldiering.Similarly, a hospital administrator would use the &dquo;Delegating&dquo; management stylefor an emergency room trauma team when the victims of a car accident arrive,because a highly trained team of medical professionals have both high willingness(high confidence), and high ability to meet the demands of the situation. In either ofthe above situations, it would be ineffective to use a different management style.

The Differentiated Currents of Management and Leadership

Downstream from the situational rapids the surface of the river appears to beorderly and peaceful. The chaos and turbulence seems to have been sorted out inthe situational rapids. Looming deep below the surface however, is the beginning ofan elongated submerged jetty that eventually makes its way to the surface and risesto form the Quality Coastal Range. The Quality Jetty gradually separates the

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current into two distinct channels. The majority of the accumulation from theCommerce Fork, the Management Canal, the Power tributary, and the ScientificManagement tributary are mixed with ancillary augmentations from of the othercurrents in the river and are diverted into the upper channel. This upper channel

pours into the Management Fjords, a series of waterways that reflect varioustheories of management. Flow from the Government Fork, influenced in varyingdegrees by all of the tributaries upstream, now dominates the lower channel. Nolonger tainted by the effluent from the Commerce Fork and the Management Canal,the Leadership River becomes completely transformed as it cascades toward the sea.

The Quality Coastal Range appeared because of a major upheaval in the JapaneseEconomy after World War II, and in the US economy that began in the 1970’s andcontinued well into the 1980’s. The upheaval formed the Management Fjords,which were infused by springs from the Quality Coastal Range. A host of

management writers suggested management solutions to the economic crisis. In

1982, Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman published a landmark book In Search ofExcellence that examined numbers of companies that had been successful despite theeconomy in order to identify successful management techniques that could be

applied to other organizations (Peters, & Waterman, 1982). About the same time,W. Edwards Deming was gaining an American audience for the principles of TotalQuality Management he had been teaching in Japan for thirty years. Excellence andQuality became the mantra of the economy. Various sub-currents of the riversettled in different inlets of the Management Fjords. In one large cove the currentfrom the Power tributary effects the implementation of quality theory spawningvariations of hierarchical arrangements for businesses and organizations. In another

. major fjord, the warm waters from the Human Relations tributary nurture

numerous applications of collaborative management processes.

Some authors who ply these waters are still confused about terminology, using theword leadership in their writing, when they are really describing management.Leadership scholar Joseph Rost, was not confused about the two terms managementand leadership. He conducted extensive research of the major 20th century writingsin leadership.

&dquo;After pouring over those notes and doing several cuts in analyzingthose materials, I came to a startling conclusion. There is a school ofleadership in the literature since 1930 that has been hidden by theobvious confusion and chaos of the literature as it is presented in thebooks, chapters, and articles. Under the surface, I found a consistentview of leadership in the background assumptions and in the

meanings behind the words used in the definitions and models. Thisschool conceptualizes leadership as good management. I will call itthe industrial paradigm of leadership...&dquo; (Rost, 1991 p. 10)

Rost’s comprehensive qualitative analysis of his data demonstrated that most

&dquo;leadership&dquo; authors were actually expounding about management theory, equatingleadership with good management. To be consistent with our metaphor, thesewriters have been adrift in the Management Fjords though they believed they weresailing on the main channel of the Leadership River!

52

Transforming Leadership School

If we head back upstream out of the Management Fjords and up to the Quality Jettywhere the upper and lower channels begin to separate we find the main flow of theLeadership River continues through the lower channel. Immediately past the

Quality Jetty, the river spills over a high waterfall. As it cascades down to theturbulent pool below, it begins a transformation process. The high waterfallrepresents a major event in the development of leadership theory, the 1978

publication of James MacGregor Burns’s book Leadership. In this book he defines

leadership:

Leadership over human beings is exercised when persons with certainmotives and purposes mobilize, in competition or conflict with others,institutional, political, psychological, and other resources so as to

arouse, engage, and satisfy the motives of followers. (Burns, 1978, p.18)

Burns forwards a theory of transforming and transactional leadership. He believesthese constructs represent the extremes on a continuum of leadership behavior. Ihave argued elsewhere that transactional leadership, which is where leaders andfollowers make contact with one another for the economic, political, or psychologicalexchange of mutually beneficial things, is actually a description of management, notleadership (Burns, 1996). Transforming leadership occurs when &dquo;one or more

persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise oneanother to higher levels of motivation and morality&dquo; (Burns, 1978, p. 20).

Just as turbulent free flowing rivers are able to clean themselves from pollutants, intransforming leadership both leaders and followers come through the conflict,stress, and collaboration of the leadership relationship changed, and changed for thebetter. As leaders and followers work together on a problem they grow as humanbeings to a higher level of morality. This is no mere exchange of favors as intransactional leadership. The heart of transforming leadership is the human growthwhich occurs as we meet the challenges before us, and change for the better as weresolve them. This is the heart of the transforming theory of leadership.

Rost praised Burns as an important pioneer in the study of leadership whose work is&dquo;extremely important as a transitional statement that has immense possibilities tolead us toward a new school of leadership&dquo; (Rost, 1991 p. 11). No longer is thediscussion of leadership corrupted by the disproportionate attention to the needs ofwhat Rost labels the &dquo;Industrial Paradigm of Leadership&dquo; (1991), the interests ofbusiness and its management. Those waters remain upstream, locked in the

Management Fjords. Ronald Heifetz in his book Leadership Without Easy Answerrefused to use the word transforming to describe leadership, and instead wrote aboutadaptive behavior. I have labeled Heifetz’s ideas elsewhere as a kind of transformingleadership (Burns, 1996). More recently there has been discussion about replacingthe term transforming leadership with charismatic leadership:

Within the last decade and a half, exceptional leaders who infuseideological values and moral purpose into organizations and whohave extraordinary effects on their followers and organizations, havecaptured attention of leadership scholars (e.g. Bass, 1985; Bennis &

Nanus, 1985; Burns, 1978; Conger, & Kanungo, 198ï; House, 1977;

53

Sashkin, 1988; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993; Tichy & Devanna,1986). Variously labeled charismatic, transformational, inspirational,and visionary, these exceptional leaders are purported to have

qualitatively different and quantitatively greater effects on theirfollowers than the effects of exchange leaders (House, Spangler, &

Woycke, 1991; Howell, & Frost, 1989), this new genre of leadershipwill be referred to &dquo;charismatic&dquo; because of its widespread use in pastand current writings on this topic. (Howell, 1998).

Transforming/Transformational, adaptive, or charismatic leadership reconstructsour thinking about leadership forever. The primary current surfaces to define

leadership as what people do together to morally transform themselves and theirsocieties in order to solve the problems before them. As the river surges past theTransforming Waterfalls, the river’s transformation is complete and it now racesinto a narrow canyon enriched by the outlet of a beautiful coastal lake. The lake isthe product of a huge artesian well. The source of the well reaches back overcenturies charged with an indomitable spirit that characterizes humans, that is thespirit of service. Robert Greenleaf wrote about this ancient influence (Greenleaf,1977) which has been modeled well by certain historical figures like Moses, Christ,Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa. Servant Leadershipinfuses purpose into the transforming nature of the Leadership River.

The Leadership River is now is fully developed and its true character, TransformingServant Leadership, is evident as it flows into the Sea of Chaos. In this vast sea, it

may indeed be able to function as a catalyst to bring the seemingly random patternsof chaos into useful, meaningful, sources of creative change.

The Sea of Chaos

Chaos theory is an ocean that has only begun to be explored, and it represents thenext great adventure of discovery for leadership theorists as we tumble into the 21stCentury. Historically, social science has been influenced by physical science

paradigms. For most of the 20th century and indeed since the

Renaissance/Enlightenment, linear models have driven the &dquo;hard&dquo; and socialsciences. Linear models suggest that things can be determined by discovering thepath of causes for them. This path can be determined through careful scientificobservation and by developing mathematic equations to plot and predict past andfuture events. The essential element here is that if the laws of Physics reflect afundamental reality, human beings are simply a bit more complex &dquo;things&dquo; and theyought to obey in some general and predictable ways the laws associated with thatreality, i.e. gravity seems to hold both rocks and people to the earth.

Thus, in the linear paradigm, rocks are the result of an understandable set ofinferences of linear geologic processes. Human behavior can be understood byexamining psychological and environmental processes that influence human

development. Chaos Theory questions both sets of assumptions. At the subatomiclevel the distinction between organic and inorganic matter is lost. Linear

explanations of cause and effect are inadequate. While social scientists have believedtheir science was inadequate because it is impossible to control all of the variables,the recent discoveries of physical scientists suggest that it is not a matter of

controlling variables at all. Both physical scientists and social scientists have been

54

operating under a paradigm that is too limiting with regard to our understanding ofthe nature of all things.

Chaos Theory emerged in the physical sciences in the early 1970’s as a new

paradigm. Essentially, chaos theory challenged the highly predictable but notalways accurate linear models of physics. Through high-speed computers, standardlinear equations were proven to &dquo;break down&dquo; into chaotic (not predictable)patterns. In linear equations this variation and patterning used to be dismissed as&dquo;noise.&dquo; But now, this noise has been studied and has been discovered to be morereflective of a chaotic reality (Gleick, 1987).

Some social scientists (who tumbled into the Sea of Chaos from the business andmanagement fjords) have begun to examine chaos with regard to human systemsand organizations and employ chaotic models for understanding their behavior, justas linear models have been used in the past. In Chaos, leadership might be defined asthe activity of holding in dynamic tension the tendency of organizations to implode(by &dquo;managing&dquo; themselves so closely that they are no longer responsive to

environmental influences) and to explode into total chaos (by being so responsive tothe environment that they can’t focus or settle on a direction) (Stacey, 1996).

Conclusion

The Leadership River metaphor is useful as an instructional tool. Students use theriver to understand the context of the theories they learn. Instructors have the

opportunity to emphasize various sections of the river, bringing in theorists,historical figures, and historical events in order to help students understand thevarious theories in a comprehensive context.

In my own instruction I have had students &dquo;explore&dquo; areas of the river, and theyreadily run with the metaphor. We have had discussions about pollutants, they havesuggested dams, and thought about obstructions in the river as they test theirknowledge of history and philosophy with the river’s course. The Leadership Rivermetaphor has generated more discussion about leadership theory than anyinstructional methodology I have ever employed.

Perhaps the most important point about this metaphor is that it sticks with thestudents. I introduce the river early in the first course in the Leadership Studiescurriculum, and we revisit it throughout the course and refer to it in subsequentcourses. Students refer to it in class discussions, exam questions, and in theirpapers. They also frame the skills they are learning in the context of theories theyare beginning to understand. Advanced students are able to develop sophisticatedtheory based critiques of the leadership literature because they have become sofamiliar with leadership theory by using this river system metaphor.

Theory is not a four-letter word. Theory is a dynamic foundation for the instructionof leadership, and leadership educators need to continuously experiment withmethodologies to engage students in this important part of the curriculum.

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