Relational Leadership

Walter C. Wright develops a biblical management model that fosters an environment of active participation in an organization's mission. Foreword by Richard J. Mouw and Eugene H. Peterson.

The traditional idea of leadership as being about the solo, heroic leader has now run its course. A new way of thinking about leadership is now needed to address major challenges such as achieving greater social responsibility, enhancing leadership capacity and recognising the importance of context as affecting how leadership occurs. Relational leadership offers a new perspective of leadership that addresses these challenges. At its core, relational leadership recognises leadership as centred in the relationships that form between both formal and informal leaders and those that follow them, far more so than the personality or behaviours of individual leaders. This book introduces readers to the most up-to-date research in this area and the differing theoretical perspectives that can help us better understand leadership as a relational phenomenon. Important characteristics of effective leadership relationships such as trust, respect and mutuality are discussed, focusing on how they develop and how they bring about leadership effects. Specific forms of relational leadership such as shared leadership, responsible leadership, global team leadership and complexity leadership are addressed in subsequent chapters. The book is the first to examine recent ideas about how these new forms of relational leadership are put into practice as well as techniques, tools and strategies available to organisations to help do so. The inclusion of three detailed case studies is specifically designed to help readers understand many of the key concepts covered in the book, with key learning points emphasised. The book offers an excellent summary of the state-of-the-art topics in this new and exciting field of relational leadership.

Leaders and followers live in a relational world—a world in which leadership occurs in complex webs of relationships and dynamically changing contexts. Despite this, our theories of leadership are grounded in assumptions of individuality and linear causality. If we are to advance understandings of leadership that have more relevance to the world of practice, we need to embed issues of relationality into leadership studies. This volume addresses this issue by bringing together, for the first time, a set of prominent scholars from different paradigmatic and disciplinary perspectives to engage in dialogue regarding how to meet the challenges of relationality in leadership research and practice. Included are cutting edge thinking, heated debate, and passionate perspectives on the issues at hand. The chapters reveal the varied and nuanced treatments of relationality that come from authors’ alternative paradigmatic (entity, constructionist, critical) views. Dialogue scholars—reacting to the chapters—engage in spirited debate regarding the commensurability (or incommensurability) of the paradigmatic approaches. The editors bring the dialogue together with introductory and concluding chapters that offer a framework for comparing and situating the competing assumptions and perspectives spanning the relational leadership landscape. Using paradigm interplay they unpack assumptions, and lay out a roadmap for relational leadership research. A key takeaway is that advancing relational leadership research requires multiple paradigmatic perspectives, and scholars who are conversant in the assumptions brought by these perspectives. The book is aimed at those who feel that much of current leadership thinking is missing the boat in today’s complex, relational world. It provides an essential resource for all leadership scholars and practitioners curious about the nature of research on leadership, both those with much research exposure and those new to the field.

When is leadership not relational? When is education not relational? When is life not relational? Relationships always matter to our living, educating and leading. Relational Leadership in Education considers this ‘Relational Leadership’ within the context of education, critiquing the current ideological ‘context’ and contemporary understandings of its influence. Employing a phenomenological approach, this book explores the relational nature of education, Relational Leadership, and the organizational culture to provide a more sophisticated exploration of practice-based wisdom. It offers an extensive range of activities for further thinking on the experiential nature of Relational Leadership, grouped around a number of themes: Relational Leadership and sensibilities; organizational culture; professional development; curriculum, pedagogy and assessment; and the reconstruction of a postgraduate Educational Leadership and Management programme for experienced, emergent and aspiring leaders. ‘Relational Leadership’ is not about describing yet another style of leadership but rather about a relational way of being in leadership that utilizes refined relational sensibilities. ‘Relational Leadership’ is also a reminder of what is critical in a leader’s practice — leadership is always relational, and relationships are the essence of leadership.

Walter C. Wright develops a biblical management model that fosters an environment of active participation in an organization's mission. Foreword by Richard J. Mouw and Eugene H. Peterson.

This book systematically elaborates Scott Eacott’s “relational” approach to organizational theory in education. Contributing to the relational trend in the social sciences, it first surveys relational scholarship across disciplines before providing a nuanced articulation of the relational research program and key concepts such as organizing activity, auctors, and spatio-temporal conditions. It also includes critical commentaries on the program from key figures such as Tony Bush, Megan Crawford, Fenwick English, Helen Gunter, Izhar Oplatka, Augusto Riveros, and Dawn Wallin. As such, the text models an approach to, or social epistemology for building knowledge claims in relation rather than through parallel monologues. Eacott’s relational approach provides a distinctive, post-Bourdieusian variant of the relational sociological project. Shifting the focus of inquiry from entities (e.g., leaders, organizations) to organizing activity and recognizing how auctors generate – simultaneously emerging from and constitutive of – spatio-temporal conditions unsettles the orthodoxy of organizational theory in educational administration and leadership. By presenting its claims in the context of other approaches, the book stimulates intellectual debate among both relational sociologists and opponents of relational approaches. Beyond Leadership provides significant insights into the organizing of education. As it does not fit neatly into any one field, but instead blends educational administration and leadership, organizational studies, and relational sociology, among others, it charts new territory and promotes important dialogue and debate.

Developing Relational Leadership offers the scholar, the practitioner, and most importantly, the scholar-practitioner an exuberance of riches. The authors provide a deep foray into the worlds of systemic, cybernetic and constructionist ideas, while bringing those ideas to the worlds of leadership and organizational change and practice. The authors share cases that present tools for exploring these ideas and practices. While the authors position the two halves of this volume as ¿tools for thinking¿ and ¿tools for action,¿ marking this as a book about both theory and practice, the reader experiences ¿tools for thinking about the relationship between thinking and action¿ ¿ and this connection is quite a treat. Relationship and context are continually in the foreground. Developing Relational Leadership looks at the importance of the questions that we ask ¿ and what our questions do for systemic inquiry and praxis. The focus on diverse ways of asking powerful questions is worth the read itself. This book is for those who are interested in systems theory, cybernetics, constructionism, and communication theory, as well as those interested in leadership, coaching, and organization development. The authors, true to their reliance on positioning ourselves in a multitude of roles, invite us to converse with an ecology of ideas, and open space for a profound reflective practice. A joyful read that will change how systems practitioners think and systems theoreticians act.

Highlighting leadership from a social and relational perspective, this book has a particular emphasis on the innovative role that social networks play in systems change. The social systems engaged in this volume cut across a wide array of stakeholder groups, ranging from student learners, pre-service/in-service teachers, administrators, community leaders, and out to organizations and communities that reflect well beyond the education sector, showcasing diverse perspectives from multiple areas and international settings. Bringing together 32 distinguished scholars from Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Taiwan, the UK and the USA, this book explores the use of social networks in education across different contexts and settings, connecting it with leadership practice that works at these settings for change. The contributors also examine online and virtual social behaviors and their connections to face to face networks. Ultimately, the volume showcases that leadership is social influence through examining a variety of social systems through social relationships. In addition to the breadth of studies connecting innovative leadership research to practice in this volume, the contributors also explore a new area of social networks and leadership by examining online and virtual social behaviors and their connections to face to face networks. Ultimately, the selected chapters in this volume make the point that “leadership is social influence” through examining a variety of social systems through social relationships.