Planet+Champion

Planet Champion
The time capsule revisits transformational leadership theories and looks at leadership through a new millennium lens.

On the Shoulders of Giants
"//While we might agree with Otto Peters’ characterization of Charles A. Wedermeyer as the great visionary and Lord Perry of Walton as the great pragmatist of distance education, we can also safely state that both shared an overarching trait of leading by emphasizing the implementation of innovation. Wedermeyer had the capacity to conceptualize, synthesize and intersect earlier philosophies with emerging new ideas, and articulate their implications and applications. Perry was able to translate those concepts into a new institution, the British Open University, that has had enormous influence on the evolution of much subsequent distance education practice.//

//Can it be said too that leaders such as Wedermeyer and Perry were especially effective in having their ideas adopted around the world because they were charismatic ? Certainly yes, at least in the sense of charismatic leadership as defined by Conger and Kanungo (1987), whose list of traits most surely apply to them: to focus primarily on a vision and mission; to develop a unique and inspirational view of the future; to empower and energize others to implement their vision; to press their organization to continuously improve; to widely communicate, and live that vision; to integrate congruent values into the culture they are influencing; and to profoundly inspire and affect their followers’ aspirations. " // (Beaudoin, 2003)

According to Beaudoin, the trailblazers, Wedemeyer and Lord Perry in DE, share the traits of great leaders from other arenas.

Research literature fails to account for the great preponderance of leaders from the English-speaking world, particularly The United Kingdom and The USA. American culture produces a hugely disproportionate number of inventors and pioneers.

The [|Wordle] above was produced by data inputed from an Encyclopaedia Brittannica (2003) chart of the world's important inventions throughout history. The chart listings for sites of ancient origin like Mesopotamia and Persia were eliminated along with double entries like UK/Russian. All the Eastern European (former soviet block), Scandinavian, and Middle Eastern countries were grouped together. (The wordle is an example of prosumer behaviour that new technology makes possible). media type="custom" key="9771246" align="left"

Inventions need leadership, inventions need communities of users, technicians, and developers, inventions create communities, inventions need a cultural infrastructure that can support their utilization and dissemination. A two-circle venn diagram of the greatest leaders and of the greatest inventors would therefore greatly overlap. Changes in social processes that allowed for the greater contribution of formerly disenfranchised persons; like the inclusion of women, disabled persons and slaves in the cultural pool, needed leadership and created a larger pool of human capitol from which to draw for leadership.

Take Me To Your Leadership
"Leadership processes always involve an interaction of leader, subordinate, and contextual qualities." (Uhl-Bien, 2003, p. 137). Culture, as defined as the socialization into a characteristic patterns of thought, behaviour, attitude, history, identity, role, belief and types of relationship to others in a group, produces the leadership and the leaders swirled into the social [|memes] cultural groups exchange. Memes like genes replicate society, passing between generations. Memes also alter society spreading laterally amongst persons, as in the changes in fashion. New social memes develop around technological innovation and invention, resulting not so much in cultural development as cultural evolution, wherein some memes fail to transmit between generations. Presently technological change in terms of the capability of DE threatens the meme structure associated to the cultural transmission of universities. The leadership memes taken up by members in the English-speaking world and in Europe in particular have allowed for the horizontal disruption of cultural patterns.

Mary Uhl-Bien and Peter Gronn disrupt or offer plausible, alternative explanations for some of the individualistic assumptions of more mainstream leadership research as in the trait theory or great man theory. In common between them is a perspective that is bigger than the top-down directives of a singular leader. In Uhl-Bien's case distinctions between leaders and leadership enlarge the perspective (2003) and in Gronn's view the very value accorded to leadership in education comes into question, ie. the belief that "//leadership is more significant than any other factor,//" (p.23) and instead the change process is explained by activity within a group, that is change occurs with a community of practice and practitioners (2003).

Both Uhl-Bien and Gronn in the papers referred to above emphasize non-hierarchical or non-coercive organization for the roll-out of the complex changes within a community of practice. With all members having the capacity to lead, leadership changes within the members of the community much the way a flock of birds or school of fish change direction. Except that in some communities of practice there can be many directions to take some of which may be characterized as rhizomal in pattern. somehow the bounds of the community are escaped.

The Charles Wedemeyers and Lord Perrys of leadership are like rhizomal plant leaders. They cultivate new territory which is soon flourishing with off-shoots from their leadership. This rhizomal-like pattern to change seems to be supported best in a culture, American culture that its self was a colony, an off-shoot of many other cultures, primarily European. Change may be like colonization; in need of support, of defense and defenders and a viable community. Presently DE may be colonizing HE and what will remain or fall away will be the result of an evolutionary process.

For my personal reflections on the tour in the time machine, please proceed to Planet Chalk.