Theoretical Positions

#### **Chapter 2**

## Leadership is a Practice Shaped by Everyday Actions in Messy Organisational Realities

*Tom Karp*

#### **Abstract**

Practice-oriented perspectives of leadership suggest that we should relate more to organisational realities as they are 'in practice'. This entails studying patterns of actions with a certain form, direction, purpose or objective. Leadership researchers have not often focused on conducting empirical studies of everyday life and challenges within organisations, which may have contributed to a possible gap between theory and leadership practice. Thus, there is a need for other perspectives, both for researchers and leaders. Rather than presenting idealised notions of what leaders should do, the premise of practice perspectives is that leadership is shaped through leaders' actions in their everyday environments. The sum of such actions over time constitutes a practice that takes place within a community of collective practice. This entails leadership is understood as a function, a process and an action. Accordingly, research into practice is not so much concerned with identifying normative models and characteristics of the individual but rather shifts the focus from the individual to processes and actions. For leaders, this means that they must develop their own leadership practice regarding how to deal with organisational realities, their messiness and complexity.

**Keywords:** leadership, practice, everyday interactions, power, processes

#### **1. Introduction**

A leader in an MBA course recently explained that he spent most of his day reacting to events, dealing with ad-hoc problems, finding resources and prioritising tasks without knowing whether his actions contributed to the overall objectives set by the organisation. He had not found much help in textbooks or from the many leadership development courses he had taken. He had learned, at least in theory, about how to be transformational, authentic, inspire trust, serve others and exhibit empathic understanding and emotional intelligence. He, therefore, asked me why there is such a gap between the normative ideals and the realities often experienced by leaders in everyday organisational life. Frustrated, he asked, *'Is it only me who experiences this, or is it a structural or systemic problem?'* He is not alone, and this is a common challenge for many leaders. They often discover that leadership theories and abstract models do not help them in dealing with everyday organisational challenges and are left with little support from leadership research and leadership development programmes.

Some, therefore, question whether the best available evidence-based knowledge is used when theorising and practicing leadership [1].

Practice-oriented perspectives on leadership are premised on other perspectives, both in theory and in practice, suggesting that researchers and leaders should pay more attention to real-life organisational realities. In this chapter, I, therefore, examine which practice-oriented perspectives can contribute to the field of leadership and which implications this would have for research into, as well as the exercise of leadership within organisations. Within a range of disciplines, the growing interest in studying practice as a social phenomenon reflects a desire to move away from the restrictions imposed by dualisms, such as subject/object, structure/actor, head/body, thinking/doing, individual/social structure, leader/follower, leader/manager and explicit/implicit. The objective is to contribute new perspectives of what constitutes and creates social systems and thus practice with all its movement, dynamics, relationships, reflections, learning, development and knowledge. To the extent that there is an underlying premise, it is that knowledge about people and people as participants in various activities is in continuous development.

Eikeland [2] claims that practice involves patterns of actions with a certain form, direction, purpose, or objective. It is the patterns that indicate 'the ways of doing things' and, in this context, the ways of leading. Several leadership scholars [3–6] have argued that leadership should be understood, researched, and exercised as a practice. Practice-oriented perspectives in leadership indicate that we should relate more to organisational realities as they are 'in practice and in doing, so leadership is a way of doing things in organisations as the exercise of a practice. In fields, such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and technology, there has been a growing interest in recent years in the concept of practice and in studying practice as a social phenomenon (e.g., see [7–13]). Practical knowledge of different forms, as well as the importance of practical knowledge, have been examined since the time of ancient Greece. For both Aristotle and Socrates, practical experience and wisdom were viewed as important when attempting to understand theoretical and professional knowledge [14]. Moreover, the concept of practice has been broadly applied in Marxist philosophy. Marx believed that theory and practice were mutually dependent and had a reciprocal influence on each other. In the humanities in general—and organisational research in particular—practice-oriented studies gained traction during the 1990s. In particular, the field attracted interest in the areas of organisational learning and knowledge management. Researchers emphasised that knowledge could not be separated from action and instead discussed dynamic and social constructs, such as knowledge in practice [15].

However, Barley and Kunda [16] have pointed out that leadership researchers have been less concerned with conducting empirical studies of everyday life within organisations and regarding what leaders actually do. This may have contributed to a possible gap between theory and practice; however, recently, studies have been conducted that focus on leaders' everyday situations and their practices. Rather than presenting idealised notions of what leaders should do, the premise is that leadership is shaped through leaders' actions in their everyday environments. The sum of leadership actions over time constitutes a practice that takes place within a community of practice. This means that leadership is a process and action, and to a certain extent, these elements are disconnected. Accordingly, research into practice is not particularly concerned with identifying individual characteristics and normative models, and thus the focus is shifted from the individual to processes and actions. This positions and this research direction as an alternative to conventional understandings

#### *Leadership is a Practice Shaped by Everyday Actions in Messy Organisational Realities DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107467*

of leadership, which attach importance to a leader's personal characteristics and the importance of the leader's sole actions. Practice-oriented perspectives are also an alternative to neo-charismatic theories. In addition, practice-oriented perspectives add important critical perspectives, and in doing so, they challenge the growing 'managerialism' within leadership studies [17].

In this chapter, I first present the most important theoretical foundations for studying and performing leadership as a practice. Thereafter, the importance of power and its implications for studying practice are discussed. I then discuss the knowing aspect of practicing leadership before considering how leaders should develop their leadership practice. Implications for researching practice are thereafter examined. The chapter concludes with the central arguments for investigating and conducting research on leadership as a practice.

#### **2. The practice turn in leadership**

Carlson [18], Mintzberg [19, 20] and Kotter [21] have conducted insightful studies regarding what leaders actually do during their day-to-day activities, and they have established some of the grounds for practice-oriented leadership studies. Also worth mentioning is Luthans, Rosenkrantz and Hennessey's [22] quantitative and qualitative study over a two-week period of 52 leaders in three organisations. These researchers determined empirically which activities successful leaders perform, such as politicking, networking and conflict management, rather than what they were theoretically supposed to do.

More recent studies on leadership in practice have largely concentrated on the behaviour of leaders in everyday settings. Findings include the pressures and expectations leaders face, the complex and often ambiguous work environment, the uncertainty leaders must deal with the hectic pace, the processual and adaptive ways of leadership work, the collectiveness of leadership and the informal and symbolic activities leaders need to engage in to succeed [5]. Research suggests that successful leaders are more efficient than less successful leaders in improvising, learning from experience, recognising opportunities and taking advantage of serendipities. Researchers have also pointed to the challenging realities within organisations that leaders often must deal with to succeed, though these realities are rarely discussed in textbooks and research articles. This includes demanding everyday challenges, such as confusion, emotions, politicking, dubious ethics and selfish behaviour, often observed in organisations.

The practice turn in leadership has also given rise to a specific research direction, commonly referred to as 'leadership-as-practice' (L-A-P). The premise comprises the processes and actions with a form of direction, purpose, or meaning that determine whether leadership is exercised. Leadership is exercised through the conversations and discussions that take place between people and the patterns that develop over time between those involved in collaborative working. Crevani, Lindgren and Packendorff [23] hence argue that leadership researchers need to place the analytical focus on leadership as it is practiced in daily interactions rather than on individual leaders. They claim that leadership should be understood as processes, practices and interactions, and the empirical study of leadership should be based on process ontology. Leadership emerges from social practices rather than from the mind of an individual. One should, therefore, focus on leadership in activities rather than on the traits and heroics of individual actors [24].

Nevertheless, practice-oriented research is still scarce. This has led to the critique that some of the claims made by L-A-P researchers have less substantial supporting evidence and that nothing new is presented that is not already addressed in studies of post-heroic leadership [25]; however, some recent empirical research exists. Findings show that leadership is not only contextually influenced but also context-producing practice in which the leader's micro-actions are important for context and overall success [26]. Researchers have also shown how different types of talk relate to different phases of leadership practice [27]. Other findings highlight power differences and demonstrate that participants are not given equal scope to exercise power within the emerging and hybrid agency orienting the flow of leadership [28].

Practice-oriented perspectives are broader in scope than presented in L-A-P. Moreover, a common theoretical framework has not been established. Nonetheless, the various practice-oriented research directions and studies do have some features in common. First, researchers attach more importance to how framework conditions, guidelines and contexts influence the exercise of leadership. Second, researchers are more concerned with how leadership is shaped through actions in everyday organisational operations. They are also interested in leadership actions, *per se*, and in how people exercise leadership in certain situations. In general, they pay less attention to appointed leadership roles and the qualities that a leader should have and instead focus more on processes and patterns of action. Third, there is a greater focus on realities within organisations, meaning the demanding everyday situations within which organisational groups and leaders operate, and the day-to-day actions that are performed. Fourth, practice-oriented researchers are in most cases not seeking universal truths or normative methods but instead believe that leaders should develop their own practices. In other words, it is a view that leadership emerges through experience and practice, moving from the abstract to the realisation of rehearsed, specific and perfected actions.

A practice-orientation involves a shift from a functional to a process-oriented understanding of leadership. Actions and team-working by and between leaders and co-workers are integrated into structures and contexts. Structures in organisations' social systems become constructed and reconstructed by leaders and co-workers during the team-working process [29]. Accordingly, context, structure and practice become both the medium and the result of their actions and exist because the actors continue to reinforce them. The challenge becomes one of distinguishing between what leaders do when working with others and what it is that they and others do that generates leadership. Often, this includes leadership actions on a micro-level—actions that have little visibility and that do not necessarily have a large immediate impact but that over time can be aggregated to create direction, meaning, cohesion and trust to deliver results within organisations.

For leaders themselves, a focus on practice means that they need to pay attention to their everyday interactions and the context they operate within, and from this, they must learn to identify and develop their own practice in relation to how to handle the challenges of their job. Hence, leaders should develop reflexive knowledge about their own and others' contributions to leadership processes to exercise influence [28]. Leadership happens in everyday work, often in mundane, subtle acts. It is seldom the extraordinary acts that make the difference over time but rather the everyday handling of matters. No one way of leading—no one way of doing leadership work—may be deemed better than others. Rather, there are different ways depending on the individual leader, relationships, structural boundaries and context.

#### **3. Leaders practising leadership**

The practice consists of a diverse range of activities that are a function of an understanding of how things should be done and a framework within which one exercises one's practice [30]. In this way, practice comes to constitute interpersonal actions that are organised around and negotiated into existence as part of a shared understanding of 'how things should be done around here' [31]. As discussed, a leadership practice is not so much developed by a leader acting alone but rather by the organisational community and the context in which the leader is a part as well as what the community and context consider acceptable and effective approaches, knowledge and behaviour. The organisational community abides by a shared meaning system regarding language, culture and structure as well as what constitutes acceptable behaviour and attitudes.

Consider the following empirical example from my own research [32]. A leader needs to prioritise different activities during everyday work. A conventional view of leadership suggests that the leader can 'set the direction' instrumentally by determining priorities based on the organisation's objectives. For most leaders, this is a challenging task because it is difficult to see the connection between everyday work activities and the organisation's overarching goals. As a result, many leaders struggle to explain in specific terms how they set a 'direction' [33]. 'Direction' is also an abstract concept that is difficult to correlate to what leaders do during their day-today work. Leaders often instead ask themselves and their teams, 'What have we done before in similar situations? What do we know? What do we know less about? Is there something we should know more about before we make a decision? Can we decide now, or should we wait?'

In this example, prioritisations made are therefore a function of experience using the best knowledge available at the time the decision is made coupled with the use of judgement. Leadership practice is thus constituted by specific actions, often on a micro-level. In this case, practice concerns accessing the available knowledge before priorities are made, as this creates organisational movement toward goals. The act of ensuring the quality of the knowledge base over time creates a practice of how the leader, often in collaboration with others, solves organisational challenges. Over time, such actions aggregate into 'a direction'. Eikeland [2], p186 refers to *experiential reality*, which explains how experimental and gradually rehearsed actions make it possible for the practitioner to master them: '*testing and gaining experience, regarding various organisational phenomena; and acquiring the appropriate language, individually and collectively, in relation to patterns of reaction, power, action, interaction, interpretation and thought*'.

Leadership is the interaction between people and environments that emerges through social systems [34]. Contextual factors, such as trends in society, branch of industry, structure, culture, working environment, colleagues and employees, all play a role in the development of leadership practice. Factors such as learning, feedback culture and psychological security affect the community of practice, which in turn provides guidelines for the leader's individual practice. Leadership practice is, therefore, dependent on the knowledge and skills the leader possesses and the context in which he or she operates. This involves having explicit and tacit knowledge of leadership as an activity and process as well as understanding the tasks and processes for which the leader is responsible. Moreover, it requires an understanding of the branch of industry and other contextual knowledge, such as having knowledge of the organisation, its structure and culture and the characteristics of its value creation. Leaders must also possess capabilities to deal with 'the messiness' of organisational life and

everyday challenges, politicking, network building, ad-hoc problem solving, improvisation, managing oneself and making decisions under uncertainty whilst maintaining a level of ethics.

Some may claim that such activities are not leadership but management. While this distinction may have its uses, it is problematic because it excludes the important everyday dimensions of leadership. This is also a distinction that some leadership researchers often invoke to legitimise their field and promote the unique aspects of leadership. Leadership takes place in the midst of everyday matters; it is embedded in managerial work rather than distinct from it. Leadership is, therefore, a practice, not the outcome of such [3]. Leaders commonly find that they cannot always rely on available knowledge, systems, rules and procedures but need to deal with problems in '*the swampy lowland where situations are confusing "messes" incapable of technical solutions*' [35], p42. Relevant knowledge and skills needed for leadership are thus determined by the interface between the leader and the environment in which he/she operates [4].

Given a practice orientation of leadership, the *doing* dimension receives more attention than the *being* dimension. This contrasts with the conventional leadership literature that has devoted much space to how and who leaders should *be*, meaning the qualities leaders should possess to be successful; however, this is not necessarily justified. The *'I'* of leadership is often given too much emphasis at the expense of the *'we'* of leadership. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the leader's identity is of interest, though not to the extent of what is emphasised in parts of the literature or a society characterised by individualism. The leader's identity in collaborative practices involves who the leader is in relation to others [36]. The construction and reconstruction of identity occur when leaders do their job as well as when they reflect upon or talk to others about the leadership job. A leader's identity is, therefore, developed both unconsciously because of the work done and consciously via reflective processes. A leadership identity can also legitimise the archetypal aspect of the leadership role, which in turn can be influenced by leadership ethics as well as the professional values and ethics of the organisation for which they work.

#### **4. Power in processes and relations**

In leadership, power is commonly understood positionally. Yukl [37] asserts that most definitions of leadership reflect assumptions that include an individual's ability to influence other people to guide, structure and facilitate activities and relationships in a group or organisation. Such activities imply the use of asymmetrical power. His understanding of leadership reflects conventional assumptions about leadership and concerns the ability of the individual leader to influence others as well as the characteristics, qualities and situational understanding that the individual should have to succeed in his/her endeavours; however, practice-oriented perspectives on leadership differ from Yukl's understanding, particularly regarding how much of this influence can be attributed to the appointed leader and the extent to which the individual's specific characteristics or actions equip him/her with the ability and power to influence others.

Undoubtedly, leaders and other influential individuals in organisations exert greater influence than others, either due to position, power relationships, personal characteristics, knowledge or skills or due to situation-specific conditions. Alvesson and colleagues [3], p3 claim that leadership means *'influencing ideas, meanings,* 

*Leadership is a Practice Shaped by Everyday Actions in Messy Organisational Realities DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107467*

*understandings and identities of others within an asymmetrical (unequal) relational context'.* The question is whether asymmetry in groups occurs because someone has more power and legitimacy than others or whether it is because processes and power dynamics in groups of people result in the source of influence that alternates depending on position, people, processes, contextual conditions and external events.

Appointed leaders have more power by virtue of their position but not necessarily more legitimacy. This may be due to personal and relational conditions and because power is a dynamic entity [38]. Within leadership, power is often understood as the capacity of a superior to impose his/her will over a subordinate. The party in the position of power can achieve what he/she wants despite opposition [39]; however, the use of power also depends on legitimacy being granted by the people over whom power is wielded [40]. That is, over time, a leader's use of power will be weakened if those who are exposed to the use of power do not perceive it as legitimate. Striking a balance between exerting authority and earning trust is difficult but necessary to lead with legitimacy [41].

Several leadership scholars have shown that leadership is a relational and co-produced process [42–44]. The underlying premise is that power may also operate relationally as well as be embedded in processes [45, 46]. The power lies in interpersonal relations and in the leadership practice that is collectively created in processes by a group that interacts. In other words, power may be a characteristic of interpersonal relationships [47]. Moreover, power differences in relationships need to be legitimised over time. This means that power is dynamic. It is thus a valid assumption that the influence over people in organisations can originate from different sources and may be due to several factors. Appointed leaders as well as others in a working group influence others and the work they do together, and the interaction results in a dynamic process [48, 49]. Many of the activities carried out by leaders are often described as leadership activities because it is the leaders who carry them out [50]; however, such activities are also done by others in working groups or teams, regardless of whether they are appointed leaders. In other words, when people work together in organisations, many may be involved in leadership activities. The execution of such processes in modern organisations is dependent on the position as well as on the knowledge and skills of individuals and the situational conditions and demands.

#### **5. Developing a leadership practice**

Leadership development encompasses the interactions between the leader and the social environment. Thus, leadership development is based on the collective capacity of the people in the organisation [51] and needs to be integrated into everyday practices to be effective. Day and colleagues [52] argue that the ongoing practice through day-to-day leadership activities is where the crux of development truly resides. Rather than focusing on implementing better leadership development programmes or classroom lectures, it is more productive to focus on what happens in the everyday lives of leaders as they practice and develop. This entails that leadership is learned on the job and enhanced by a variety of experiences and challenges. Leadership development programmes and classroom experiences may certainly assist in developing a leadership practice. Such learning interventions, when designed to include organisational realities and everyday challenges, can help leaders make meaning of their experience by encouraging them to reflect on it personally and to share it with their colleagues, but the learning must be carried back to the workplace to have an impact on the organisation.

Practice-oriented perspectives on leadership require leaders to have an inquiring relationship with their own day-to-day practices and that of the organisation and its practice community to which they belong. It is not unusual for leaders to create limitations affecting their own behaviour and effectiveness and thus others' behaviour and effectiveness because they resort to familiar patterns for thinking and acting [53]. It is important to challenge their own thought patterns and assumptions. Furthermore, the practice involves the creation, development and adaptation of relevant knowledge and skills to suit the context within which the leader is operating. Therefore, leaders willing to learn and develop tend to become their own 'research objects' and need to acquire a spectrum of knowledge and skills that will allow them to deal with the challenges and opportunities they encounter. This involves the patterns of leadership actions as an activity as well as the actions inner cognitive and emotional aspects [2].

Consider this example. A leader struggles to create good relationships with his/her employees. Conventional understandings of leadership dictate that he/she should be 'relationship-oriented', a characteristic the leader should possess that presumably will enable him/her to effectively lead. Being 'relationship-oriented' is a relevant ambition for many leaders, but what should the leader do specifically? One possible action is to closely examine the relational processes between himself/herself and others. He/she may then find that his/her relationship orientation is affected by a strong need to be 'liked'. If the leader further examines such patterns, he/she may discover that creating professional relationships may involve vulnerability. The leader may realise that he/ she must show trust but also endure rejections, receive criticism and be told that he/ she is wrong or is not well-liked. Vulnerability is a challenging demand for leaders, and it is not something the leader necessarily associates with a leader's job. It challenges his/her assumptions about leadership. The leader may eventually discover that he/she needs to overcome fears to establish better relationships. These fears may be related to not meeting the expectations of others and oneself, not being liked, making mistakes or losing control. In other words, the leader's leadership is, therefore, not necessarily about being 'relationship-oriented', an abstract skill that says little about the patterns that unfold between people in the workplace, but rather is about facing up to his/her own fear of not being liked. Thus, over time, dealing with this fear may positively influence relationships.

Mastery and the willingness to invest considerable effort in leadership training over time may be important in this context [52, 54, 55]. In this example, mastering leadership is concerned with the leader's ability to deal with workplace relationships, but mastery is applicable to dealing with a wide range of everyday leadership tasks; however, little research has focused on the mastering of leadership, although the literature does provide some answers. Leadership mastery is related to gaining skills and experience in tackling many organisational tasks [56, 57]. That is, it is not enough to complete a university education or to attend various leadership development programmes. Leadership needs to be practiced regularly and over time to achieve mastery. This brings us back to reflexivity as well as to the ability of leaders to be able to accept feedback, possess self-insight and be willing to work on changing their own behaviour. This is a demanding exercise that often results in many leaders not meeting the challenge or not being willing to invest the time and energy in what it takes to master leadership.

The mastery of leadership is also related to leaders' ability to learn, especially the ability to learn from experience and the ability to adapt to changes [58–60]. Studies have pointed out that having a mastery-oriented approach to learning can be effective. Mastery-oriented individuals ask themselves what they want to learn, and they

*Leadership is a Practice Shaped by Everyday Actions in Messy Organisational Realities DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107467*

are not afraid to make mistakes [61]. The interplay between cognition, dialogue and the 'inner conversation' influences leaders' experiences, feelings and behaviour. Repetitions turn into thought patterns and attitudes, which in turn affect knowledge and skills. Mastery orientation is also linked to self-efficacy, meaning the belief in one's ability to accomplish various tasks [62, 63].

#### **6. Researching leadership as a practice**

The purpose of leadership ought to be continually questioned rather than taken for granted. To advance such questioning, and to advance the practice and study of leadership, the field of leadership research needs to better connect with organisational realities. This is the aim of practice-oriented leadership. Conducting research into leadership practice involves shifting one's focus away from the individual and toward collaborative activities, to what is happening, how things are done, who is doing what and the context in which all this occurs. Crevani and Endrissat [64] argue that the subject of the analysis should be leadership processes and why actions occur. In their opinion, researchers should focus on everyday activities and on what is being done. Accordingly, they recommend that researchers should investigate questions such as: What exactly is leadership work? How is leadership exercised? Where and how is leadership work carried out? What recurrent patterns of actions can be observed? What roles do individuals play? Methodologically, this means investigating leadership as a 'living experience' rather than as a reported experience reproduced by using questionnaires and interviews.

This approach can be operationalised by introducing three elements that are frequently referred to in practice-oriented literature: 'the what, who and how of practice' [65]. This involves studying three different areas: (i) *What*: By examining the actions through which leadership is exercised. These are actions that describe what leaders and employees do, such as staffing, administrative work, operations, strategy planning, implementation of changes, execution of tasks, problem-solving and the social and symbolic activities that take place in organisations; (ii) *Who*: By identifying and describing which people contribute to and are involved in exercising leadership both individually and collectively, including appointed leaders. The purpose is to examine individuals' contributions to what the group does and the degree of influence they have on groups/other people; and (iii) *How*: By examining the activities and actions that constitute leadership, meaning what people in organisations do and how they act. This is done by identifying the recurring patterns that shape interactions in groups, what groups do, what individuals do and the results they achieve. In addition, researchers should study how contextual framework conditions affect these variables as well as how these variables, in turn, affect the context. This involves analysing how certain factors, such as organisational structure, organisational culture, work environment, values, norms, artefacts, budgets and macro conditions, both facilitate and impose restrictions on the work of groups and individuals.

This can be illustrated by using an empirical example of how decisions are made in a group with a leader [32]. The leader may make decisions in meetings with others, using tools, such as digital boards, where it is important that all those participating offer their views before decisions are made. This should follow a fixed routine depending on the type of decision-making. This reflects decision-making in relation to the pattern of activities that govern how a group as well as its leader make decisions. In other words, we have shifted the attention away from the analytic unit

'a leader' to study 'the interactions that are taking place' as well as how the leader influences the process.

The next level of analysis is to understand who is doing what—the purpose is to study the degree of influence that individuals have on the group. Leadership is created in interaction; it is a process but a process where someone leads, while others allow themselves to be led, in the sense that some individuals have more influence on the interaction that takes place. We can then examine what the leader does that supports the processes in the group. For instance, we may observe that he/she initially adopts a somewhat withdrawn role so that everyone is able to have their say before he/she intervenes. We can attempt to identify the type of knowledge or abilities he/she uses when making decisions. We can check whether the leader follows specific routines when making decisions. For instance, when making certain types of decisions, he/she may listen to the views of one or two of the group members, while for other types of decisions, he/she may allow collective ideas to flow freely. In such situations, we may also observe the body language used by the leader. For example, he/she may adopt a stance centrally in the room and use a confident tone of voice when presenting a decision. He/she, therefore, influences others through position-power, whereas knowing this use of power also ensures legitimacy.

The collected data that emerge when the approach and methods described are used will most likely be richer and provide more interesting information than descriptions of the leader and his/her leadership in isolation (for example, see [66]). Alvesson and colleagues [3] express the view that there is a need for more in-depth studies using observations and follow-up discussions over a period of days, even weeks, that involve various actors who can help verify each other's behaviour as well as analyses that focus on understanding the context in which leadership is exercised. Using such a research design, it would be possible to gain a better understanding of how leadership is exercised and avoid falling into the trap of using idealised models that are disconnected from reality. The goal should be to avoid the social fragmentation of everyday experiences by transcending the artificial distinction between theory and practice related to leadership [67]. Eikeland [2] believes that practice-oriented research, in general, has the methodological potential for changing, articulating and defining theory development.

Practice-oriented research thus involves increased use of certain methods, such as auto-ethnography, shadowing, interviews, time studies, observations, and action research as well as multimethod approaches, such as triangulation, to collect, process, analyse and interpret data in addition to using conventional qualitative and quantitative methods. Practice-oriented studies are often more time-consuming and require more analytical work than conventional studies, which may explain why researchers are often reluctant to study practice. It is a demanding approach and entails research that involves a considerable amount of work. Moreover, it is often the case that it is not valued or prioritised by leading leadership journals. Consequently, choosing to conduct practice-oriented research as a research career path will often not result in rapid academic advancement for researchers compared with more time-efficient conventional qualitative and quantitative research. As a result, practice-oriented research is often given less priority by researchers, which may also explain why there are still few practice-oriented studies on leadership.

#### **7. Conclusion**

Applying practice-oriented perspectives contributes important insights to the field of leadership studies in relation to theory, empirical findings and methodological

#### *Leadership is a Practice Shaped by Everyday Actions in Messy Organisational Realities DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107467*

approaches, as well as valuable advice for leaders themselves. These perspectives are applied to build a bridge between theory and practice—a bridge between ideals and reality. Practice-oriented perspectives on leadership comprise a broad spectrum of literature and research but have some shared features. Researchers often attribute greater significance to context and to how it guides and constrains the exercising of leadership. They argue that leadership is also the result of collaboration and collective processes and that the exercise of leadership and the framework conditions for it are created collaboratively. Leadership can be taken on by different people in turn, but someone will be leading, whether it is the appointed leader or someone else. Influence may come from many sources and is dependent on the collaboration that is taking place, power dynamics, group processes and the actions of other actors. Individuals thus can influence the collaboration that determines whether leadership takes place or not, although power differences apply.

Practice-oriented researchers are thus more interested in the process of leadership in relation to everyday organisational operations and day-to-day actions. There is less emphasis on the leadership role and on what leaders as individuals can achieve. Accordingly, there is less focus on describing desirable attributes for a leader but more focus on how the person(s) who want to lead need to develop their own leadership practices, including supportive knowledge and skills. Practice-oriented research involves shifting some attention away from the individual and toward the collaborative activities that are taking place, studying what is happening, how things are done, who is doing what and the context in which it all takes place. The study object comprises everyday operational, tactical and strategic activities as well as what is actually being done. Accordingly, there is a need for in-depth, longitudinal, observational studies.

For leaders, a practice orientation means being aware of their own practices in addition to being aware of the organisational practices of which they are a part. Developing one's own practices means that one will be able to tackle leadership responsibilities as well as develop the ability to influence others. Practice is a function of the knowledge and skills that leaders have developed. Leaders need to find their own leadership approach by experiencing how their activity patterns and the action patterns of others unfold and develop. There is no single best way to lead—no single best leadership practice—that is universally more effective than others. Rather, there are many ways to lead depending on the individual leader, his or her relationships with other people and the context within which he or she exercises leadership.

#### **Author details**

Tom Karp Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway

\*Address all correspondence to: tom.karp@kristiania.no

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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#### **Chapter 3**

## Leadership Styles during Disruption: A Multi-Case Study

*Alberto Abadia*

#### **Abstract**

This chapter reviews relevant literature in order to identify the leadership framework and profile that may better characterize entrepreneurs and business leaders that eventually founded or developed disruptively successful firms—popularly known as "unicorns." Next, the chapter describes a conducted multi-case study that demonstrates a strong correlation between the positive checkmarks in the selected leadership framework—visionary leadership—and the profile of the leaders of nine different international corporations that became industry leaders in less than 20 years (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, General Electrics, Toyota, Alibaba, Tencent, and Inditex).

**Keywords:** leadership, visionary leadership, visionary, disruptive success, disruptive innovation, discontinuous innovation, revolutionary innovation, entrepreneurship, multi-case study on leadership, unicorn

#### **1. Introduction**

During the last two decades, there is an increasing number of leadership theories and frameworks. However, less work has been done in terms of determining which frameworks would suit better some particular organizational outputs. The study described in this chapter explores how some leadership models may be linked to some exceptional occurrences, such as "disruptive success." This label can be applied to startups or more mature—but not yet elite—companies that, at some point, grew fast and became world leaders in a period of less than 20 years.

After giving a quick review of state-of-the-art of the leadership research and theories [1], this chapter shortlists, briefly explains, and finally analyzes the candidate frameworks and chooses the apparently most suitable one. Next, the chapter describes a conducted multi-case study that tested the actual possible correlation between the chosen leadership framework and the profile of the leaders of their "disruptively successful" corporations. The option of the multi-case approach for the testing is the most fitting in the explained context, given the limited number of possible samples and the unquantifiable nature of the analysis. The other most plausible alternative option, direct interviews or direct surveys, would not have been doable, given the challenge of obtaining response from a large number of highly profiled business leaders.

#### **2. Theoretical framework: leadership styles**

The article "Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives" [1] provides a review of the state-of-theart research in terms of leadership research of the last two decades, including most of the theories and frameworks, except that of visionary leadership, which has anyway been included in the analysis [2]. Taking into consideration the profile that could be expected in the context of startups and an innovation-led context [1–3], best framework candidates for further evaluation would be (1) transformational leadership, (2) charismatic leadership, (3) entrepreneurial leadership, and (4) visionary leadership.

#### **2.1 Transformational leadership**

The concept of transformational leadership was introduced by James MacGregor Burns in his book Leadership [4] and then further developed in Transforming Leadership: A New Pursuit of Happiness [5]. Another researcher, Bernard M. Bass, expanded on Burns' work by describing the psychological mechanisms behind transforming leadership. He applied the term "transformational" instead of "transforming." Bass argued that transformational leadership has four constitutive parts [6, 7] which are (1) idealized influence, (2) inspirational motivation, (3) intellectual stimulation, and (4) individualized consideration. On the opposite, transactional leaders, which frequently are less successful in terms of outcomes [5], usually adopt four possible approaches which are (1) contingency reward—rewards in exchange of support, (2) management by exception (active)—monitoring and just acting when a corrective deed is necessary, (3) management by exception (passive)—no monitoring and just acting when a corrective deed is necessary, and (4) laissez faire—leadership avoidance [6, 7].

#### **2.2 Charismatic leadership**

Long ago, Max Weber described charismatic authority in his book Economy and Society [8], where he identified it as one of three types of legitimate domination. According to Weber, charisma is defined as a set of qualities in a person that allows him or her "to be set apart from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities … regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader" [8]. A charismatic leader is a person, who has the ability to influence people and who, consequently, has some controlling power over them [9]. A widely accepted framework developed and tested by Conger and Kanungo [10–13] defines four characteristics in charismatic leaders: (1) possessing and articulating a vision, (2) willing to take risk to achieve the vision, (3) exhibiting sensibility to the needs of followers, and (4) demonstrating noble behavior.

#### **2.3 Entrepreneurial leadership**

The definition of entrepreneurial leadership can be traced back to different theories about entrepreneurship [14], entrepreneurial orientation [15, 16], and entrepreneurial management [16]. "Entrepreneurial Leadership is that leadership that creates visionary scenarios that are used to assemble and mobilize a 'supporting cast' of participants who become committed by the vision to the discovery and exploitation

of strategic value creation" [17]. The article "Entrepreneurial leadership: developing and measuring a cross-cultural construct" [17] compares all the theories about leadership and entrepreneurship. In the case of entrepreneurial leadership, Gupta, MacMillan, and Surie came up with a list of 19 leadership attributes that appeared to be the most relevant [17]. They grouped the remaining attributes into two "enactments" and five roles that would help the analysis in case that this one is the chosen leadership framework [17].

#### **2.4 Visionary leadership**

"Visionary leaders are those who inspire extraordinary levels of achievement in followers through an inspiring vision and through other behaviors" [2]. The article "Characteristics of Visionary Leadership" highlights the relevance of certain management traits in the context of greenfield projects and then associates the following attributes to those of a visionary leader [18]: (1) creators of a positive and inspirational vision, (2) supporters of organized learning and growth inside the organization, (3) innovators, and (4) pioneers.

#### **3. Method**

#### **3.1 Framework selection**

The four models that were considered potentially suitable for a context of disruptive success—transformational, charismatic, entrepreneurial, and visionary—underwent a further scrutiny in order to determine which one would better suit the context of disruptive success, as it is briefly described in the next paragraph.

The original term "transformational" already implies the existence of some entity that experiences transformation, and it is not so suitable in the context of completely new startups [7, 19]. Charismatic leaders emerge in times of instability, change, or crises, but many critics argue that charismatic leaders tend to forget the group's benefit and try to gain most of the attention for themselves. This reality implies that collective or organizational outputs may not always be prioritized or maximized, since that is not the main objective for this type of leaders [9]. Entrepreneurial leadership framework appears to be a suitable option for the study in terms of effectively measuring the entrepreneurial aspect in leadership, but it does not really screen or measure elements that may impact discontinuous innovation [17], which would be mandatory for the chosen context. Therefore, the framework that appeared to suit the best in terms of analyzing environments that combine entrepreneurship and innovation is that of visionary leadership [20–22]. Eventually, there is no assumption on what the results would have been or would be if some other of these frameworks would have been tested in the study. In the case of the selected framework, the results are the ones that tell if this choice was right.

#### **3.2 Case selection**

There are few companies—similar to Apple, Microsoft, or Google—that are really disruptively successful over the span of, for instance, a decade, so it is not possible to collect enough samples as to conduct a statistical study. Besides, the analyzed variables are not quantitative in nature. Multiple theorical and practical studies

indicate that the longitudinal multi-case approach is the best one in terms of properly investigating the results of qualitative inputs [23–28]. In order to choose the specific companies or cases, disruptively successful firms, the following three criteria were applied: (1) the pool of chosen companies should be located in, at least, three different geographical realms i.e. North America, Western Europe and Eastern Asia, (2) the chosen corporations should be at the highest possible position in the rank of global top 100 companies as per market value [29], and (2) those firms should have become industry leaders in (a) a relatively short period of time—less than 20 years, and (b) after leveraging some competitive advantage based on discontinuous innovation.

An overwhelming percentage of the disruptively successful companies in the top 100 as per market capitalization are American and, mostly, they are located in Silicon Valley. Nine was the maximum number of samples in the list that allowed to keep a reasonable geographical balance across several geographic realms without mixing firms that were not really comparable in terms of size or level of achievements. Nine is also a number in the range of similar studies conducted in the past. For instance, the number was three in the case of the study "Internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises: a multi case study" [30], four, in the case of the study "Competitive product-service systems: lessons from a multi-case study" [31], and 10 in the case of the study "Knowledge management critical failure factors: a multi-case study" [32].

The list of selected American corporations included the top five that could be considered disruptively successful firms as per the rapid growth: Apple, Google, Microsoft, General Electric, and Facebook [29]. The other American companies ranked in-between in the original list were not disruptively successful ones e.g. Exxon Mobil, Berkshire Hathaway, Wells Fargo, and Johnson and Johnson [29].

The only large-enough Western European disruptively successful company that also met the criteria was the Spanish firm Inditex—number 67 as per market capitalization [29]. On the other hand, the Eastern Asian disruptively successful companies that ranked high enough in the global top 100 were Toyota Motors, Alibaba and Tencent—15, 22, and 32 [29].

Therefore, the list of multinationals and leaders included in the study is as follows:


#### **4. Multi-case study: findings**

#### **4.1 Rankings of leadership**

**Table 1** summarizes the findings on rankings associated with the four abovementioned features.

It can be observed that, in 89% of the cases, the leaders either outperform their already outperforming firms, in terms of "value" rankings—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Amancio Ortega— or enjoy even more prestige and recognition than the companies that they started up. Only in the case of Larry Page, the achievements and profile of the leader appears to be, arguably, less remarkable than that of his own company.

#### **4.2 Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.**

Apple Inc., a multinational technology company, was founded by Steven Paul Jobs—known as Steve Jobs—in 1977, in Los Altos, California, USA [38]. In 2016, Apple ranked number 1 in the world in terms of market capitalization. Steve Jobs ranked top in the list of the 20 most influential Americans of all times [34].

Jobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California—in Silicon Valley. His passions kept changing over the time. He dropped out of Reed College, in Portland, took a job at Atari Corporation as a videogame designer in early 1974, and saved enough money for a pilgrimage to India [39]. In 1976, back in Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs and his former friend, Stephen Wozniak, worked on a computer design of their own, the Apple I [39]. Jobs and Wozniak later designed a far better product, the Apple II [39].

Over the last four decades, Apple has been involved and played a leading role in a number of disruptive and revolutionary innovations. The list includes personal computers, music distribution, tablet computing, mobile phones and digital publishing. Elements of disruptive innovation can be found in at least four of the items in Apple's list: personal computers, music distribution, tablet computing, and digital publishing. iPhones would belong to the category of revolutionary innovations [40–43].

Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs official biographer, described the founder of Apple as a "creative entrepreneur whose creativity, passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing" [44]. Jobs, pioneered devices such as iMacs, iPods, iPhones, iTunes, and iPads and initiated projects such as Pixar and Apple computers [18].

Some Jobs' words, recorded in the mentioned documentary Triumph of the Nerds [45], can give a sense of his ability for creating positive and inspirational visions [18]:

*To me, the spark of that (birth of personal computer industry in Silicon Valley in the early seventies) was that it was something beyond the sort of you see every day. It is the same that causes people to wantna be poets instead of bankers, and I think this is a wonderful thing. And I think that same spirit can be put into products. And these products can be manufactured and given to people and they can sense that spirit [45].*

Regarding the second attribute of visionary leadership [18], which is supporting organized learning and growth within the organization, Jobs spoke eloquently about its importance, from his own point of view:

"The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay" [46].


#### **Table 1.**

*Feature comparison between studied firms and founders.*

*"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it" [47].*

#### **4.3 Larry Page, Google/Alphabet**

Google was started in 1998 in Menlo Park—California, USA. Founders were two students of Stanford University, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page [48]. Google's beginnings were less humble than those of earlier Silicon Valley startups at the time, because the two founders were able to initially raise US\$1 million US dollars [49].

Larry Page met Sergey Brin when Larry entered the doctorate program at Stanford. Both students were interested in finding a way for extracting useful information from the mass of data in the Internet. With that purpose, they devised a new type of search engine tool to track the backing links of each site. They called the new search engine Google—a name derived from a misspelling of the word googol [48].

Therefore, Google's initial success was not based on disruptive innovation, but rather on revolutionary innovation—the development of relevancy ranking in the search engine sector [49, 50].

In essence, Google's business model has been labeled as continuous disruptive innovation [51] or continuous innovation [50]. These labels define a concept different than Christensen's. Google's innovation model is based on a hub—Googleplex—that attracts talent; this is the same model than Edison's [50, 52, 53]. Eventually, during the last two decades, this model helped Google to be involved in a relevant number of discontinuous innovations, including Android, YouTube, Google Books, and Google Maps, and some continuous ones, such as Chrome or Gmail [54, 55].

There is some dispute among scholars regarding the quality of Page's leadership strength, especially during his early tenure [56]. Still, there are little doubts that Page congregates the four attributes that define a visionary leader, as several authors already validated in their studies [18, 57, 58]. Several quotes from Larry Page that highlight his visionary skills are as follows:

On being an inspirator: "What is the one-sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!" [59].

On his role as a supporter of organized learning and growth inside the organization: "My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they're having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we're doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that" [59]. On being an innovator: "Invention is not enough. [Nikola] Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people" [59]. On being a pioneer: "Lots of companies don't succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be? And how do we create it? And how do we power our organization to really focus on that and really drive it at a high rate?" [59].

Page's personality traits, like his introverted tendencies, may not fit the profile of a charismatic leader [55, 56, 58, 60], but he definitively does in that of a visionary leader. Eventually, it is interesting to notice that many other leaders analyzed in this study also are, apparently, introvert, e.g. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg.

#### **4.4 Thomas Edison, General electric**

General Electric (GE), a multinational technology corporation, was founded by Thomas Alva Edison in 1889, in Schenectady, New York, USA. Since then, GE has been in the lists of top ranked companies in the USA [61].

In 1859, Edison quit school and began working as a train boy on the railroad between Detroit and Port Huron. Edison took advantage of the opportunity to learn telegraphy and, in 1863, he became an apprentice telegrapher. By 1869, he thought that he had made enough progress with a duplex telegraph—a device capable of transmitting two messages simultaneously on one single wire—and abandoned telegraphy for full-time entrepreneurship. At that time, Edison moved to New York City, where he initially partnered with Frank L. Pope, an electrical expert, and produced the Edison Universal Stock Printer [62]. During the next decade, Edison grew fast as successful mogul [62]. By 1889, he had full ownership or participation in many electricity-related companies that got then merged. The resulting corporation was General Electric Company (GE) [61, 63].

From the very beginning, General Electric adopted an innovation development strategy similar to Google's. The actual scheme was not so much based on sparks of disruptive innovation and genius, but on a systematic approach toward producing inventions [64]. This method required concentration of researchers and projects in one spot. The first chosen location was Menlo Park, in New Jersey. Menlo Park hub was then succeeded by a larger laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey [53]. Both hubs developed a long list of innovations [53]. Some of the most relevant ones were the phonograph, the incandescent electric light and power, the motion picture camera, and the alkaline storage battery [53].

Thomas Edison ranks in the top of almost every list of all-time greatest innovators, pioneers, and entrepreneurs. He registered more than 1000 patents in the US alone [53] and founded more than 300 companies [34–36, 53]. Edison's role on the development of these technologies and later commercialization of them clearly qualifies him as visionary, innovator, and pioneer [18]. Edison also was one of the first entrepreneurs to apply the principles of organized teamwork to the process of invention [65].

#### **4.5 Bill Gates, Microsoft**

In 1975 William Henry Gates III—known as Bill Gates—, a student then at Harvard University, and his friend, Paul Allen, partnered and founded a developing software company, called Microsoft [66]. First, they adopted BASIC, a programming language used at the time on larger computers, as the core of their work. By 1980, Gates managed to convince a large computer manufacturing multinational, IBM, to depend on Microsoft for every software related to personal computers (PCs). Then, other manufacturers of IBM-compatible PCs also turned to Microsoft in search of its products. By 1990, Gates was the PC industry's king [67].

Microsoft's initial success was based on one disruptive innovation—personal computers and related software [66]. Later, Microsoft also played a key role in another emerging industry: gaming—Xbox [68–70].

Gates is as introverted, similar to Larry Page [45, 55] and, definitively, he is not as charismatic as Steve Jobs [39, 45, 71, 72], but, still, he has been equally visionary. Bill Gates clearly fits in the description of an innovator, a pioneer, and a supporter of organized learning and growth [45, 67, 71–73].

#### **4.6 Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook**

On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard student, launched the facebook.com, a directory in which fellow students entered their information and photos into a template. Within 2 weeks, half of the students had signed up [74]. Then, his two roommates, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz, helped him add a few features and they made Facebook available to other universities [74]. It differed from other social media sites at the time in the fact that it required real names and e-mail addresses [74]. In 2004, the three partners moved to Palo Alto, California, where venture capitalist Peter Thiel invested in the firm. In May 2005, Facebook received additional money from a venture capital firm (US\$12.7 million) [74]. Facebook's initial success was therefore based on one single but relevant disruptive innovation: social media [71, 74].

Among other achievements, Mark Zuckerberg reached the top five in the list of wealthiest people on earth [33]. Again, Zuckerberg is as charismatic as Jobs or Edison [39, 45, 71, 72]. However, he definitively qualifies as a visionary leader. Besides other studies, interviews, and papers that prove this point [55, 71, 72, 75], Zuckerberg produced a number of quotes that support this statement. On being an inspirator: "We look for people who are passionate about something. In a way, it almost doesn't matter what you're passionate about" [75]. On being a supporter of organized learning and growth inside the organization: "I think as a company, if you can get those two things right–having a clear direction on what you are trying to do and bringing in great people who can execute on the stuff–then you can do pretty well" [75]. On being an innovator: "People think innovation is just having a good idea but a lot of it is just moving quickly and trying a lot of things" [75]. On being a pioneer: "In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks" [75].

#### **4.7 Amancio Ortega, Industria de Diseño Textil (Inditex)**

The Inditex group is a multinational textile fashion retailer firm founded in 1985 in A Coruña, Spain. Inditex currently owns famous brands such as Zara, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home, and Uterqüe. Inditex ranked 67 in the global top 100 as per market capitalization [29].

As a youth in A Coruña, Galicia, in northwestern Spain, Amacio Ortega gained an entry into the garment business by working as a delivery boy for a men's shirt store and assistant in a tailor's shop. He later managed a clothing store that catered to wealthy clients. Finally, Ortega saw an opportunity of appealing to a much broader audience by selling garment at extremely competitive prices. His proposal was based on reducing production costs by using less expensive materials and more efficient manufacturing systems. Ortega first applied this approach in a bathrobe business, Confecciones Goa, company that he founded in 1963. Then, in 1975, Ortega started the first Zara's ready-to-wear clothing store. Zara soon became not only an internationally famous chain but also the flagship of the holding company Inditex, which he founded 10 years later [76].

The success of Inditex—and H&M, its main competitor—is ultimately based on a revolutionary innovation called "fast fashion" [77]. Inditex devised a new model of supply chain, the Agile Supply Chain (ASC), that allows its fashion retailer chains to update products just in time [77, 78]. In this process, store managers constantly

communicate customer feedbacks to collection designers, who immediately update models and production [77, 78]. Inditex's supply chain operations focus on three aspects: maximizing resources used, minimizing inventory, and minimizing lead times [78]. Inditex produces a significant amount of its production in-house and makes sure that its own factories reserve 85% of their capacity for in-season adjustments [77]. Inditex's business model, which is based on flexibility and speed, requires a vertically integrated value chain that differs greatly from that of other competitors, like Benetton and Mango.

Amancio Ortega, who was the one that directly conceived and engineered the above-mentioned business model, clearly is an innovator and a pioneer [18]. He also supports organized learning and growth inside of his firm. An article in The Economist describes how Ortega works:

*He has never had his own office, desk or desktop computer, preferring to direct his firm while standing with colleagues in a design room of Zara Woman, the flagship line. One former long-term CEO of Inditex, and Mr. Ortega's business partner for 31 years, José María Castellano, says that his ex-boss's working method is to discuss things intensely with small groups, delegate paperwork, listen hard to others and prefer oral over written communication [79].*

"Ortega eats lunch with his employees in the company cafeteria. He can regularly be found sharing table on the factory floor with some of the designers, fabric experts and buyers" [80]. "Dear colleague, dear friend": these are the words that, both, Ortega and Steve Jobs, used in letters addressed to employees [81].

Ortega also is, as most of the previously analyzed leaders, an introvert. "Reclusive," "secretive," and "reserved" are words frequently used to describe him. Amancio Ortega has guarded his privacy so jealously that his company only released a photograph of him when the firm was first listed [82].

#### **4.8 Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Motor Corporation**

Toward the end of the second world war, Taiichi Ohno worked as a production engineer for Toyota, a Japanese car manufacture founded in Japan by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 [83]. In those days, Toyota was much less productive than its Detroit-based competitors, the Big Three—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler [83]. In 1956, Ohno visited the USA to learn their supply and inventory methods. In that trip, he visited one of the supermarkets of the Piggly Wiggly chain [84, 85]. Ohno observed then how customers picked up a number of items from shelves and, in turn, the supermarket quickly and precisely replenished them [84]. This model gave Ohno ideas on how to reduce inventory and simplify assembly lines [84, 86, 87]. Based on the streamlined approach to replenishment, Ohno devised the Toyota Production System, which is more broadly known as lean manufacturing or Just-In-Time (JIT) inventory system. That gave Toyota an edge in terms of productivity and quality [86, 87]. The new system made Toyota the car industry leader. Since that time, the principle of lean manufacturing has been adopted by many firms and industries [84, 86, 87].

Based on this history, there is no doubt that Taiichi Ohno was a visionary, an innovator, and a pioneer [18]. The other quality of a visionary leader, supporting internal growth, was clearly evinced by the way that he spoke about Toyota and its organizational style over the length of his career. For instance, he described Toyota in the following way: "The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is

#### *Leadership Styles during Disruption: A Multi-Case Study DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108029*

a system that says there is no limit to people's creativity. People don't go to Toyota to work, they go there to think" [88].

In terms of actively supporting internal growth:

*When you go out into the workplace, you should be looking for things that you can do for your people there. You've got no business in the workplace if you are just there to be there. You've got to be looking for changes you can make for the benefit of the people who are working there [89].*

Unlike the previous cases, Toyota was not a startup at the time of its disruptive success and Ohno was not its founder. Ultimately, though, the combination of Onho's leadership and revolutionary innovation transformed Toyota from being an average car maker in Japan to becoming the number one global leader.

#### **4.9 Jack Ma, Alibaba group holding limited**

In 1999, Alibaba Group, an online trading company, was established by Jack Ma, a former English teacher, in Hangzhou City, China [90]. Everything started in 1995, during a trip to the USA, when Jack Ma learned for the first time about website portals and Internet. He immediately realized that the design of portals could be a great business opportunity in the yet-unformed Chinese market, especially in the business segment. After his return to China, Ma founded China Pages, a website page developer for Chinese businesses. However, 2 years later, he closed his first company because of strong competitors such as Chinesepage [91]. For a while, Ma went back to his former job as a public servant, but then, in 1999, Ma persuaded his team at the ministry to go to Hangzhou and found the Alibaba Group [91]. Alibaba's growth was fast. Six years later, in 2005, Alibaba attracted the attention of Yahoo!, which bought a 40 percent stake. In 2007, Alibaba.com raised US\$1.7 billion dollars in its initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong [91].

Alibaba's business model bets a revolutionary innovation: Ma's belief that the small-business-to-small-business online market offered much greater opportunity than the consumer-to-consumer one, the reason being that, unlike consumers, small businesses are willing to pay a membership fee [91].

Ma's visionary leadership is as uniquely prolific as that of Edison and Jobs. In 2003, Jack Ma created a new company, the consumer-to-consumer online marketplace Taobao (meaning Chinese in "searching for treasure"). Taobao did not charge a fee but made money from online services and advertising. By 2007, Taobao had a 67 percent market share in China and eBay sold its Chinese operations to the media consortium TOM Group.

Some quotes from Ma that also proves his talent as an inspirator and team builder are as follows: "A good boss is better than a good company"; "If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat ten of them"; "We never lack money. We lack people with dreams, who can die for those dreams"; "For most people, they see and believe. We believe, and then we see. For leadership, we have to see things that other people don't see" [92].

#### **4.10 Ma Huanteng, Tencent holdings limited**

Tencent Holdings Ltd., also known as Tencent, is a Chinese multinational technology conglomerate holding company founded by Ma Huateng in 1998. Tencent is among the largest video game, social media, venture capital, and investment corporations in the world [93].

Ma Huateng studied computer science at Shenzhen University, where he earned a bachelor of science degree (1993). He then worked as a researcher for China Motion Telecom Development Ltd. before founding Tencent in 1998. In 1999, Ma's company launched QQ service (then called OICQ ), which quickly became China's most popular instant-messaging platform. In June 2004, Tencent raised nearly US\$200 million in the capital market [94]. By 2015, QQ had 850 million monthly users [94]. WeChat, a mobile instant-messaging application that was introduced in 201, soon gathered 650 million users [94]. Tencent also create Qzone, which boasted 670 million monthly users by 2015 [94].

Tencent started based on a revolutionary innovation, Internet-based QQ service. Later, the company provided users with a range of innovative "online lifestyle services." These services included online media outlets, e-commerce outlets, gaming options, social media sites, online advertising, and an online payment option [94].

Huateng is clearly a pioneer and innovator. In terms of being inspirational and a great team builder. Once, he said:

*"At Tencent, we may be businessmen, but we are still chasing our IT, our science. We are still striving to create something really cool, trying to create things we couldn't even imagine without our new technologies. I am still clinging to this enthusiasm' [95]. 'For us, it is important to choose a character, super emphasis on this one. This is related to our culture. The founders like to be simple and don't like to be politicized. Including the selection of cadres, the character is very important. The second is to look at professional ability and coordination, intelligence and so on. This is a few principles for us to select talent" [95].*

An interesting quote in terms of leadership style—as a paradigm of invention versus innovation in practice—is this one:

*"In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China – execution is" [95].*

#### **5. Conclusions**

Unlike other studies [1–3, 30–32], the presented multi-case study focuses on a very specific business context: that of the creation of exceptionally successful firms such as Apple, Google, Facebook, or Tencent. The described multi-case study found the four attributes that define visionary leaders (creators of a positive and inspirational vision; supporters of organized learning and growth inside the organization; innovators; pioneers) in the nine studied cases. This is the first search effort that proves the link between the visionary leadership framework and firms that experienced disruptive success—unicorns.

In regard of the reasons why this type of profile is required in the studied context, one may be the fact that, in the case of disruptive innovation, nobody, even clients, may be able to forecast or imagine items such as the final functions and aspect of the products, the expected demand, and other features. Visionaries may be the only ones

#### *Leadership Styles during Disruption: A Multi-Case Study DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108029*

that can actually provide some accurate guesses, and, at the same time, put together, motivate, and guide a team in the right direction. In the future, it would be interesting to conduct more targeted research that could, both, give more details on the profile and the role of these leaders in the stated context and further describe the associated leadership attributes. Also, it would be of interest to investigate how the visionary leaders and disruptive-innovation-based environments interact with each other and why this type of leadership helps produce such outstanding results. Finally, it would also be interesting to test how other leadership frameworks fit in the same context and how the same leadership framework fits in the different ones.

### **Author details**

Alberto Abadia University of Vigo, Ourense, Spain

\*Address all correspondence to: alberto.aba@gmail.com

© 2022 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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#### **Chapter 4**

## Emotional Intelligence: Constraints and Possibilities in Leadership Practices

*Doris M. Dickerson*

#### **Abstract**

Once the COVID-19 pandemic was over, the issue of educational disparities in outcomes for marginalized students in all fields revealed a systemic process of educational disparities. This has amplified economic inequality among ethnic groups. Accommodating the diversity of student needs while also helping to create leaders has now become a critical priority. Addressing this necessitates implementing inclusive leadership practices which need novel leadership abilities. Principals can expand their inclusive leadership talents by including emotional intelligence (EI) expertise in their repertoire. I believe that taking on new leadership challenges, such as ethics, diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), creativity, and innovation, will support developing inclusive leadership habits, which will aid in providing education and academic triumphs to all underprivileged students while also bringing in lasting human capital growth. Therefore, this chapter takes note of the connection between transformational leadership and the principal's capabilities when it comes to leading.

**Keywords:** emotional intelligence, leadership, diversity, equity, inclusion, creativity, innovation, change

#### **1. Introduction**

Among educational policymakers, researchers, and practitioners, there is a consensus that effective principals contribute to the success of student academic achievement and other school outcomes, such as attendance, discipline, and high school graduation. However, research indicates systemic and persistent educational disparities in educational outcomes at all levels for minoritized students [1]. Black students from low SES homes, when compared to their Caucasian middle-income counterparts, despite the numerous federal mandates and school improvement initiatives to increase academic success for these students. For example, the results Post-COVID-19 pandemic revealed that student loss of learning during the shutdown, expatiated the systemic educational inequalities of minoritized students in public schools [2]. In addition, the long-term learning loss—gap will result in 3% lower income over their lifetimes [3]. Such factors contribute to economic disparities between Black and students of color.

The results of post-COVID-19 pandemic also revealed that principals are faced with increased challenges of teacher shortage, teacher burnout, teacher turnover, emotional safety, and well-being, primarily due to political interference in some states that caused inconsistencies in following CEC guidelines for safe school reopening [2]. This suggests that principals should employ the same leadership skills during the disruption and gradual reopening, of schools; empathy, compassion, collaboration, and support. Such leadership skill reflects emotional intelligence (EI) competencies. Simply stated, EI is defined as the ability to understand and manage individual emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of others around you [4–6].

Moreover, the results of a comprehensive report identified four major themes that pose new challenges for leadership and principals, in particular: ethnicity, diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), creativity, innovation, and change [7]. The identified themes mirror principals' existing leadership challenges and post-COVID-19 pandemic leadership challenges.

This chapter discusses the principal's use of EI skills as a vehicle to improve their inclusive leadership skill sets. In the process, I question whether EI competencies facilitate leadership effectiveness. Therefore, I collect related literature and find the connections among these variables. Next, the conceptual framework for studying the effects in the context of the four new leadership variables was drawn to confirm the connections among these variables. Finally, the four challenges for principals to improve leadership effectiveness in the post-COVID era were concluded. I believe the reader can identify the relationships between EI competencies and leadership effectiveness, which can be improved through EI competencies and inclusive leadership skills.

#### **2. Literature review**

#### **2.1 Transformational leadership skills in a new era**

Einstein [8] famously said, "Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results." Covey [9] commented similarly along the same vein: "If we carry on in our usual way, we will continue to get what we have." The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed a persistent educational disparity for marginalized students, which supports the notion that race and socioeconomic status can determine a student's success. People who work with economic policy, researchers, and practitioners all agree that these persisting educational inequalities necessitate new leadership skills embracing inclusivity to increase all students' academic achievement.

In general, scholars and practitioners consider transformational characteristics and behaviors important when assigning leadership roles. This was first discussed by Burn [10] who noted that it "entails a process where leaders and followers raise each other to high levels of motivation and morality" (p. 20). Bass [11] later expanded the principals' role, which was inspire, motivate, establish a commitment to a vision and work collaboratively with stakeholders. However, Grissom and Loeb [12] reported that recent studies have found only minimal effects of transformational leadership behaviors relative to instructional leadership.

By contrast, a quote by Kouzes and Posner [13], "Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behaviors they expect of others" supports the notion of transformational leadership in the context of organizational management. This concept of

#### *Emotional Intelligence: Constraints and Possibilities in Leadership Practices DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109977*

organizational management is also supported [13, 14]. Kouzes and Posner [13], share leadership lessons from 25 years of experience and research on what makes successful leaders. Also, they embody five key transformational skills for effective leadership behavior and practice: model the way (role model), inspire a shared vision (illustrate your vision), challenge the process (experiment and take risks), enable others (teamwork, trust, and listen), and encourage the heart (reward and celebrate). The leadership challenge inventory is an assessment that identifies distinctive features related to transformational leadership theory, seen as a playbook. This inventory also defines leadership behavior and characteristics that can help build successful leadership abilities with an emphasis on purposeful and effective change management.

In this same vein, Fullan [15] identified several issues that contribute to change leadership, According to Fullan, organizational growth is contingent upon change leadership from a moral point of view. Consider the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"—it neglects the altering demographics and assorted educational requirements, while maintaining educational differences amongst marginalized students. Change can help promote innovation and avoid stagnation. Besides having a moral basis, building relationships, and establishing shared liability requires school leaders to clearly depict the core competencies of alteration, understand change, build correspondence, form knowledge, produce consistency and get agreement from associates to make goals. Also necessary are leadership capabilities such as creating coherence and working together.

Nevertheless, transformational leadership skills are widely accepted among scholars and practitioners and are touted to increase leadership effectiveness in addressing challenges that lead to organizational change. For example, research backs the perception that efficient leadership qualities include forming long-term and attainable goals and objectives, stirring commitment by executing strategies to enhance a positive climate, and communicating a definite vision for the school district. Contrarily, scholars claim that long-term aims result in burnout among staff members. Long-term ambitions are normally tough to realize and may be postponed due to unforeseen issues. Shorter objectives are realistic and can be achieved more easily, allowing personnel to observe swift results in their labor, as outlined by Lucas and Venckute [16]; Jex and Britt [17].

Two schools of thought exist on leadership abilities. While some researchers and professionals believe that transformational leadership skills are obtained naturally, many leadership preparation courses tend to focus on the theories of leadership instead of providing leaders with opportunities to practice such skills [18, 19].

By comparison, the plea for leadership aptitudes that portray inclusivity is endorsed by the study that has steadily revealed the broad accomplishment hole between high-social class and low-social class students and the disparities in opportunity (e.g., top-notch direction, admittance to propelled school readiness courses) that power these accomplishment holes. The achievement hole for students from low socioeconomic homes encompasses the expanding US pay equality financial gaps. Likewise, it attracts thoughtfulness regarding an expansion in understanding the connection between understudy scholarly achievement and labor force preparedness for monetary worldwide rivalry [3].

In the DEI era, there is a growing need for principals to demonstrate leadership skills and practices that provide structures that afford underrepresented students the opportunity to compete in a diverse and inclusive global economy [3]. A growing body of research calls for new leadership skills that focus on inclusive leadership behavior and practices that increase positive school outcomes for all students [20].

Early research on culturally responsive teaching was to support minoritized students. However, it was later argued that culturally responsive practices should be extended to all aspects of education, including school leaders. Previous and current research indicates that principals can and do contribute to student academic success, understand school resources, and are in the best position to promote and support school improvement initiatives. In this same vein, they are accountable for progress or lack thereof, Khalifa et al. [21]. Besides, principals are primarily responsible for instructional support to empower teachers to make intentional changes in their teaching practices that lead to improvement in student academic outcomes [22].

Harvey and Allard [23] observed that it can be challenging to foster diversity in the workplace through organizational change and management practices. Leaders can assist by utilizing methods such as active listening, forming connections, and recognizing and comprehension impediments. For instance, social scientists discovered that enforced education, warnings, and regulations had little effect. Procedures that promote variety at work embrace voluntary teaching, setting up self-regulating teams, a mixture task force, and diversity supervisors.

#### **2.2 Emotional intelligence**

*Anyone can become angry-that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way-this is not easy.*

*—Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics*

A consensus is that EI has been an important and controversial topic during the last few decades. Its significance and its correlation with many domains of life have made it the subject of expert study. EI is the appendage for feeling, thinking, learning, problem-solving, and decision-making [24]. Although there is an increasing demand for EI, the accuracy of its varied measurements as well as its relevance in terms of worth and merit are often questioned. Various types of EI tests may hold potential, but their standards, evidence from neuroscience literature regarding EI, and the link between leader EI and followers all require further research [25, 26]. EI competencies expand the skill set leaders possess to create equitable outcomes for all students through more inclusive practices [3–6, 27].

Mayer and Salovey [4, 28] introduced the concept in 1990 to define EI "as the ability to monitor one's own and other's emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one's thinking and actions. Successfully developing EI affords one the ability to use emotions to direct thoughts and behavior and to understand their own feelings and others' feelings accurately. Goleman [5, 29] extended the concept to include general social competence and suggests that EI is key for the success of one's life.

Notwithstanding, Mayer and Salovey [28], suggested that EI is a cognitive ability, which is separate but also associated with general intelligence. Mayer and Salovey [30] revealed that EI consists of four skill dimensions: (1) perceiving emotion (i.e., the ability to detect emotions in faces, pictures, music, etc.); (2) facilitating thought with emotion (i.e., the ability to harness emotional information in one's thinking); (3) understanding emotions (i.e., the ability to understand emotional information); and (4) managing emotions (i.e., the ability to manage emotions for personal and interpersonal development). These skills have a key role in facilitating thinking, understanding emotions, and managing emotions, and evolve contingent upon maturity.

#### *Emotional Intelligence: Constraints and Possibilities in Leadership Practices DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109977*

Moreover, Drigas and Papoutsi [24] studied a variety of learning theories from multiple researchers creating a nine-layer pyramid that encompasses EI Ability and EI Trait. This pyramid acts as a graphic presentation to depict what must be accomplished for someone to attain the apex of EI—emotional unity. This highest level is associated with awareness, gratification, and vastness. Models seven and eight, depicting self-actualization and transcendence, appear to draw from Maslow's pyramid of needs. The pyramid appears to combine emotional, cognitive, and metacognitive capabilities with personal progression toward growth and wants [24].

Similarly, research indicated that a growing body of evidence on research on EI has been divided into two distinct areas in terms of conceptualizing emotional competencies and their measurements: the trait EI [30] and the ability EI model [31]. Research evidence has consistently supported this distinction by revealing low correlations between the two [29–36].

In a novel standpoint, Humphrey et al. [37], proposed to combine studies on leadership and EI for the benefit of both. By examining various mainly theoretical approaches, it was concluded that leadership behavior is an emotional process triggered in everyday work settings. The five-tier multi-level model of emotions and leadership developed by these authors included: (1) within the person's internal changes; (2) differences in responses to events; (3) interpersonal attention such as contagion, dyadic leadership, and emotional labor; (4) groups/teams where contagion takes place; and (5) organizational culture/regulation rules. In detail, each tier offered advantages to the fields of both leadership study and EI research. Moreover, merging the two topics proposes that researchers should extend their aim to take into further consideration aspects of quality research as well as expand empirical research area [37].

Bradberry and Greaves [6] categorize EI competencies into two areas: personal and social; identified four EI competencies that align with their 2.0 EI Assessment A brief description of the EI competencies is included below.


developing others, applying ethical decisions in conflict management, and successfully serving as a catalyst for change in the organization [13, 15].


#### **2.3 Emotional intelligence and leadership challenges**

#### *2.3.1 Leadership for change*

Consequently, the world is transforming to an altered way of life during an epidemic, which is true for schooling. It has been asserted by investigators that confronting the aftermath of COVID-19 and its influence will be one of the significant tests for educational leaders in this age. By leaving a door open and exchanging ideas with one another, school leaders are utilizing data and modern tools to rapidly adjust and traverse the difficulties brought on by the pandemic. This "new normal" won't just be a brief event but instead will have continuous and powerful results in education and school direction. Additionally, educational leaders can use insights to b Accordingly, the world is adjusting to "new" life during a pandemic, and the same is true for the education sector. Researchers argue that responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath will be one of the biggest challenges for school leaders in this era. By being open and sharing insights with each other, school leaders are using data and the latest tools to quickly adapt and navigate COVID-19 challenges. More than just a trend, this "new normal" will have lasting and powerful effects on the future of education and school leadership. Also, school leaders can use data to make a change that is impactful and sustainable [1, 2, 7].

#### *Emotional Intelligence: Constraints and Possibilities in Leadership Practices DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109977*

Conversely, a review of the literature reported that effective leadership is key to successful organizational change [2, 11, 13, 15, 19, 22]. For example, effective leadership and change management behaviors and practices facilitated positive organizational change and innovations for organizational growth and sustainability. Effective leaders must be able to understand and apply change management theory such as applying the three stages: (1) adapting to change, as evidenced by determining stakeholders readiness and willingness to commit to change, (2) controlling change, which include determining the degree of implementation such as piloting a program, to gather data to identify issues and areas of concerns prior to fully implementing innovation, and (3) effecting change, means that school leaders begins with the understanding that change is a personal choice [15]. Researchers concluded that effective leadership behavior and practices, which facilitate change in the work setting includes building trust with stakeholder and employing strategies to implement an organizational culture that reflects trust and honesty, which results in a sense of belonging. Such strategies reinforce a commitment to organizational change [7, 15, 17, 39].

#### *2.3.2 Ethically leadership*

*Ethical challenges of Leadership: Casting light or shadow*. C.E. Johnson

Moreover, a lack of knowledge, skills, or experience might cause leaders to unintentionally "cast shadows". For example, a lack of understanding digital equity, which goes beyond access, as equity includes literacy and identifying the digital gap. In this same vein, application of ethical perspectives or frameworks to be applied to ethical dilemmas requires under understanding emotions, which are critical to decision-making and actions. Consequently, a lack of self-awareness can misguide in making appropriate ethical choices [40]. Continuous research concerning ethical leadership is taking place within multiple contexts of educational leadership, such as detailed defining of ethical leadership, which aptly portray an ethical leader as one who respects truthfulness and models their actions in line with their values and beliefs [39, 41]. Nonetheless, past studies on the effectiveness of leadership mostly emphasized traits and behaviors. Furthermore, strictly concentrating on leadership behaviors may mask unethical destructive behaviors which necessitate followership.

For instance, a scandal related to testing in a nearby metro school district caught my attention. The superintendent (who has since passed away) was responsible for orchestrating it back then. Most teachers were among the followers who manipulated test scores for pupils experiencing academic difficulty across the area. Although the superintendent had to refund capital earned from high-test scores for the district to the state government, great damage had ensued: lack of trust by learners, parents as well as citizens alike and subsequent blaming of instructors that disturbed learning progression. This situation reminded me of an old saying: "We believe what we see more than what we hear". Similarly, early research on transformational leadership was crucial for understanding how connection between leaders and their followers results in increased motivation and morale [11, 13, 15]. Furthermore, conceptualized transformational leadership via group purpose which aids in recognizing constituents' individual objectives can stimulate rethinking of entrenched thought process leading to organizational adjustment [11, 13]. Researchers reported that creating relationships enables transformational leaders to pick up high-order values, which are guided by ethics resulting in moral behavior. Highlighted that only when leaders satisfy ideal requirements and display moral values do they become transformational leaders. This study investigated how ethical management

secures psychological safety thus promoting corporate social responsibility at a micro level connecting with employees' awareness, perspectives, or strategies [10, 11, 15, 19, 39]. Research has also purported that the personal integrity of leaders contributes to ethical behavior and practices, which requires developing character and is developed by experiencing personal trauma, such as career setbacks and personal losses which allows leaders to examine his/her inner self. Revisions maintains my intended meaning [11, 13, 19].

#### *2.3.3 Leadership for diversity, equity, and inclusion*

School leaders are charged with producing tangible outcomes such as higher test scores and graduation rates (n.d.) School culture, the environment, and the organizational change adversely impact school leaders' cognitive behaviors. A study focused on how secondary principals conducted decision-making related to federal and state mandates. The results revealed that over half of the principal's decision-making process on mandates was guided by their values and beliefs, which requires thinking and reasoning, a cognition process. This study supports the notion of how self-awareness helps understand triggers that evoke emotions and the importance of identifying strategies to address such emotions [15, 30, 32, 34].

The advantage of hiring people who look different from the existing majority, and think differently, is that leaders are provided an opportunity to develop and exercise collaborative intelligence, which is a "road less traveled". For example, many leaders are traditionally taught to focus on the gulfs between us rather than valuing the intellectual diversity that key players bring to the setting [27]. This approach supports leaders in developing competence in self-management skills, such as demonstrating active listening and patience.

Likewise, cultural competency is essential for diversity to thrive in the workplace, which begins with self, by acknowledging stereotypes and biases, and understanding cultural values and norms of the groups he/she serves [23, 25, 42]. Importantly, leaders should also acknowledge that cultural competency is an ongoing learning process. Social awareness skill also supports the importance of leaders' acknowledging their own bias and limitations [6].

Authors Flore and Bagwel [43] extended the discourse on social justice and leadership to promote inclusion. Accordingly, inclusion has previously been limited to students with disabilities, by which instruction was provided in the least restrictive environment. However, the persistent inequalities among underrepresented students, linguistically diverse students, and LBGTQ students, are increasingly challenging the traditional notion of inclusion. The ongoing academic gaps and educational disparities are the center of attention in most school districts, which suggest inclusive leadership practices to be employed as social justice leadership and to expand the capacity of beginning school leaders to become champions for social justice in their schools [18, 43].

A case study of two principals, in a large urban school district elected to implement social justice model in their assigned schools. Data collection included interviews, observations in each school, and the development of themes that described the barriers and resistance to social justice in their schools [38], reported that understanding a clear definition of social justice leadership begins with a recognition of the unequal circumstances of underrepresented groups and how policies and procedures, economic, political, and societal beliefs regarding race, class, gender, and other variables to successful perpetuate inequalities in schools and classrooms [43, 44].

#### *2.3.4 Leadership for creativity and innovation*

Research reported that education systems are quickly recognizing the significance of creativity. Even though scholarship around leadership in schools is vast, there isn't much on leading for creativity. A study highlighted how engaging people with varying backgrounds leads to greater intellectual innovation for leaders. Moreover, a recent examination determined if servant leadership actions and practices could influence creativity, as well as if participation and knowledge sharing improved it. Data was accumulated from 247 employees and 57 managers employed at Chinese commercial enterprises. It showed that servant leader behaviors such as establishing an atmosphere where personnel feels appreciated and respected can help provoke creative thought by facilitating knowledge sharing [45].

A unique perspective on creativity and the field of educational leadership examined creativity discourses in the educational leadership journal, .and found a limited number of peer-reviewed journals, with a limited direct focus on the topic of creativity in the major professional educational leadership journals. This chapter concluded by suggesting an invitation for the field of educational leadership rather than providing conclusions or setting aims to be achieved.

Previously, studies on leadership and creativity have focused on organizational problem-solving to improve product performance and to maintain a competitive edge in an increasing complex global economy. However, research indicated that problemsolving is a complex cognitive process that requires time and attention of leaders. Tenets of creative problem solving include defining and constructing a problem, producing relevant information, generating, and evaluating a diverse set of solutions. The duration of time for pursuing creativity in the workplace requires commitment and support from leadership. Also, these authors noted that identifying and understanding various models of creativity demonstrate leadership commitment and support [43, 46].

Hao and Yazdanifard [47] reported that communication patterns are another important variable that fosters creativity in the workplace. For example, the inclusion of diverse teams of members from a wide background and experiences in problem-solving is based on previous experiences. Subsequently, diverse teams increase the possibilities of including multiple and diverse problem construction. Likewise, planning was identified as an integral part of performing complex tasks in organizations during the creative for performance process. For example, an examination of alternative models of planning as well as how planning might uncover errors should be included in this process. In this same line of thinking, the evaluation of ideas might minimize errors, especially as the problem-solving process is more cylinder [45]. As previously indicated, this process requires leadership support and guidance. Also, leadership should articulate what criteria are being evaluated and identify barriers to use as a guide to help cognitive processes such as time for planning and implementation. Recommendations included providing feedback that includes strengths, weaknesses, and future challenges [45, 46].

#### *2.3.5 Leadership for change*

Accordingly, the world is adjusting to a "new" life during a pandemic, and the same is true for education sector. Researchers argue that responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath will be one of the biggest challenges for school leaders in this era. By being open and sharing insights with each other, school leaders are using data and the latest tools to quickly adapt and navigate COVID-19 challenges. More than just a trend, this "new normal" will have lasting and powerful effects on the

future of education and school leadership. Also, school leaders can use data to make change that is impactful and sustainable [1, 2, 7].

Conversely, a review of the literature reported that effective leadership is key to successful organizational change [2, 11, 13, 15, 19, 22]. For example, effective leadership and change management behaviors and practices facilitated positive organizational change and innovations for organizational growth and sustainability. Effective leaders must be able to understand and apply change management theory such as applying the three stages: (1) adapting to change, as evidenced by determining stakeholders readiness and willingness to commit to change, (2) controlling change, which include determining the degree of implementation such as piloting a program, to gather data to identify issues and areas of concerns prior to fully implementing an innovation, and (3) Effecting change, means that school leaders begin with the understanding that change is a personal choice [15]. Researchers concluded that effective leadership behavior and practices, which facilitate change in the work setting includes building trust with stakeholder and employing strategies to implement an organizational culture that reflects trust and honesty, which results in a sense of belonging. Such strategies reinforce a commitment to organizational change [7, 15, 17, 39].

As previously stated, the adage "If it ant broke don't fix it," is still prevalent among some stakeholders in today's work settings. This notion reflects a lack of establishing clear goals by linking goals to school improvement plans or analyzing data from multiple sources to develop school-wide goals. Educational leaders provide stakeholders the opportunity to understand the 'why' and what is truly "broken" [13, 23].

"Moving the vision from the wall to the hall" is reflected in this line of thinking Kouzes and Posner [13]; Fullan [15] reported that modeling beliefs and values demonstrate involvement, which results in commitment from stakeholders. Also, studies have found that a lack of involving stakeholders in decisions that affect them increases the risk of stalled change efforts (as previously noted, change involves a personal decision). Involving stakeholders in the decision-making process strengthens relationships and provides estimations on timetables and duration of goals, expectations, and commitment. These strategies increase leaders' effectiveness in successfully managing change in the workplace [13, 21].

#### **3. Summary**

The data from the literature review, previous educational leaders in K-12 public school settings, and teaching experience in higher education in recent years are collected. In summary, there are two central concepts to the conceptual framework for studying EI competencies and the four variables for leadership challenges. The model represents the relationships among EI competencies, principals' behaviors for each EI competency, and variables of leadership challenges in post-COVID-19 pandemic.

The second establishes an operational path for establishing the relationship between EI competencies and the variables of the leadership challenges. It also illustrates how the EI competencies affect principals' leadership behavior and practices and subsequent leadership skills. Variables that mediate (explain) how effects influence leadership behavior and practices and principals' leadership skills. A basic model, shown in **Figure 1**, is proposed and is used in all empirical casual studies.

The model represents the relationships among EI competencies, principals' behaviors for each EI competency and variables of leadership challenges. As shown *Emotional Intelligence: Constraints and Possibilities in Leadership Practices DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109977*

#### **Figure 1.**

*Data collection is the basis of principals' leadership skills. Principals' influence student academic success and other school outcomes such as attendance, discipline, and high school graduation rates. Data collection should also include teacher observations for culturally responsive teaching practices and teacher, student, and parent surveys. These data can be considered true and measurable. Principals can expand the lens by seeing how teacher practices support DEI. Also, data can be used for principals to work collaboratively to identify and develop professional development activities, develop instructional goals, and to initiate a professional learning community. These steps suggest that principals should increase EI competencies to increase inclusive leadership skills that support teaching and learning, which leads to increased learning opportunities and positive school outcomes for all students.*

in **Figure 1**, a theory of action for principals' increasing ethical leadership behavior and practices, EI competencies, inclusive leadership skills, culturally responsive leadership practices, developing and initiating creative innovations to reflect change leadership practices and developing a community of practice

In **Figure 1**, principals can apply EI competencies to develop inclusive skillsets to identify the leadership challenge that speaks to the specific needs of the individual school to move the needle toward increasing student academic success for all students; increase leadership effectiveness in implementing innovations to increase educational opportunities for marginalized students**.**

#### **4. Conclusion**

Research step 1 proves that EI competencies can support principals' personal core values in making ethical decisions. For example, implementing policies that support social justice for underserved students and increasing access to high-quality instruction [18, 19].

Research step 2 illustrates that EI competencies can support principals' personal core values in increasing self-awareness in self-management skills to guide in staying the course for creativity and innovation. For example, risk-taking and using challenges as opportunities. Also, remaining focused on the benefits of creativity, which includes retaining quality employees, and fostering imagination leads reflects intellectual capital, which leads to problem solving in the work setting [16].

Research step 3 shows that EI competencies can support principals' social-awareness in leading for DEI skills. For example, culturally responsive schools begin with intentional leadership practices and inclusive leadership skills that support teaching and learning practices that foster motivation, build relationships, and support rigorous and relevant instruction [3, 20, 21].

Research step 4 delineates that EI competencies can support principals lead change, which requires self-management, trust, collaboration, and relationship building [2, 7, 12, 18]. For example, applying the ADKAR model created by Jeffery Hiatt [48], limits resistance, by implementing incremental change, incorporates employee feedback, and keeps the goal in front. A (awareness of the need to change); D (desire to change); K (knowledge of how to change); A (ability to change); R (Reinforcement to keep the change in place).

#### **Author details**

Doris M. Dickerson Concordia University Portland, OR, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: ddickerson31@gmail.com

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Emotional Intelligence: Constraints and Possibilities in Leadership Practices DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109977*

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