Organizational Context and 21st Century Leadership
The contextual model of leadership and the culture of diversity move us closer to appreciative leadership than do any of the other three cultures or styles of leadership associated with these three cultures. However, even the contextual leadership theorists provide an inadequate model when we consider the complex, unpredictable and turbulent organizational environments that I have identified in this series of essays. We can’t even find consistency regarding contexts within which a specific leadership style does or doesn’t work. At certain times, a particular kind of leader will make a difference, provided she is in the right place and time. At other times, this same leader will be ineffective, even if the situation very closely resembles that which existed at the point of effectiveness. Sometimes Leader X is influential. At other times she is not.
An old Zen saying suggests that we can never step into the same river, for the water that was there when we first entered the river (and the pattern of water flow in the river) is not the same the second or third time we enter the river. Flexibility in style, therefore, must be supplemented by a commitment to learning. As Argyris, Schon and Senge have observed, we are effective leaders not because we avoid making mistakes, but because we learn from our mistakes.v Yet, if appreciative leadership is to be effective, something more is needed. An appreciative model of leadership must be based, in addition, on the assumption that history is the unfolding of simultaneous or sequential elements of both reason and irrationality.
