Leadership effectiveness and the problem of social action: Continuing the conversation between Burns and Rost

The State of Leadership Studies: The Challenges and the Promise

In this paper, I want to understand the practice of leadership effectiveness by engaging in a conversation with Burns (1978, 2006) and Rost’s (1991) understanding and formulation of what this practice means. Burns (1978) describes leadership effectiveness in the following way: ‘the test of the extent and quality of power and leadership is the degree of actual accomplishment of the promised change … The ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended real change that meets people’s enduring needs’ [Italics in original] (Burns, 1978, p. 22, p. 461). More recently, in his ‘Afterword’ to the General Theory of Leadership (GTOL) Project, he offered something similar. He defined leadership

… as influence process, both visible and invisible, in a society inherited, constructed, and perceived as the interaction of person in human (and inhuman) conditions of equality – an interaction measured by ethical and moral values and by the degree of realization of intended, comprehensive, and durable change. [Italics and parenthesis in original] (Burns, 2006, p. 239)

What are we to make of these differing and contradictory formulations of leadership effectiveness? How is it possible for Rost (1991) to claim that leadership may still be leadership even when the relationship between leaders and followers fails Burn’s ‘ultimate test of practical leadership?’ Are we to conclude that this is mere rhetoric and dogmatic nonsense?

At a practical level, I hope to offer a reasoned response to what leadership students might want to know: Is leadership effectiveness what Burns (1978, 2006) says it is? Is leadership effectiveness what Rost (1991) says it is? The answer, as argued in this paper, is that it is not one or the other. The answer is both, in that each author assumes a very different understanding of what it means to act. To that end, I will introduce Hannah Arendt (1958) and her thoughtful differentiation of the verb ‘to act’ into the mix. ²

If ‘practice,’ as Gadamer (1981), a decisive thinker of 20th century hermeneutics, noted, is ‘essentially’ about ‘choosing, of deciding for something and against something else…’ (p. 81), then, unlike Chester Barnard, who wrote the following as early 1948: ‘Leadership has been the subject of an extraordinary amount of dogmatically stated nonsense’ (as cited in Rost, 1991, p. 179), I choose to argue against the thinking that we are confronted with more dogmatic nonsense. Barnard wrote at a time when the trait approach and the ‘Great Man’ theory of leadership, were the mantra of the day. This mantra was a ‘leftover’ since the 19th century. In the 19th century, for example, Carlyle (2011[1841]) summarized the recurring themes about leadership in his theory of the ‘great man.’ For him, leaders were exceptional persons or heroes who were able to use their intelligence, charisma, wisdom, and political skill to have power and influence over people.

Today, it cannot be denied that there is an increasing interest and scholarly research in leadership (Dinh et al., 2014), and that multiple scholars from different academic disciplines are engaged in thinking and talking about the theory and practice of leadership (Harvey, 2011; Riggio, 2011). It is doubly exhilarating to see, the late JM Burns bringing together a group of scholars from multiple disciplines to launch a General Theory of Leadership (GTOL) Project (Goethals and Sorenson, 2006). While scholars in that project may not have come to a ‘conclusive’ understanding of leadership, and as evidenced in other literature on leadership studies (Bass, 2008; Day and Antonakis, 2012; Fleishman et al., 1991; Gardner, 1990; Hickman, 2016; Mumford, 2006, Rost, 1991), it is heartening to note that the conversation among scholars is well on the way (Goethals and Sorenson, 2006, p. xvi).

What is particularly reassuring is that there is a candle of hope that the diversity of approaches by different scholars from multiple disciplines, and a focus on the major themes that emerge from each discipline, will offer leadership scholars with an opportunity ‘to establish some common ground for conceptual and research progress in the field of leadership studies’ (Riggio, 2011, p. 5). This common ground promises the possibility for an ‘integration’ or an integrative leadership model (Harvey, 2011, pp. 199–229). Similarly, from the perspective of practical integration, Wren (2006) leaned on Hicks, as the former called on leadership scholars to model the scholarship practices of a department like religious studies which, as Hicks noted, emphasizes ‘disciplinary approaches – and how they can be incorporated in a boundary-crossing conversation …’ (Hicks, as cited in Wren, 2006, p. 4). This boundary-crossing conversation is, for Hicks, ‘a more promising way to go’ (as cited in Wren, 2006, p. 4) in our thinking about leadership and what it means to lead.

Organizing

In continuing this boundary-crossing conversation, this paper is organized as follows. First, I will speak to Burns (1978, 2003) and Rost’s (1991) mutual understanding of the fundamental intent and purpose of leadership. Second, I will demonstrate where they part company by virtue of their particular understanding of what it means to act. In relation to both Burns and Rost’s formulation of leadership effectiveness, I will turn to Arendt (1958) for the purpose of understanding and grounding their respective formulations. Third, while acknowledging that Arendt has offered much on the topic of leadership through her writing and reflections on totalitarianism (1966), violence, lying in politics, power (1958, 1972), and revolution (1977), what I will do within the context of my interest in leadership effectiveness, is to read Arendt on her own terms and with a ‘narrowed’ interest in the question of action. Finally, I will explore the implications of Rost’s interpretation of leadership effectiveness for leadership learning and education.

What Burns and Rost Share In Common

In their article Leadership ‘Déjà vu all over again,’ Hunt and Dodge (2001) captured a rather uncomplimentary view of the state of leadership studies. They quoted on unknown author who wrote: ‘I was gone from the leadership field for about ten years. When I returned, it was as if I had been gone ten minutes’ (Hunt and Dodge, 2001, p. 436). Burns (1978) was perhaps the first to locate this ‘not-much-has-changed’ attitude, as residing the realm of the intellect, when he noted that ‘the fundamental crisis underlying mediocrity (of our understanding of leadership) is intellectual’ [Parenthesis mine] (p. 1). It is an intellectual problem in that it is connected to how we have come to think about leadership. For Rost (1991), what is least understood, and what adds to the underlying mediocrity, is that leadership researchers, scholars, and practitioners have tended to focus on the ‘peripheral elements and the content’ of leadership. For example, the focus has been on peripheral elements like traits, skills, and styles of a leader, and on the content of leadership which expressed itself in terms of what leaders need to know in order to be successful or effective. In doing so, these peripheral and content foci have resulted in a leader-centric approach to leadership ‘as opposed to the essential nature of leadership as a relationship’ (Rost and Barker, 2000, p. 5) between leaders and followers. Similarly, Burns (1978) exhorted his readers to ‘see power – and leadership – not as things but as relationships’ (p. 11), and he spoke to the nature of this relationship as a ‘reciprocal process of mobilizing’ others ‘to realize goals independently or mutually held by both leaders and followers’ (p. 425).

It is worth noting that both Burns (1978, 2006) and Rost (1991) share a mutual understanding of the fundamental intent and purpose of leadership. Both agree that leaders and followers intend real rather than superficial change. For Burns, real change is that which meets people’s common enduring needs rather than independent, privatized, or transient needs. In his later volume on Transforming Leadership, Burns (2003) continued with his earlier thinking, and stipulated that enduring needs include both the basic needs like ‘having a pair of shoes, education, food, medicine,’ and ‘higher’ needs such as ‘respect, human dignity, liberty, justice, equality, and the pursuit of happiness’ (p. 2). In this regard, he aligns his thinking with the ‘hierarchy of needs’ model as developed by the psychologist, Abraham Maslow (1943). As Burns noted in his interview with Brandt (1979), in his role as a college teacher he was ‘interested in what happens when leaders (teachers) deal with followers (students) in such a way as to help raise them through higher stages of self-realization’ [parenthesis in original] (p. 384).

By virtue of being ‘enduring’ these ‘basic’ and ‘higher’ human needs are not temporary. While men and women might come and go, while their time on earth is limited, these human needs live on – across time and across cultures. Speaking from the lens of political science, and within this context of the realizing of the enduring needs of humankind, Burns (2003) clearly outlined his ‘core agenda of transforming leadership,’ namely, as ‘leaders working as partners with the dispossessed people of the world to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – happiness empowered with transforming purpose…’ (p. 3). He further opined that this type of partnership and transforming intent, could also become ‘the greatest moral undertaking of united leadership’ (p. 3) – leaders and followers united in a common and transforming purpose.

Similarly, we can also read Rost’s (1991) concern for the realization of enduring human needs, as being reflective of the mutual purposes of both leaders and followers. Leaders and followers are commonly led by their mutual concern for realization of those common and enduring needs. They lead, in other words, by being led by their mutual purposes (Crippen, 2010; Greenleaf, 1977; McKinney II, 2013). In this process of connecting and meeting, the common concern and desire for the realization of enduring needs forms a common bond between leaders and followers. The relationship is not simply between the private and separate interests of leaders and followers, but between them and something ‘other – namely, the desire to lead themselves, in Maslow’s (1943) language, to higher stages of self-realization, namely, to enable themselves and others to be what they ‘can be,’ ‘to become actualized in what he (she) is potentially,’ and to ‘become everything that one is capable of becoming,’ [Italics in original; Parenthesis mine] (382) – that they both hold in common. Said differently, it is this mutual concern and purpose (common intention) for the ‘other’ that governs and influences the collaborative relationship between leaders and followers.

Within the context of my paper, I choose to orient to this notion of self-actualization from another perspective. More than being an ‘individual journey,’ and along with Bennis (1982) and Burns (2003), I propose that we think of the leadership challenge as one that is focused on the idea of a ‘collective actualization’ – as leaders and followers go about the process of bringing about change with a transforming purpose, and as the capacity to understand collective aspirations. From the perspective of collective actualization, Burns (1978) for example, firmly believed that the no matter what ‘separate interests persons might hold,’ transforming leadership acts on the conviction that both leaders and their followers ‘are presently or potentially united in the pursuit’ of these both basic and higher goals (pp. 425–426).

This shared and common intention of both Burns (1978, 2006) and Rost (1991, 2005) for realizing or achieving real change, returns me to the heart of my questions. From the perspective of leadership effectiveness, how is it possible for Burns and Rost to share a common intention and yet differ in their understanding of the realization of their shared intention? What version of action enables Burns to formulate the ultimate test of the effectiveness of practical leadership as the realization of intended real change that meets people’s enduring needs? What version of action enables Rost to stipulate that leadership may still be leadership even when the relationship between followers and leaders fails to produce intended results? What are the implications of his interpretation for those who are engaged in the activity of leading?

James McGregor Burns: Practical Leadership

Allow me to recall Burns’ (1978) formulation of practical leadership. ‘The ultimate test of practical leadership,’ he noted, ‘is the realization of intended real change that meets people’s enduring needs’ [Italics in original] (Burns, 1978, p. 461). Defining leadership effectiveness as the realization, accomplishment, or achievement of what is intended, appears to be a central thrust among leadership and management scholars since the 1950s. A glance at several scholars’ definitions of leadership reveals the following:

Leadership may be considered as the process (act) of influencing the activities of an organized group in its efforts toward goal setting and goal achievement (Stogdill, 1950, p. 3).

While Harvey (2011) noted, that these leadership definitions reveal that ‘the context of a group is a central thrust of modern scholarship’ (p. 201), I suggest that there is another common theme at play. Another major thrust/theme is that there is a common and shared understanding of leadership effectiveness, namely acting in ways that accomplish intended goals. Action, from this perspective, is akin to the execution or implementation of one’s well thought out plans. Effectiveness is directly related to the achievement of those plans through proper planning and execution. The effectiveness of leaders, then, resides in their capacity to influence their followers by establishing direction and motivating them to achieve the collective or shared group’s goals. Within the realm of organizations, it is, in the words of Bennis (1991), ‘the capacity to create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then to translate vision into organizational realities’ (p. 25).

This way of thinking about leadership effectiveness is not new. We have inherited this way of thinking from Aristotle (1941). In his book Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguished between three types of knowing, techné (instrumental know how), episteme (theoretical know why), and phronesis (practical wisdom about how to act or bring about change or a particular end). In his book Making Social Science Matter, Flyvbjerg (2001) summarized these three types of knowing as follows:

Episteme: Scientific knowledge. Universal, invariable, context-independent. Based on general analytical rationality. The original concept is known today from the terms ‘epistemology’ and ‘epistemic.’

Allow me to return to Burns (1978, 2003). We notice how close Burns’ formulation of practical leadership is to Aristotle’s formulation of phronesis. In relation to phronesis, Burns, claims that the ‘ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended real change that meets people’s enduring needs’ [Italics in original] (Burns, 1978, p. 461). Insofar as practical wisdom is concerned with particulars, we need to ask: what particular context informs Burns (1978, 2003) as he writes about practical leadership? In deliberating about the transforming purpose of practical leadership, Burns (1978) claims that its moral legitimacy ‘is grounded in conscious choices among real alternatives’ [Italics in original] (p. 36). If moral leadership is grounded in conscious choices among real alternatives, then, it is related to practical leadership insofar as the latter acts on bringing-forth, or realizing, those consciously grounded choices.

But, herein lies the rub. Insofar as phroenesis, or practical wisdom, is also a ‘reasoned and true state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man’ (Aristotle, 1941, p. 1026, 1140b, 5), both leaders and followers, can consciously choose to act for the common good or the common bad. Machiavelli’s The Prince, stood out for Burns (1978) as a classic example of a ‘practical (bad?) advice to leaders on how to win and wield power’ (p. 444), namely, negative and manipulative power. For him, ‘at the core of Machiavellianism lay the most pernicious and inhuman concept of all: the treatment of other persons … as things’ [Italics in original] (Burns, 1978, p. 446).

What troubled Burns (1978) – his lived experience – is that in his day (and today?) there were (and continues to be?) a countless number of Machiavellian imitators that come to us in the form of ‘how to’ manuals.

The vogue of the ‘how to’ manual still thrives today. How to gain power. How to influence people. How to win office. How to take over an organization. How to organize a people’s movement. Most of these guides are promoted as being wholly practical – buy and peruse them and you will really win … and – can we doubt it? … The technique is usually that of the marketplace manipulation: to play on low-order wants and needs and to create hopes and aspirations where none existed before, through the use of saturation promotion and propaganda. (Burns, 1978, p. 446)

It appears as if Burns’ (1978, 2003) is troubled by the deliberation of techné leadership, in that its ‘knowing how to’ or instrumental rationality, is limited to one’s reflection of the attainability of an end, and then doing whatever needs to be done to attain it. We would be well served, I think, if we paid closer attention to Gadamer’s (1981), cautionary note about this way of thinking and acting. According to him, the practical wisdom and reasoning of practical leadership

… does not consist simply in the circumstance that one reflects upon the attainability of the end that he thinks good and then does what can be done. Aristotle distinguishes very explicitly the mere resourcefulness that for any given ends finds the right means with almost inhuman skillfulness (which means lying whenever necessary, deceiving wherever possible, talking one’s way out of anything. This sharpness of the operator is no real ‘practical reason’… [Parenthesis in original] (Gadamer, 1981, p. 81)

Perhaps this is why Burns (1978) would say that ‘moral leadership concerns me the most’ [Italics in original] (p. 4). And by moral leadership, he meant that (a) ‘leaders and led have a relationship not only of power but of mutual needs, aspirations and values;’ (b) ‘followers have the capacity to choose among alternatives;’ and (c) ‘leaders take responsibility for their commitments – if they promise certain kinds of economic, social, and political change, they assume leadership in bringing about that change’ (Burns, 1978, p. 4). In this, Burns succeeds avoiding a common false dichotomy in writings on leadership, namely that of the ‘great man’ theory and the ‘situationalist’ theories (Bennis, 1982). Allow me to focus on Burn’s idea of leadership effectiveness as taking responsibility to bring about promised changes.

Homo Faber Model of Leadership Effectiveness

To ‘bring about’ any change is to suggest a movement or a change from one state of being into another. A promise to change economic conditions, for example, could be viewed as a change and a movement away from living with less income to increasing one’s income. The ones who make such a promise, according to Burns (1978) ‘assume leadership’ by working on existing conditions to bring about such a change. In other words, they ‘make’ something out of something else. For Arendt (1958), this practice of making is akin to the life of Homo Faber, namely one who is skilled in his or her art or work of fabrication. In her book The Human Condition, she thoughtfully distinguished between three types of human activity: labour, work, and action. All three activities and their corresponding conditions are, for her, ‘intimately connected with the most general condition of human existence: birth and death, natality, and mortality’ (Arendt, 1958, p. 8).

From the perspective of human existence, labour, or a concept of man as animal laborans, she wrote, assured the life of the species and not only individual survival. Unlike productive labour, which she identified as ‘work,’ the mark of unproductive labouring is that ‘it leaves nothing behind, that the result of its effort is almost as quickly consumed as the effort is spent’ (Arendt, 1958, p. 87) At the same time, despite its futility, Arendt argued, a greater urgency is born. Work, and the life of homo faber, work and its product, the human artifact, ‘bestows a measure of permanence and durability upon the futility of mortal life and the fleeting character of human time’ (Arendt, p. 8). Finally, action, ‘insofar as it engages in founding and preserving political bodies, creates the condition for remembrance … for history’ (Arendt, p. 9). While all three are ‘rooted in natality,’ in that ‘they have the task to provide and preserve the world for, to foresee and reckon with, the constant influx of new comers who are born into the world as strangers’ (Arendt, p. 9), ‘action,’ she noted, ‘has the closest connection with the human condition of natality’ (Arendt, p. 9). Insofar as there is a newborn, the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something new, that is of acting. As a way of fleshing out Burns’ (1978), implicit understanding of action, I will proceed by paying attention to the notion of ‘making.’

The definitions of leadership effectiveness, as noted earlier in this paper, are directly aligned with the Homo Faber image of leadership. First, there is a deliberation of what’s best for man. Second, there is the aiming and calculating how best to attain what’s best. Third, there is the work of making it a reality, namely realizing or achieving what’s best. For Arendt (1958), this ‘work of fabrication is performed under the guidance of a model in accordance with which the object is constructed’ (p. 140). This ‘model’ can be ‘an image beheld by the eye of the mind, or a blueprint …’ (p. 140). Consider for example, the art of making one’s bed every morning. How does one know that the bed is well made? The notion of a well-made bed can be measured against an ‘image beheld by the eye of the mind’ or it can be measured against an already existing blueprint. In either case, ‘what guides the work of fabrication is outside the fabricator and precedes the actual work process …’ (Arendt, 1958, pp. 140–141). The ‘activity,’ or more accurately the ‘making’ of leadership is talked about in an analogous way among leadership scholars. It is talked about as, “being able to envision the future”, of ‘painting the “big picture”, of describing “a compelling image of what the future could be,” (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 99), and looking for ways to bring that envisioned future to fruition (Bennis, 1991).

It is this homo faber perspective of leadership that continues to inform many leadership definitions today. And, there is something attractive about this homo faber-orientation to the world. The strength of this thinking/approach is that it affirms that human beings have the capacity to bring forth something that did not exist before. It has the capacity to build and leave something solid and durable behind. Therein lies its creative power. In his review of Burns’ book on Leadership, Bennis (1982) celebrated the durability and creative power of Burns’ thinking about leadership. “Burns,’ he noted, ‘makes one of his most stunning contributions – leadership can invent and create institutions (or ideas or documents or even memories) that can empower followers to satisfy their needs’ (Bennis, 1982, p. 204). It is a creative power that exploded into our human realm since the birth of the industrial revolution.

Celebration of Homo Faber

The storied-success of 19th century industrialization, and the creative power of industrial leadership (the bourgeoisie), that Marx (1848/1978) ³ celebrated in his day, bears testimony to Burns’ formulation of the effectiveness of practical leadership. This is what Marx had to say of the strength, creativity, and effectiveness of industrial leadership, or the ‘bourgeoisie’ of his time.

‘The bourgeoisie … has created more massive and more colossal productive powers than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers … What earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?’ (Marx, 1978, p. 477)

However, insofar as the success of industrial leadership depended upon their choice to instrumentalize everything around them it also meant ‘a degradation of all things into means’ and a ‘loss of intrinsic and independent value so that eventually not only the objects of fabrication but also “the earth in general and all forces of nature,” (Arendt, 1958, p. 156) which existed without the help of man, lose their intrinsic value. What this essentially means is that the creative power of homo faber also required him or her to destroy all that exists in his or her process of making, and correspondingly, the experience of what exists. Arendt (1958) stood on the shoulders of giants like Plato by saying that “wind,” for example, could “no longer be understood in its own right as a natural force but will be considered exclusively in accordance with human needs for warmth or refreshment” (Arendt, 1958, p. 158). Wind, as something that is objectively and naturally given, is eliminated from human experience. In quoting Kant, she agreed that they lose their “value because [they] do not present the reification which comes from work” (as cited in Arendt, 1958, p. 156).

A closer look at Burns’ (1978) formulation of practical leadership reveals an understanding of acting as making; it reveals his sympathy for the idea of the leader as Homo Faber. As a craftsman or craftswoman sets out to produce a work of art or a product, and actually produces it, leadership effectiveness is also talked about in the same way. This Homo Faber way of thinking would stipulate that leadership effectiveness and excellence is really about setting out to produce the effects of intended changes and actually producing those results. However, while “it is in the nature of man the user and instrumentalizer to look upon everything as means to an end, – upon every tree as potential wood,” (Arendt, 1958, p. 158), the real issue at stake for Arendt, and for us, is ‘not instrumentality, the use of means to achieve an end … but rather the generalization of the fabrication experience in which usefulness and utility are established as the ultimate standard for life and the world of men’ (Arendt, p. 157). What must be noted is that the idea of man as lord and master of all things ‘does not directly arise out of the fabrication process’ (Arendt, p. 157). It arises instead out of a mental model, an epistemology, a vision, or an ‘“absurd” opinion that man is the highest being and that everything else is subject to the exigencies of human life’ (Arendt, p. 157). What is really at stake in this epistemology is that if one makes man the measure of all things for use, then it is man the user and instrumentalizer, “and not man the speaker and doer, or man the thinker to whom the world is being related” (Arendt, p. 157). The hubris of man the user can and does move them to ‘subject’ and treat other human beings as things to be manipulated or deceived. Man, as user can and does use others for their own private ends.

This is precisely what Burns (1978) argued against. As noted earlier, in the last page of his seminal volume, for example, he recommended ‘the most practical advice for leaders’ namely, ‘to treat … all persons like persons’ [Italics in original] (p. 462). By implication, to treat all persons like persons is not to treat persons as things or objects to be used, manipulated; it is not to treat persons as simply being users. It is not to treat persons as a means to an end. ⁴ To treat all persons like persons is to acknowledge that not only do all persons come to their worlds with their own motivations, histories, intentions, stories, what they hold as meaningful, aspirations, and values, but that they can also be, and are capable of being more than makers or fabricators; that they can be and are capable of human agency; that they can be actors, speakers, or thinkers.

What then are the implications of orienting to the other as an actor, speaker, and thinker? The answers to this question necessitates that we take a closer look at another question, namely, what it means to act. It is here that we turn our attention to Rost (1991) and how he defines leadership effectiveness.

Joseph C Rost’s Model of Leadership Effectiveness

Insofar as Rost (1991) claims that leadership can still be leadership even when leaders and followers fail to produce their intended results, he cannot be viewed as working from within the basic industrial assumption and image of acting as making. What image of acting, then, does he have in mind such that it enables him to say what he says? Unfortunately, Rost (1991) does not offer a reasonable explanation of how leadership can still be leadership even if leaders and followers fail to produce their intended mutual purposes, other than simply stipulating that he is offering a postindustrial version of leadership. In his ‘postindustrial’ model, he instructs us that ‘effectiveness or whatever synonym is used – achievement, results, excellence … success, peak performance – is not an essential element of leadership’ (Rost, 1991, p. 116). ‘Leadership,’ he further specified, ‘is not limited to relationships that achieve results, the real changes that the leaders intend’ (Rost, p. 116). Leadership ‘happens when leaders and followers enter into a relationship that intends real changes’ (Rost, p. 116). Elsewhere, Rost and Smith (1992) noted that ‘intend means that leaders and followers do not have to produce changes to do leadership, only intend them and then act on that intention’ (p. 195).

Are we, as readers, merely to accept what he claims, as a given? If, as he himself noted, ‘real’ change also includes a change in peoples’ basic assumptions (Rost, 1991, p. 115), and, since the desire for real change is a shared/mutual purpose, then, are we not also called upon to examine Rost’s understanding of action that enables him to say what he says, for the sake of real change? Consequently, rather than accepting what Rost says as ‘a given,’ we continue our conversation by orienting to his view as another perspective or story that needs to be understood. It is here that we once again turn our attention to Arendt (1958) for the purpose of understanding Rost’s understanding of leadership and leadership effectiveness.

Arendt: On the Verb ‘to act’

As a way of grounding Rost’s understating of leadership effectiveness, we turn to Arendt’s (1958), excellent unveiling of different meanings of what it means to act. The Greek and Latin languages, she sketched, contain two different yet interrelated words to designate the verb ‘to act.’

To the two Greek verbs, archein (“to begin,” “to lead,” and finally “to rule”) and prattein (“to pass through,”, “to achieve,” “to finish”) correspond the two Latin verbs agere (“to set in motion,” “to lead”) and gerere whose original meaning is “to bear”). [Parenthesis and Italics in original] (p. 189)

We can also see the use of the verb to act from the perspective of prattein and gerere, namely, leaders and followers bearing the burden of finishing, accomplishing, or achieving a task. This understanding of the verb ‘to act’ continues to dominate the definitions of leadership as we saw earlier in this paper. What is of consequence in this story, is that in the history of the usage of the verb ‘to act,’ Arendt (1958) noted that ‘prattein and gerere – became the accepted words for action in general, whereas the words designating the beginning of action (archein and agere) became specialized in meaning, at least in the political language’ (Arendt, 1958, p. 189).

Archein, came to chiefly mean ‘to lead,’ and ‘to rule,’ and agere came to mean ‘to lead’ rather than ‘to set in motion’ (Arendt, p. 189). What has dropped out of sight in our leadership discourse is the notion of acting as beginning something new or to set in motion, and the subsequent experiences of leaders and followers from within this frame of reference. What is critical to note in Arendt’s (1958) very perceptive distinctions, is that to think of leadership action as ‘to set in motion,’ is to accept that “the strength of the beginner shows itself only in his initiative and the risk he takes, not in the actual achievement” [Italics mine] (p. 190). It is this understanding of the verb ‘to act,’ namely action as agere – as in ‘to set in motion’ and not in the actual achievement, and independently of its prospects of success, that informs Rost’s (1991) claim that leadership can still be leadership even if it fails to produce intended results. This understanding of action comes very close to Weber’s (1978) formulation of the value rational feature of social action, namely that which is “determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake … independently of its prospects for success” (pp. 24–25). ⁵

To accept what Rost (1991) is saying then, is to accept the idea that both leaders and followers enter into a relationship that exposes them to an essential vulnerability that is inherent in ‘acting.’ In jointly acting on their commonly desired end-values, they mutually accept the risk of failing to produce that which they conjointly desire. It is to this idea of vulnerability, inherent in what it means to act, and too often missing from leadership discourse, that I now turn my attention. What are the implications of this new (but actually old) understanding of acting as ‘setting in motion’ (agere) for leadership effectiveness?

Acting as Initiating

First, insofar as both leaders and followers act on their mutually-shared-intended purposes, as soon as they set their intentions in motion, as soon as the act on their choice(s), they bear the burden and the risk of suffering the unintended consequences of their actions. Perhaps this is why we have the proverbial human adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. On the one hand, not acting on our good intentions will lead us to hell. On the other hand, since acting on our good intentions is no guarantee that we will produce the intended results, it too risks going to hell. Arendt (1958) alerts us to the unpredictability and unintended consequences that is inherent in setting something in motion. We simply do not know where our actions will take us.

To set something in motion is to accept, risk, and experience the predictability of its unpredictability. To focus on acting as initiating, would by implication, require us to address the lived experiences of leaders and followers both as ‘doers’ and ‘sufferers’ as they set something new in motion and as they suffer the unintended consequences of their actions and the unpredictability inherent in the nature of action. Recall, for instance, the experience of the former President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. In his Final Presidential State of the Union Address, he noted that he had intended “to reach across … differences and choose that kind of politics – not a cynical politics, not a politics of fear…” (Obama, 2016a) but, as he would say elsewhere “a politics of hope” (Obama, 2016b). The politics of hope was for him ultimately a hard choice but a ‘right choice’ because it is “a lot easier to be cynical” in a divided world, and to believe that “politics is hopeless” (Obama, 2016a). While the audacity of hope would become one of Obama’s defining characteristics of deliberating and acting well within his context of division, fear, and uncertainty, in his Final State of the Union Address, he expressed a regret that “the rancor and suspicion between parties have gotten worse instead of better” (Obama, 2016a). As Amaladas (2018) argued, while Obama did not succeed in his intent to change the rhetoric of divisive politics and bring about a more united politics, while he needed others to join him in achieving that purpose (action a prattein, archein), he was faced instead with deliberate attempts to sabotage his leadership. If the passing of Bills in the House of Representatives is one measure of Obama’s effectiveness, Bernstein (2014) noted that the “correct count of how many bills have been filibustered during Obama’s presidency is approximately all of them” (Para 2).

From the perspective of homo-faber, and Burns’ (1978, 2006), formulation of leadership and leadership effectiveness, President Obama’s tenure (in this regard) would be regarded as being ineffective leadership. And yet, if we understood the strength of the actor from the perspective of agere, as Arendt (1958) demonstrated, namely as showing itself only in the initiative and the risk that men and women, as actors, take, and not in the actual achievement (p. 190), then we would need to rethink our conclusions and pay more heed to Rost’s (1991) formulation of leadership effectiveness.

One way of controlling unpredictability is to lead by ruling. It is to revert to a specialized political version of acting as archein, where to lead is to rule. However, it is important to reiterate that Burn’s (178) use of ‘power’ is antithetical to the use of violence or force. Unlike totalitarian or dictatorial regimes, or regimes with a one-party rule, democratic regimes would actively resist such a move. In saying that ‘leadership shares with power the central function of achieving purpose’ (Burns, 1978, p. 18), he shares with Arendt (1977) the idea that in democracies, “power comes into being only if and when men join themselves together for the purpose of action” (p. 175). Violence, as Arendt (1968) ⁶ noted is anti-political. “Violence,” she continued to say, “can always destroy power: out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What can never grow out of it is power” (Arendt, 1968,  p. 56). Power in democracies, then is not about control or domination or having power-over others. Instead, as Bernstein (2011) affirmed, "power is a horizontal concept: it springs up and grows when individuals act together, seek to persuade each other, and treat others as equals’ (p. 10). In Burns’ (1978) language, horizontal power is about treating persons as persons.

Insofar as man as actor, speaker, and thinker is the focus of what it means to act (agere), Arendt (1958), also noted that the unintended consequences of acting ‘are boundless’ because the very act of setting something in motion, is for her, to act “into a medium where every reaction becomes a chain reaction and where every process is the cause of new processes” (Arendt, 1958, p. 190). To add to this complexity, by virtue of its boundlessness, to orient to persons as actors, speakers and thinkers is to accept the condition of human plurality. Plurality has a distinctive meaning for Arendt (1958). It involves distinction, and equality. Plurality involves individuality, in that every individual brings a distinct perspective to a common world, and it is rooted in our natality, namely in our capacity as human beings to begin something new, to initiate action spontaneously. Recall for example, President George Bush Jr, reaction to the destruction of the World Trade Centre, and the subsequent loss of human lives. Through his massive aerial assault against Iraq, he intended to instill ‘shock and awe’ among Iraq’s leaders, and bring an end to terrorism. Instead of bringing an end to terrorism, an unintended consequence of his and his administration’s action was that it created a runaway and boundless chain of terrorists’ cells that were more intent on creating more destruction and more violence. Herein lies an essential paradox of ‘controllers’ attempting to control that which is out of control, and by the very act of attempting to control, they create a ‘runaway’ chain of uncontrollable reactions. Where in the world, in other words, can one be and not, at the same time, be a part of the consequences of our own actions? The story (unintended consequence) of one American administration’s reaction to violence emerged as a result of action and when the fleeting shock and awe moment was past.

The boundlessness of action, however is not only limited to political action. Arendt (1958) noted, and I agree with her, that “the smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of the same boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation” (p. 190). Today, we use a term, coined by Edward Lorenz, ‘The Butterfly Effect,’ to describe the possibility of large impacts as consequences of small acts.

Finally, in contradistinction to fabrication, “where the light by which to judge the finished product is provided by the image or model perceived beforehand by the craftsman’s eye,” the light that ‘illuminates processes of action, and therefore all historical process, appears only at their end, frequently when all the participants are dead” (Arendt, 1958, p. 192). One critical implication of Arendt’s distinction between the light to judge the finished product (fabrication) and the light that illuminates historical processes of action, is that the story of setting something (new?) in motion, the story of agere, and the story of intending and producing or not producing intended results, reveals itself retrospectively to storytellers. This, I would suggest, is the ‘stuff’ for history and historians.

It is not as if storytelling does not occur during episodes of leadership, as people try to make sense of what is happening to them and why it is happening. In a leader-centric world, it is not as if leaders do not persuade others to follow them by telling their own stories. For Arendt (1958), however, the light that illuminates historical processes of action appear only at “their end, frequently when all the participants are dead.” In this sense, storytellers, through their backward glance, might know something different about the actions and consequences of leaders and followers than what the participants who were engaged in the act of setting in motion knew. At the same time, it cannot be denied that storytellers will tell their stories from their distinct lenses. We may, then, have historiography rather than ‘objective’ history.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that ‘listeners’ (followers) will also be editing the stories that are told. The listener edits and reshapes stories that are being told, by how he or she listens, by the questions they ask, and by choosing to focus and elaborate certain parts of the story. Sometimes they engage in spinning alternative narratives. In short, listeners edit as they attempt to understand what the speaker is saying through their lenses and their frames of reference. This is a part of the transaction and the relationship between story-tellers and listeners. Story tellers tell their stories with a particular purpose and an audience in mind. Their audiences, listeners, listen and edit stories that they hear, and they retell stories heard based on their edits. Consequently, we will not have the ‘full’ story, told retrospectively or otherwise, but rather parts of the story, each with its own ‘truth’.

Concluding Comments

The conversation in the preceding pages leaves us with a decision to include another feature of action, in our thinking about what it means to act. In contradistinction to a Homo Faber image of leadership effectiveness, Rost’s (1991) understanding of leadership, announces the possibility of thinking about leadership effectiveness from the perspective that is informed by the verb ‘to act’ as agere, namely as choosing ‘to set in motion.’ Within this frame of reference, as Arendt (1958) insightfully argued, the strength of leadership shows itself only in the initiative and the risk that leaders and followers take when they act on their intended purposes or choices, and not in the achievement of their intentions. To repeat, Rost (1991) would say that leadership can be leadership even if it fails to produce intended results (p. 116).

As leadership development educators, this would require that we orient to the experiences of vulnerability, boundlessness, and unpredictability, inherent in acting, as we think and write about leadership and leadership effectiveness. It is not about predicting an unpredictable future. Rather it is about experiencing the unpredictability that is inherent in acting. If we are to accept Rost’s (1991) formulation of leadership effectiveness as including the lived experiences of both acting on mutual purposes and suffering the failure to achieve intended results, then we cannot ignore inquiring into the possibilities, limits, and the humbling experience of what it means to act from this particular perspective of action as agere. This cannot be simply a matter of techné and neither can it be limited to a homo-faber orientation and thinking about leadership.

I am encouraged by Burns and Rost’s call to think about leadership. Rost (1991) for example held out some hope ‘to begin a new life for leadership study in ways that are consistent with a postindustrial framework’ (p. 187). From the perspective of action as agere, perhaps it is more a matter of thinking and speaking our truth about our acting, namely, setting something new in motion – the human condition of natality (Arendt, 1958) – and suffering of the unintended consequences of our actions. Perhaps it is more a matter of learning from those lived-experiences. Perhaps it is time that we focus on both the process and product of leadership and “write about the reflective process” (Ciulla, as citied in Goethals and Sorenson, 2006: 1) from the points of view of the differing meanings inherent in what it means to act. Being encouraged by Rost (1991) who concluded from his own review of leadership studies that “all kinds of potential futures are possible…” (p. 186), I end not with answers but with a question. What would the potential future of our leadership and leadership effectiveness discourse look like, should we choose to go down this path?