What Rost disagrees with

• Burns
  He likes Burns' idea of transformational leadership, but doesn't think Burns has gone far enough, because in his mind, Burns is still thinking of a hierarchical arrangement of a leader and a bunch of followers below him.
• Management
  He also doesn't like the 1980's idea of leadership as management, because it is too industrial, and we need a post-industrial model to go along with postmodern thinking.
• Excellence
  He thinks that Tom Peters' stuff on excellence is too industrial.
• He combines these in the phrase, "Leadership as good management [is like Santa Claus] and Santa Claus looks remarkably like those great men and women with certain preferred traits (from Burns) who influence followers to do what the leaders wish (from management) in order to achieve group/organizational goals that reflect excellence as some kind of higher-order effectiveness (from excellence)." (from p. 95.)

Leadership vs. management

Rost's idea of leadership

• Influence, not authority. Influence is multi-directional; authority is top-down. It is based on persuasion, not coercion. People use power resources to persuade. In contrast, authority is contractual; people accept superordinate/subordinate responsibilities legitimated by contract. Dictatorial is power-wielding; nobody thinks this is leadership.
• Active followers, not passive subordinates. There can be more than one leader. The relationship is unequal because the influence patterns are unequal. The leader has more power and resources than the followers. Also, these active followers have many roles that shift dynamically; they are all part of a dynamic, complex system, not a fixed hierarchy. Moreover, both followers and leaders do leadership; they both intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes.
• Intend real changes, not that changes happen and then the leader is judged to be effective after the fact. Real changes are substantive, not superficial; they are purposefully desired by both leaders and followers. Changes are intended; they don't necessarily have to happen. In contrast, Burns says "the ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended, real change that meets people's enduring needs" - the realization, not just the intent (from his p. 414). Burns wants a product, while Rost wants a process.
• Mutual purposes, not mutual goals or independently agreed upon goals. Goals are end states; purposes have to do with process. The intended changes reflect, not realize (as in an end state) these purposes. These mutual purposes become common purposes. Burns says that leadership is morally purposeful, but does not distinguish between goals (end states) and purposes (dynamic processes). Rost also puts a bit of critical theory into the purposes pot. These mutual purposes must be consciously agreed upon, not just traded like commodities in the marketplace of transactions - tit for tat. Independent goals, mutually held, which pervade Burns' transactional and transformational leadership models, are not enough for Rost. Rost is looking for what Burns calls end values: liberty, equality, freedom, justice, equity, care, peace, security - the highest and most comprehensive of human goods.

Rost's idea of transformation

The ethics of leadership

Ethical processes means that leaders and followers must guard against using coercive and authoritatian methods to control the relationship. They must also guard against power-wielding, because that only accomplishes the power wielder's objectives, not the recipient's. Ethical leadership adds to the autonomy and value of the individuals who are in the relationship; it does not require that individuals sacrifice some of their integrity to be in the relationship (p. 161).

The leadership process is ethical if the people in the relationship freely agree that the intended changes fairly reflect their mutual purposes (p. 161). This opens up Pandora's box of ethics: witness abortion protestors and activists for gay marriages. Just what is ethical? In whose estimation? Moreover, leaders and followers may engage ethically in the leadership process to propose unethical changes; or, they may propose ethical changes (e.g. the fanatic who protests abortions under any circumstances) by using unethical processes (e.g., marching and yelling in front of the Cathedral with his obnoxious posters!)

Thus, Rost questions Burns' entire idea of transformational leadership, because it does not address this issue. They assume a fixed moral ground; they do not debate just what constitutes the underlying ethics or the context in which power of discernment should be used.

Ethics and change

Thus, the changes that actually happen may not be at all what the original intended purposes were. Leadership happened, but so did some unethical changes. Nobody can agree on ethics - is it utilitarian? (i.e., the greatest good for the most people) - is it standards-based? (if so, then whose standards?) - is it a social contract? is it up to the individual? (relativistic). These systems of ethical thought create as many problems as they provide solutions.

It boils down to two point: personal responsibility for making ethical judgments (using one's own free will and power of discernment) and an ethical framework that involves me than self-interest (one which makes them accountable to other human beings). It involves civic virtue - an intgrated concept of the common good, of our social ecology as a community - not just using an ethical framework to achieve our own individual good.

Final comments

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