Chapter 4

Individual Human Agency

and Principles of Action
Presented by
William Allan Kritsonis,
PhD
 The inescapable dilemma of every
leader is the gap between deeply held
personal beliefs concerning right and
wrong, good and evil, and the
requirements of working in
environments in which these
principles become muddled in a
messy world.
Fenwick W. English
 Overview
Weberian principle of action
Gardner Cognitive Model of
Leadership
The moral leader
The pragmatic leader
The wounded leader
 leaders are fragile instruments.
As in classical tragedy, their very
virtues often contain the seeds of
failures and disasters; and self-
knowledge is not generally their
strongest suit.
Carnes Lord (2003)
 Weberian Principle
of Action
Humans can become real and
knowable by examining their actions

Four types of action

Type 1:
Zweckrationalitat
Instrumental leadership; traditional
educational leadership decision
making in which an administrator
anticipates the costs and benefits of
reaching a desired set of goals
Type 2:
Wertrationalitat
Decision is approached and engaged
to attain an ethical, aesthetic, moral,
or religious ideal or principle
Type 3: Affectual
based purely on the emotional
response to a situation
Type 4: Traditional

Ingrained habitation - A decision

made from following past practices
irrespective of whether the reason
for it is apparent
 The Moment of
Leadership
The first thing a leader does is situate
himself in a public discourse, and
construct a narrative relating what has
been done previously to what he
proposes to do in the moment at hand.
The basic parameters of the politics of
leadership is set here.
Scott Skowronek
 Thethe
Consulting Good Ole
Oracle Days
of Dephi

Leaders must always look forward

Advice in ancient times
Oracles or seers
Oracle of Delphi

Rely on core of personal values in

present time
 The Gardner Cognitive
Model of Leadership
Leaders traffic in stories or narratives
Followers create leaders
Followers search for leaders
Leadership is an artful and purposive
construct of a voice and a message that
resonates with the people
Followers are the doers
 Gardner continued
Leaders give voice, make sense of,
and interpret and rationalize what
followers are perceiving and feeling
A common group or subgroup
confront, or are surrounded by
conditions, hardships, or deprivations
Continued interaction with negativity
creates a shared sense of community
 Gardner continued
This creates situation in which leaders rise
up and give voice to their emotions or
privations
Charisma magnetic personality; the
greatest revolutionary force
Leaders emerge to meet the needs of the
followers facing similar circumstances
Follower opinions create a movement
 Gardner continued
Leaders compete for followers by engaging in
stories or narratives Ex: Civil Rights Movement
Born leaders and born followers
Followers seek social structure, hierarchy, or
purpose
Followers seek leaders to help make sense of
what may often appear overwhelming
Followers require a sense of identity and mission
Followers need assurance that their privations are
not in vain
 Gardner continued
Leaders tell identity stories- give
answers to questions asked when
confronting uncertainty and ambiguity
Stories contain symbols, signs, and
metaphors that the followers already
know and understand
Simple
 Gardner continued
Leaders must embody the beliefs
they espouse
When leaders ask their constituents
to die for a certain cause, the leaders
must appear credible. Leaders must
convincingly embody the stories they
tell to their audience.
 Weber: leadership legitimacy of those
leaders who have attracted followers last
only so long as the belief in its charismatic
inspiration remains.
Charisma is contradictory to requirements
of organization routinization, which is
retained by stability; rules of office with
predictable relationships
Not everyone with authority is a leader
 Moral Discourse
Written and spoken communication
The character of modern leadership reveals
itself fully only from a vantage point beyond
itself
Some leaders and followers see their values as
fixed to standards they believe extend through
time, are universal = Plato perspective
Others swayed by possibilities within immediate
political or social contexts = Sophists
 Who the Leader Is
And what is important
Decisions comprised of two levels
1. Nature of the decision itself

2. Ideas, perceptions,
assumptions, and values
 Leaders should have some idea of the
medium in which potential actions
move in their heads, their hearts, and
the language and culture that defines
what they think and how they feel and
perceive the outside world.
Potential decisions rest on perceptions
and judgments; value system
 Morality does not dissolve all
disputes
Common good focus for leader in
deciding competing values
School law relies on constitutional
interpretation Whose common
good?
Sophists Perspective

pursuit of truth must be taken

without regard to moral values - we
cannot know in advance what the
truth will turn out to be
common good = many temporary
arrangements worked out between
conflicted elements in society
Protagorian leader Abraham Lincoln
Platos Perspective

common good based on enduring

and permanent values based on
disciplined thinking
Ideal for the unchanging lies at the
core of Christian theology
Ex: William Lloyd Garrison -
abolitionists
 One of the first task of leadership is to
maintain organizational unity
Leaders must observe the laws that
govern his or her office
Laws often unjust and unfair
Leaders who are working to change laws must
ignore or break them in protest
If a leader belongs to an organization that
supports unjust laws, s(he) may be forced to
forfeit membership or have their cause
compromised
 The Wounded Leader
Leadership roles often do not support,
confirm, or resonate with the psychic
needs of the person who become a leader
The gap between the demand of the
organizational role and the requirements
for dramatic effectiveness may cause a
leader to become lost and is put in a
position in which her moral compass has
become confused or points to a false
position
 The healing process for a wounded
leader begins with permitting herself
to tell her own story
Wounding is not the sign of an inept
leader
- comes with territory of leadership
- not if, but when
- what do you do about it
The Wounding Process

Time to engage in critical self-reflection

and growth
Opportunity to recast public image
Time to rethink how you can work day
to day within the value system in
which you believe and reset your moral
compass
Know thyself