Transformative leadership, social change,

and commitment: an analysis Michael Chew

Introduction

This paper explores various concepts of transformative leadership in the

theory and operation of a pilot social change project, the Pledge Project. In

particular it critically explores how the transformative concepts of expanded

identification and distributive leadership operate in the project. This is

achieved in two parts - firstly by exploring the broad conceptual background of

the project, then in the second part critically examining the project’s various

operational roles together with their inter-relationships. From this analysis

brief recommendations are developed for deepening the transformational

nature of future projects.

Part A – Background and context

Snapshot: the project and its context

The Pledge Project was designed to provide a mechanism to enable

participants to make individual written commitments to undertake actions to

address climate change. These commitments involved specific, personally

feasible social actions that would address climate change directly or indirectly.

The project was initiated as a response to:

a) The collective lack of political leadership around addressing climate

change at various levels of government;

b) The failure of the recent Copenhagen summit to produce scientifically

meaningful action;

a) The dominant emphasis in public discourse on personal action as the

most appropriate site of action to address climate change (as opposed

to the community or political spheres).1

Because of these factors – namely insufficient action concentrated at the

wrong level - I explicitly framed the pledged actions in terms of social,

community and political influence, defined as one’s cultural footprint2. The

participant’s written pledges committed themselves to take actions that would

increase his or her cultural footprint - expanding their social influence on

others – e.g. taking political action, educating their community, motivating

friends to reduce their ecological footprints, and so forth.

The project operated as follows: a small number of volunteer facilitators

sat at the public project table and verbally engaged passers-by to participate

in the project. This involved inviting them to sit down, introducing them to the

concept, and engaging the participant in a general conversation with the aim

of guiding her/him to commit to a relevant action. The participant then wrote a

brief description of the action on a slip of carbon copy paper to produce two

written pledges. Finally, the participant attached the original pledge to a large

public display board, and kept the copy as a reminder to take the action.

The project took place as part of ‘Create’ program of the 2010

Sustainable Living Festival in Birrarung Marr, Melbourne. This festival has

established itself a key event in Melbourne’s sustainability calendar, and

approaches sustainability in a broad fashion – encompassing educational,

political, consumerist, and creative approaches (Petheram & Johnson 2006).

Despite this wide scope, the vast majority of stalls and events were

predominantly information-based, framing the participant as a generally either

a passive recipient of information or as a predetermined role - for instance as

a potential member or donor of an environmental organisation. As we will

explore in the subsequent sections, the project’s goal of fostering the

1 The author acknowledges that these points are contested; however their discussion is outside the scope of this paper. 2 This term is used in contrast with personal actions, which are designed to reduce one's individual or household’s 'ecological footprint'. The term was first introduced to me during a lecture for an environmental leadership course (J Clarke [Centre for Sustainability Leadership] 2007, Week 6, 15 June).

participants’ own agency represents transformative leadership processes -

which have the potential to transform the participants’ subjectivity to a greater

degree than the approaches listed above. Firstly however it is important to

introduce the core elements of transformative leadership relevant to the

project and its context of social change.

Theoretical background: transformative leadership and social change

Although many of the concepts behind transformative leadership are far from

new, they have only been critically discussed over the last few decades.3

Burns’ (1978) work on the topic is considered seminal (Stone, Russell &

Patterson 2004), arguing that leaders are transformational or transactional –

the former appealing to the follower’s higher moral values and the latter

appealing to the follower’s self-interest through systems of rewards and

punishments. Since then, the definition of transformational leadership has

been widely researched and contested in academic and management

literature (Brown & Treviño 2006, Fry 2003). Two perspectives that are useful

in exploring the Pledge Project will now be discussed.

Firstly, according to Bass, transformational leadership occurs when

leaders ‘…generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission

of the group, and when they stir their employees to look beyond their own

self-interest for the good of the group’ (Bass 1990:21). Namely, it is a process

for expanding a person’s concerns from self-centred to group-centred,

appealing to the follower’s higher moral values – that of expanded

identification. The second perspective can be broadly described as

distributed leadership. As Timperley writes, ‘distributed leadership is not the

same as dividing task responsibilities among individuals… but rather it

comprises dynamic interactions between multiple leaders and followers’

(Timperley 2005:396). While this concept of distributive leadership has a

literature of its own (National College for School Leadership 2003), and its

3 An age old example is Lao Tzu’s famous quote, ‘The wicked leader is he whom the people revile. The good leader is he whom the people revere. The great leader is he of whom the people say, "We did it ourselves." ‘ (Lao Tzu, cited in Senge 1990:328).

relationship to transformative leadership is complex and is still being

debated,4 this paper draws upon the concept for its transformative connective

and emergent processes. While other transformative concepts are referred to

throughout the paper, these two perspectives form the general basis

underpinning the project’s operation.

A key point to note here is that the project takes place in a social

change context, rather than in an organisational context - where much of the

transformative leadership literature is focused. The latter theories intersect

with research on social and behaviour change in complex ways; it is unwise to

assume that one can be applied uncritically to the other. Frequently

behaviour change theory and practice relies on a mix of transformative and

transactional leadership styles to achieve specific ends - for instance using

appeals to an individual’s intrinsic values (transformative), while also relying

on incentives (transactional) to encourage specific behaviour change (De

Young 1993).

However there are two clear differences between the project’s function

and this kind of model behaviour change program. Firstly, instead of

encouraging a personal behaviour change - such as reducing energy one’s

usage, the project instead appeals to the participant to make change on a

broader level, relying on an expanded identification beyond personal actions.5

Secondly, instead of a specific action – such as writing to one’s local

representative – the project asks the participant to reflect on his or her life,

then decide on an action themselves. These differences are reflective of the

transformative processes in the participant-facilitator interactions, which are

discussed in more detail later in the paper.

A final component of the project’s theoretical context is its form – that

of a personal, written commitment. This is by no means unique, having been

studied extensively as a means to generate behaviour change (De Young

1993). However, on a theoretical level, the pledge mechanism is

transformative according to the earlier definition – as making a commitment

4 For the purposes of this paper we will take Timperley’s view, regarding it as a subset of transformative leadership (Timperley 2003). 5 It is important to note that a minority of pledges described personal actions, rather than community actions – this issue is noted at the conclusion of the paper as a topic for further research.

can create a shift in the participant’s internal attitudes - not just their external

behaviour. For instance, Pardini and Katzev, when reflecting upon why their

commitment intervention produced durable change, suggested that the

participants may have found ‘…their own reasons for recycling, to begin to

even like doing so, and, as a result, to continue to perform these behaviors on

their own’ (Pardini & Katzev, cited in De Young 1993:499). Thus pledges can

decouple behaviour change from existing transactional, reward-based

incentives, causing the locus of change to moved to the internal,

transformative, value-based level.

Part B – Project Analysis

Transformative Leadership in action

We shift now from the general discussion of the project’s transformative

processes to explore its specific operations and the extent to which

transformative leadership is expressed through various operational roles.

These include the roles of project designer, project manager, facilitators, and

participants.

Participant 1 Participant 2 Participant 3

Facilitator 1 Facilitator 2 Facilitator 3

Project Manager

Pedestrian traffic flow

This figure shows the operational relationships discussed in Part B

Project designer

I had three roles: project designer, manager, and facilitator (during the

project’s operation). As project designer I conceived the vision and operation

of the project. It was a largely my idea, though I took input from several

friends in the design process. However, I consciously chose not to develop

this vision collectively, thereby choosing a non-transformative approach to this

generative stage6. This was because of time constraints, and a concern that

involving others at that stage would alter the developed project vision. Here I

was operating more inline with heroic leadership – for instance having a

strong personal vision that needed to be protected (Fletcher 2004). This was

the trade-off: I got a pilot project off the ground nimbly in limited time, but

without the perhaps stronger base of a slow-moving organising group with a

collectively generated vision. On reflection, this illustrates that genuine post-

heroic transformational leadership inevitably takes more time if applied

consistently at all project stages; and this time may not be available.

Project management and cooperative facilitation dynamics

During the project’s operation, my role shifted to project manager -

coordinating and briefing volunteers to act as facilitators. This role was a

complex interplay of transformative and non-transformative processes.

The actual structure of coordination (primarily recruiting, briefing and

timetabling facilitators) was managerial rather than leadership based, and

specific outcome of the vision process described above.7 However the

process in which it operated displayed transformative qualities. During the

project there were many times when I could not be present at the project stall,

leaving after meeting and briefing volunteer facilitators. I encouraged the

facilitators to perform not only the content of their roles (engaging with

participants), but also some of the coordination role itself independently of

myself and collaboratively with other facilitators. For instance, the facilitators 6 See Lyman (2005) for a discussion on the relationship between collective visioning and transformative leadership. 7 An interesting point to note here is Leithwood and Jantzi’s incorporation of these processes into their model of transformational leadership, they write, ‘Most models of transformational leadership are flawed by their under representation of transactional practices (which we interpret to be “managerial” in nature)’ (Leithwood & Jantzi 1999:454).

found replacements for themselves if they had to leave the stall, briefed new

facilitators, and juggled the varied incoming streams of participants. These

leadership processes can be read as context dependent transformative

distributive process, as described in Part A. As Copland writes, ‘Decisions

about who leads and who follows are dictated by the task or problem

situation, not necessarily by where one sits in the hierarchy’ (Copland cited in

Timperley 2005:396). By handling these meta-tasks as well as their own

tasks, the facilitators expand their concerns from just their own duties to the

project broader operation and goals, joining with the other key concept of the

earlier definition of transformative leadership – expanded identification. As

Lyman wrote, ‘Transformational leadership, however, is still about getting

others to do what you want them to do’ (Lyman 2005:153) – what is important

here is how others are actually engaged to do this.

We now turn to examine these relationships in detail using a more

specific theory of distributive transformative leadership - the complexity

leadership theory that Uhl-Bien, Marion and McKelvey (2007) develop. Their

theory is based on how leadership processes develop in Complex Adaptive

Systems (CAS) - ‘neural-like networks of interacting, interdependent agents

who are bonded in a cooperative dynamic by common goal, outlook, need,

etc’ (Uhl-Bien, Marion & McKelvey 2007:299). The dynamic functioning of the

facilitators in the Pledge Project can be read as a basic CAS – with its shared

goals of engaging participants as individuals while simultaneously self-

monitoring and managing participant demand as a whole. According to the

theory, these actions could be read as an example of adaptive leadership –

‘adaptive, creative, and learning actions that emerge from the interactions of

CAS as they strive to adjust to tension’ (Uhl-Bien, Marion & McKelvey

2007:305). The tension in this context was the varied flow of participants and

their inter-subjective interactions, as well as physical perturbations, such as

wind or shifting sunlight. I participated in this system alongside the others –

however as the recognised manager, my presence had a dampening effect on

the network dynamics. Facilitators tended to defer to me in problem solving,

which they would have probably addressed themselves.8 This shows how the

mere presence of administrative leadership – recognised positional leaders –

affects the emergent dynamic of the system, skewing it towards traditional

non-transformational leader-follower relations.

Facilitator-Participant dynamics

The interaction at the core of the project was between the facilitators and the

participants themselves. Several transformative leadership processes were

crucial here, affecting the quality, depth and transformative potential of these

interactions, which subsequently had a direct effect on the pledges made.

Here, it is important to note two key limitations in the facilitator-

participant dynamics. Firstly, due to the festival context - with its rapid flows

of people – participant-facilitator interaction time was constrained – generally

less than ten minutes per participant. Intuition suggests that a short duration

would limit the effective transformative processes in this interaction – a view

corroborated by Krishnan (2006).9 Secondly, although participants’ emails

were recorded after pledging, no follow up contact was made with them. This

limited the ability to gain evaluative information about the success rate of

pledge follow-through, and the ability to remind, support, or re-inspire

participants after the project finished.

Returning to the complexity leadership analysis of the Pledge Project,

we examine how adaptive leadership operates as part of facilitator-participant

interactions. In these interactions the facilitators used a range of techniques to

guide the participant towards choosing an action to pledge. Some relied

mainly on the example action sheets provided10, which tended to shift the

participant into a more passive subject position, often causing participants to

pledge arbitrarily or politely leave.11 The more successful facilitators engaged

8 It is important to note that I was only able to infer this phenomena second-hand through knowledge of various facilitator’s styles and observation – it is difficult to measure accurately. 9 It is of interest that the above study also infers that the affective subset of transformative leadership outcomes - attachment and affective commitment to organization - were unaffected by duration. This implies the short interaction may still be effective as an initial ‘spark’ or inspiration to explore the ideas project’s ideas. 10 These contained compiled lists of example actions and were intended to jog the participant’s mind and provide a backup if they could not think of an action themselves. 11 These observations were generalisations from my own experience as a facilitator and observing other facilitators techniques, and do not capture the wide range of interactions

the participants as thinking subjects, drawing out the person’s concerns

around climate change, their interests in action, and encouraging them to

arrive at their own decisions about what actions to take. This dynamic

interplay allowed adaptive leadership to emerge as a product of the

interactions of facilitator and participant. These dialogues created a fertile

space for new realisations to occur – for instance the aha moment, ‘when

interdependent individuals who are debating conflicting perceptions of a given

issue suddenly, and perhaps simultaneously, generate a new understanding

of that issue’ (Uhl-Bien, Marion & McKelvey 2007:307). Effectively the

facilitator and participant co-create the pledged action together. Though the

conversations were very rarely directly oppositional as implied above, the

actual process of encouraging a participant to choose an action tended to

pose some degree of challenge, indirectly or directly, as it required the

participant to step outside her/his assumptions about social change, it is the

‘…process of seeing beyond original assumptions to something not bounded

by those assumptions’. Uhl-Bien, Marion & McKelvey 2007:307). This

complexity leadership analysis articulates in more detail the general

transformative leadership concepts outlined at the beginning.

Expanded Identification

The process of encouraging the participant to see beyond her own

assumptions about undertaking social action is another key transformational

process operating in the Pledge Project – that of expanded identification. This

forms the conceptual basis for the project’s “ask” of participants, which was to

expand their cultural footprint. This process can be analysed on two levels –

the broad and the specific.

On the broad level, this expanded sense of self relates back to Bass’

definition of transformative leadership quoted earlier – ‘to look beyond their

own self-interest for the good of the group’ (Bass 1990:21). In the project’s

context the group is not a specifically defined structure, but is rather

delineated by what it is not (an individual). It is instructive here to draw upon

O’Sullivan’s (2004) concept of the minimal and the ecological self. The former displayed. Formalised evaluative methods would lead to more accurate results and more faithful analysis.

represents the modernist, isolated self that is alienated from authentic

connections with others and the planet, while the latter is the reverse – the

self that is fundamentally interconnected with successively wider circles of

identifications- family, community, nation, earth, and universe. Thus the

Pledge Project asked the participant to look beyond their minimal self to take

broader action centred on their wider circles of identification.

This perspective raises a question – if successively wider identification

reconnects the minimal self, is there a similar expectation of an ideal

trajectory of expansiveness implicit in the project? That is, does it imply that

successive pledges should be bolder and more far-reaching? This question is

difficult to answer – my personal view is that it does imply this; however,

although it may be appropriate for such a project to impose a particular

trajectory for pledges made in an organisational context, it does not suite the

social change context, where a diversity of trajectories, for a diversity of

participants, is required for transformative change.

Finally, we address how this expanded identification affects the

participant’s self-image. If the facilitator-participant engagement has been

successful, and the participant expands his/her identification, then their self-

image simultaneously shifts in the direction of embed the other – what was

formally an outer circle of identification. This is characteristic of an altruistic

relationship, which is ultimately the context in which participants make

pledges. Thus ‘..altruism brings in the dimension of “others” into leader’s

definition of self’ (Singh & Krishnam 2008:264). This can in turn produce

other transformations in the participant’s self-image – for example, from

empirically focused to more community focused, or from a member/donor self-

image to that of an independent change-agent.

Conclusions, recommendations and further research

We have seen through these critical explorations that transformative

leadership processes are active in both the broad conceptual positioning of

the Pledge Project, as well as in the specific interpersonal processes

occurring between the various project roles. While these processes were

subject to various practical constraints and limitations, they essentially serve

to structurally underpin the project’s aims of social change. These

transformative aims are enacted both in the project’s organisation and

delivery – the former empowering the facilitators to act autonomously and

collaboratively, and the latter expanding the participants’ circle of awareness

and action.

It is, however, important to remain critical and realistic in our

explorations. The pilot project’s two most serious shortcomings were the lack

of time spent on individual participant interactions – limiting the project’s

transformative affect, and lack of follow-up with participants – limiting ability to

follow through and support actions. Future projects should take steps to

address these two concerns – which would allow for a greater realisation of

the transformative leadership processes inherent in the pilot. Further research

could also address analyses not included in this paper due to space

constraints – such the transformative basis of the actual pledges themselves,

their relative success or failure, and the types of participants who were

engaged.

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Appendix 1 – Project Documentation Further documentation can be found at: http://thepledgeproject.blogspot.com