Page 83 - The Complexity Perspective 20 02 18

The Idea of Complexity Leadership

Leading has been historically associated with the top-down command
and decision-making and the maintenance of cohesion and integrity in
the system, in particular, the guardianship of the system goal. That

said, leadership is also associated with formal roles and titles and the
social recognition associated with those. If groups are to
spontaneously form to solve common problems they have identified

then the integrity of the organization is threatened as is the traditional
conception of leadership.

Theorists addressing this problem have evolved the construct
of Complexity Leadership. They have separated the function of

leadership from the formal role and hierarchical title. They have
identified three leadership functions, each of which can be performed
by anyone (in theory) at an appropriate moment:

● Administrative Leadership: is close to traditional

conceptions of leadership being concerned with devising
strategy, structure, and coordination and representing the
rational goal-oriented processes familiar from the Industrial
Era: complexity theorists see it as the manifestation of

bureaucracy and that all corporate action is necessarily
enmeshed in a superstructure of planning, organizing, and

missions
● Enabling Leadership: has been described as keeping the
organization on the “edge of chaos". A key to understanding
Enabling Leadership is to note that it is not about control and
direction but about creating the conditions under which adaptive

behavior can be catalyzed within the bureaucratic frame. The
technical term is managing the 'entanglement' of adaptive and

administrative forces
● Adaptive Leadership: refers to the self-leadership that occurs
as the tensions generated by the struggle for context-fit are

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