Abstract
This chapter explores circular leadership—its definition, practices, benefits, and challenges—as an architecture for academic leaders and administrators to frame solutions to ethical, organizational, and stakeholder challenges in the face of change within their colleges and universities. In this chapter, circular leadership is examined in the context of organizational change, the perennial challenge facing institutions of higher education. At its core, circular leadership is not about authority, power, ego, or influence. Rather, it is about community, collaboration, coordination, and cohesive action supporting a shared sense of vision. Circular leadership also offers a new perspective on shared governance, presenting enhanced opportunities for trusted partnerships, collegiality, and sustainable progress that can overcome polarization, distrust, and disunity. At its core, circular leadership enables individuals, groups, institutions, and societies to thrive in times of tumultuous change when long-standing, rigid convention must yield to new, holistic ways of securing desired futures.
TopIntroduction
I will only be someone’s mentor if I want them to be mine.
— Simon Sinek —
Leadership, at its best, is the work of nurturing the human spirit such that everything and everyone thrives: our institutions, our colleagues, our students, our legacies, and our futures. It makes the “impossible” happen — results that were not probable or predicted come to pass. At its best, leadership is not about authority, power, or ego; rather, it is about community, collaboration, consensus, coordination, and cohesive action in support of the health and well-being of our stakeholders, our colleges and universities, and indeed, ourselves.
This chapter, in many ways, turns conventional wisdom about leadership power dynamic on its head, calling into question traditional leadership theories and practices. The term Circular Leadership was first coined in 2019 by Linda Roebuck, a public school teacher, guidance counselor, and leader in the Maryland State Department of Education. Her transformative work, detailed in her anthology “Circular Leadership: Together We Rise,” is an outgrowth of a two decades-long experiment with twelve colleagues. Their collective efforts evolved into the nonprofit organization, A Community of Transformation (ACT), that birthed and champions the paradigm of Circular Leadership. This chapter’s focus is on the definition, practice, benefits, and challenges of implementing this leadership framework, and will also examine its roots in indigenous cultures. This analysis will view Circular Leadership through the lenses of leadership ethics and organizational change, and will present it as a means of inoculating against resistance to change initiatives. Since there is little in the academic or public press about Circular Leadership, this chapter relies heavily on the writings of Roebuck and her colleagues, and it intends to both break new ground and offer distinct recommendations for future research.
TopBackground
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round… The sky is round and I have heard the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind in its greatest power whirls, birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.
— Chief Black Elk of the Oglala Lakota People —
In cultures around the world, the circle has long been seen as a geometric shape and symbol that represents the continuity of life. Even today, phrases such as “the circle of life,” snd “coming full circle,” are colloquial. In The Expanding Circle (2011), Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, argues that altruism began as a genetically based drive to protect one’s kin and community members, but has since developed into a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral concern. Drawing on philosophy, evolutionary psychology, and anthropology, he demonstrates that human ethics cannot be explained by biology alone. Rather, it is our capacity for reasoning that makes moral progress possible. Singer’s aligns with the moral and altruistic underpinnings of Circular Leadership as originally defined by indigenous cultures.
The First Nation Medicine Wheel offers a visual, conceptual framework to better grasp the subtle nuances that power Circular Leadership. As seen in figure one, leadership and learning are depicted in their circular nature, contrasting the western linear paradigm. The mental, spiritual, and emotional domains of individual and group work in concert towards desired futures.
Figure 1.
Medicine wheel conceptual framework (McLeod, 2009, p. 231)
Key Terms in this Chapter
Circular Leadership: A model or approach wherein all participants are deemed equal, reach consensus and contribute to the greater good by focusing on interconnectedness and universal/spiritual principles.
Leadership: An activity or phenomena that involves teaching and learning to build capacity for results.
Circular Motion Leadership: An activity that can be taught and learned to build capacity for people to interact and thrive.
Medicine Wheel: A framework wherein the learning concepts of reflection, experience, and self-direction contribute to understanding how the participants learn to be the leaders that they are through a cyclical circular learning process.
Adaptive Leadership: The activity of mobilizing people to face and overcome difficult challenges.
Holding Environment: A culture that binds people together and enables them to maintain their collective focus.
Emotional Intelligence: The capacity to be aware of, control and express one’s emotions and to build successful interpersonal relationships.