ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a conceptual framework for the practice of democratic leadership in education by drawing on Daoist perspectives. On the view of Daoists, the macrocosm functions as everlasting source of life and the microcosm possesses all features of the macrocosm. As Cunningham and Cordeiro defined, democratic leaders are those who "delegate authority and responsibility and permit subordinates to function within defined limits". Like Daoist leaders, Greenfield in 1979 addressed the individual's uniqueness in an organisation and, in turn, how an organisation is constituted of different individuals. Friedrich Nietzsche held that "consciousness is the latest development in the organic world, of which humans are part, and as such is the most unfinished and weakest part of the self. As Scharmer succinctly put the matter: "the mind works like a parachute: it only functions when it is open". However, Daoists persist further by advocating contemplation, an altogether more abstract level of thinking.
