ABSTRACT
Although many have debated the degree to which leaders are “born” or “made,” or articulated the importance of vision to leadership effectiveness, less attention has been given to the impact of a leader’s worldview on his or her effectiveness. Worldviews are perceptual frameworks for seeing and understanding the self and the environment, guides used to determine how things ought to be and how people should conduct themselves. As Walsh and Middleton (1984, 35) note in The Transforming Vision, worldviews rest ultimately on the answers to life’s most fundamental questions, questions such as “Who am I? Why am I here? What is the nature of reality? What’s wrong? What should things be like?”
