ABSTRACT
It has long been accepted that leaders do not succeed simply through the strength of their own will and that the key to successful leadership cannot be found by restricting one’s gaze to the heroic leader. As a result, researchers’ analytic gaze has been broadened to incorporate other determinants of leadership. This has occurred in two broad overlapping waves: first through a focus on the importance of situational factors, then through a focus on followers and on their relationship with leaders. Transactional models of leader-follower relations stress how leaders are constrained by their ability to satisfy the needs of followers but run the danger of turning leadership into a mechanical book-keeping exercise. This loses sight of those aspects of leadership that make it so fascinating and so important as a topic of study: the creativity of leaders, their ability to shape our imaginations and produce social change. Transformational models respond by analyzing how leaders are able to change the things that people want and need, thereby changing what they are prepared to do. However, in seeking to explain what gives leaders the ability to produce such change, they are in danger of reintroducing the idea that leaders are marked out by their unique qualities. All the leader-follower models present problems. However, together they provide the key building blocks necessary to understand leadership: the importance of context, the role played by followers, the function of power, the dynamics of transformation.
