BRILLIANT ANSWERS ONLY

The Gruesome Grid that Traps Leadership in the Secular Box

Worldview

Perspective

People

Leaders

Followers

Leadership

Naturalism Bias toward consideration of only “natural causes” in analyzing leadership.

Material world is all there is. Events are explainable by material cause and effect.

People are merely natural objects. Human nature is neither good or bad but neutral.

Leaders are humanly gifted and trained people who succeed or fail based on their skills.

What followers do is determined largely by the actions of leaders.

Leadership works primarily through influence and psycho-social processes.

Functionalism Bias toward goal achievement as the essential work of leaders.

The highest values are productivity, results, effectiveness, and efficiency.

People are motivated by hierarchy of need, form organizations to help them satisfy needs.

Leaders influence others, control activity, and evaluate outcomes.

Followers exist to do the work that leaders determine and organize.

Leaders make decisions rationally. Leadership is linear and technocratic.

Individualism Bias toward understanding leadership as the “heroic” work of unique, powerful individuals.

Events are best explained by analysis of the actions of individuals.

Stratification of people into hierarchies is inevitable and normal.

Leaders have higher status, privileges, and skill whose contribution is essential to progress.

Followers have lower status than leaders. Follower is not as desirable as the leader.

Leadership is primarily personality, charisma, influence, authority, and power.

Relativism Bias against fixed values including judging one set of values superior to another. Value blindness.

Ethics are socially constructed and materialistic. There are no universal ethical principles.

Human worth has no fixed anchor. Human value is relative to judged usefulness or desirability.

Leaders are special people who have different and often greater rights than others.

Followers have limited moral claim on leaders. Followers’ values are merely one perspective among others.

Utilitarian, goal achievement and organizational effectiveness are the highest values of leadership.

© Guy Saffold 2007, Used with permission.