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.
Published in Chapter:
Circular Leadership: Nurturing the Human Spirit to Secure Desired Futures
Nancy Kymn Rutigliano Harvin (The State University of New York Empire State College, USA) and Michael D. Phillips (The State University of New York Empire State College, USA)
Copyright: © 2020
|Pages: 26
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4141-8.ch011
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.