Blog 01:
A Leadership Primer

A leadership primer: What is leadership and why is it important to you?
Brad Colpitts
March 20, 2025

Given that our (academics') writing tends to be niche and hidden behind a paywall, it often doesn't get a lot of eyes on it. In an effort to connect my work with a broader audience, I have chosen to write a blog using a less formal tone with a more general audience in mind, and will try to keep it concise.

If you're reading this, it means my efforts are bearing fruit. Now, on to the blog.

Creating a common language around leadership

While conducting research for my doctoral thesis under the guidance of Dr. Sarah E. Eaton, an interesting silver lining emerged from the research process itself. 

I conducted semi-structured interviews with academics at various levels of the institutional hierarchy in Japan, eliciting their views on the current leadership approaches common in their institutions and how these compared with their views of ideal leadership. To prepare them for our interviews, I provided a guide which explained some of the basic terminology that informed my research.

During several of the interviews the participants noted that having the language to discuss leadership helped them reflect on what leadership is, what forms of leadership are effective and which approaches are not.  For my study, I used Bass' (1985) Full-Range Leadership Model.. Simply put, this model envisions leadership from laissez-faire (absent leadership) to transactional (reward-punishment) to transformational (creating a shared vision). This experience underscored how having shared language to describe concepts succinctly helps us to better communicate about a given field of research and understand its implications to our own work and life (Macdonald et al., 2018).

But this still begets the question: what is leadership?

Leadership in a nutshell

To answer this question concisely, it's important to understand both what leadership is and what it is not. The clearest definition I found during my research is from Antonakis and Day (2018), who describe "leadership" as:

"the process of behaviors of an individual or group in leadership positions which allow them to inspire the members of an organization toward a collective goal."

There are many kinds of leaders. However, an effective leader should be flexible with how they apply leadership, adjusting their approach to suit a given situation or context. And although views of leadership vary across cultures, my own research in higher ed, as well as a multitude of studies in the private sector, suggest people want transformational leaders. These leaders communicate a clear, common vision and goals, put organization members' needs above their own, inspire, stimulate faculty intellectually, and engage them individually (Bass & Avolio, 2004). Effective vs. ineffective leadership is a topic that warrants a more in-depth discussion at a later date.

What leadership is not

By contrast, leadership is not management. Management describes day to day processes, such as planning, budgeting, problem solving, etc. As universities are increasingly run under a framework borrowed from the private sector, often called "new public management", it is easy to conflate these two concepts (Blaschke et al., 2014). This isn't to say management is not important. Someone has to keep the lights on. But while all leaders are necessarily managers, the opposite is not always true (Kotter, 2012). 

In higher education, we also have to extricate leadership from governance. In a forthcoming publication (stay tuned), my co-authors and I found that this term is also often conflated with leadership. However, while governance tends to refer to the structure of leadership, it does not explain the behavior of leaders. Thus, while—much like management—governance is an important facet of higher education, it should be understood as distinct from leadership.

So why does this matter?

Why it's important

Universities are facing huge disruption globally. Challenges to academic freedom, declining public trust in education....even the value proposition of a tertiary education is changing. Where I live and work in Japan, it appears to me (supported by a substantial body of evidence) the higher ed system is unsustainable. Many institutions will have to close their doors as the youth population continues to decline and the competitiveness of institutions here decreases, with international students having the option to seek a quality education in their own country.

We need adept leadership to overcome these challenges and we need leaders who can lead their institutions through change: quickly! The alternative, I'm afraid, for institutions that don't cultivate strong leaders is to pack it in or be subsumed by larger organizations.

References

Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (2018). Leadership: Past, present, and future. In J. Antonakis & D. V. Day (Eds.), The nature of leadership (pp. 3-26). Sage Publications.

Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. Free Press.

Bass, B. M., & Avoilio, B. J. (2004). Multifactor leadership questionnaire (3rd ed.). Mind Garden Inc.

Blaschke, S., Frost, J., & Hattke, F. (2014). Towards a micro foundation of leadership, governance, and management in universities. Higher Education, 68, 711-732. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9740-2

Colpitts, B. D. (2023). Exploring the role of leadership in facilitating higher education internationalization in Japan: a mixed methods study. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1-19.

Kotter, J. P. (2012). Leading change. Harvard Business Review Press

Macdonald, I., Burke, C. G., & Stewart, K. (2018). Systems leadership: Creating positive organisations. Routledge.