Running Head: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE INTERNET ON
LEADERSHIP
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The Impact of Social Media and the Internet on Leadership
Deborah Romig
Virginia Commonwealth University
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The Impact of Social Media and the Internet on Leadership
In the twentieth century, leadership ontology was widely viewed as having three main
components; leaders, followers, and shared goals (Drath, McCauley, Palus, Velsor, O’Connor,
McGuire, 2008). In the twenty-first century technology advanced, specifically the widespread
use of social media and the internet, creating a more global society, allowing information to be
accessed quickly, by anyone, giving way to more collaborative contexts. In this environment, the
traditional leadership ontology no longer applies, as it cannot face the adaptive challenges
presented by this phenomenon. Wilfred Drath in his book, The Deep Blue Sea, Rethinking the
Source of Leadership (2001) describes a necessary evolution of leadership to meet these
challenges from personal dominance, to interpersonal influence and finally to relational dialogue.
He uses three tasks of leadership, setting direction, creating commitment and facing adaptive
challenges as a framework for defining these phases of leadership development. Using the
adaptive challenge of how social media and the internet are affecting educational leadership, this
discussion will describe educational leadership’s response to the challenges within Drath’s
evolutionary models. The discussion will also include further progression that needs to occur for
educational institutions to fully prepare students to become collaborative partners in a global
society.
Social Media and the Internet as Adaptive Challenges
The group of students is known as digital natives, born after 1980, they have never
known a world without the internet or having immediate access to information through the use of
a smartphone or tablet device (Phelps, 2012). 84 percent of these students own a laptop computer
and spend the majority of their time on social media (Phelps, 2012). 95 percent of all teens ages
12 -17 are online and over 80 percent use social media (Miller & Ribble, 2013).
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The phenomenon is changing the expectations for educational leaders and presents four
compelling challenges. First, school leaders are now expected to set effective policies and
guidelines to keep students safe (Miller & Ribble, 2013). As the use of technology increases, so
do school-related issues including legal issues especially in regard to cyberbullying and other
such misuses of technology. Community members, including parents, do not want the
responsibility of setting policy and are not taking the time and effort to educate themselves, thus
making it the sole responsibility of the school (Miller & Ribble, 2013). Second, leaders are
grappling with the academic ramifications of social media. Educators understand that these tools
are growing in their sophistication and are changing the way we communicate, teach, and learn
(Mao, 2014). However, these skills do not readily translate into academic activity that affects
student success within a traditional classroom. The research for effective pedagogical
incorporation of technology into practices for effective student learning continues to be a
challenge for educational leaders (Phelps, 2012). Third, there is a growing disconnect between
secondary and higher level educational success. The solution to this problem has been the
institution of Common Core standards increasing content rigor, but not allowing time to teach
study skills, resiliency, maturity, digital citizenship skills, or the developmental aspects of
academic performance that are needed for success at a collegiate level (Lu, Miller, Newman,
2014). Additionally, leaders are expected to use social media to wield social capital within the
communities they serve. There are two aspects to this mandate that need to be addressed in order
for leaders to successfully use these tools, creating a positive message for their schools. One is
the leader’s knowledge of how to use the tools and what tools will be most effective, and two,
training teachers and other professionals to also use social media while setting boundaries
regarding their personal and professional roles within the community. These are the major
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aspects of the adaptive challenge social media and the internet present to the current educational
leadership model. The discussion will now focus on how educational leadership at a district or
division level has responded to this adaptive challenge as it relates to Drath’s evolutionary model
of leadership in regard to the three tasks of leadership.
Personal Dominance
This is the most traditional form of leadership, one that continues to be perpetuated
throughout our culture. The leader is responsible for all three of the leadership tasks; setting
direction, creating commitment and facing adaptive challenges. The followers depend on the
leader to complete these tasks effectively generating inspiration and motivation to overcome any
and all obstacles. Rather than viewing this ontology of leadership as outdated, this understanding
of leadership continues to be valued throughout organizations in today’s culture (Drath, 2001).
The impact of social media and the internet on the personal dominance structure of educational
leadership at a district level in regard to the three tasks of leadership will be discussed.
Setting Direction
In typical educational organizations, the superintendent is viewed by the followers as the
person who is responsible for setting the direction for the school division for all aspects of the
educational process. While this sounds reasonable, the challenges social media presents are much
more complex than the limits of one leader’s perspective. Using Plato’s model of the cave, it is
imperative for the leader to ascertain a variety of perspectives to avoid pitfalls and set
appropriate direction for the division. Division leaders are tasked with providing direction for the
four aspects of this adaptive challenge. The first major aspect is setting policies that are effective
in keeping students safe. However, the research shows that these policies lag ‘far behind the
evolution of social media leading to an array of legal vulnerabilities.’ (Wang, 2013 p. 60). A
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second aspect of this challenge is that leaders are expected to provide pedagogical expertise into
how technology and social media can be best used in classrooms. Research indicates that there is
little connection between the quantity of technology and student learning, but more connection
between the quality of the pedagogy with regard to how technology is being used in the
classroom for student learning (Phelps, 2012). Leadership at a division level typically focuses on
what technology will be used rather than how the technology will be incorporated into the
classroom (Phelps, 2012). While empirical evidence for the positive impact of social media in
the classroom is lagging, students continue to use it to support their learning, especially in higher
education (Mao, 2014). This further emphasizes the disconnect between the secondary and
higher education institutions. In regard to social capital, there is a severe gap in the technology
knowledge of educational leaders related to digital literacy. This can cause serious problems for
school environments as we realize from news reports nationwide (Miller & Ribble, 2013). The
leadership task of setting direction in regard to this adaptive challenge becomes increasingly
complex for the personal dominant leader. This leadership ontology collapses under the weight
of these issues even within the first leadership task. If the leader cannot set a clear direction due
to the complexity of the adaptive challenge, the follower’s sense of loyalty is violated and
commitment cannot be created.
Creating Commitment
Another impact of the internet and social media is that the followers now have access to
more information and they develop a sense of expertise themselves questioning their reliance on
the established leadership to fulfill the three tasks (Drath, 2001). They start to insist on being
included in the three tasks of leadership relying less on the expertise of the leadership, and
questioning decisions being made for them. The dominant leader is not able to create
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commitment because there is a lack of clear direction. The followers sense that the adaptive
challenge is much bigger than the leader and they lose their loyalty to the leader. Without the
loyalty of the followers, commitment does not happen and this model does not offer any other
way for commitment to be created (Drath, 2001). A personal dominant leader is only able to face
adaptive challenges when able to reframe or fully control the challenge. Therein lays another
limitation of this leadership model.
Facing Adaptive Challenges
As discussed, the personally dominant leader faces limitations when setting clear
direction and creating commitment as applied to the adaptive challenge of social media and the
internet as they relate to student learning and educational institutions. Regardless, school
divisions still insist on leading using this frame rather than moving to a different form of
leadership. They do this by trying to offer counterfeit tokens of what educators need from leaders
to maximize the effectiveness of these tools in their classrooms to affect student learning. Rather
than working on changing policies that all stakeholders can agree to, they allow individual
schools to set their own guidelines and then wait for legal ramifications to occur. Regarding
instructional practice, they provide devices rather than applications and then expect curriculum
specialists to weave technology or 21st century skills into the curriculum without providing clear
parameters. The curriculum specialists then ask teachers to ‘share best practices’, while creating
and imposing end of course assessments that do not relate to the instruction. Technology
integrators create digital literacy lessons for both teachers and students, hoping to bridge the gap
between secondary and higher educational institutions giving students transferable skills. The
division addresses the social capital issue with its own Facebook page and twitter account.
While on the surface these actions may resemble the interpersonal influence model of shared
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leadership, the staff representing the dominant leader is not sharing leadership; they are merely
perpetuating the directives of the dominant leader. This creates more ambiguity, confusion,
resentment, and does nothing to meet the challenges presented. Drath suggests that in order for
the organization to face the adaptive challenges effectively, the organization has to be willing to
move to a shared leadership style where other perspectives are considered, where people are
allowed to question, to create, and to use ideas in different ways (Drath, 2001).
Interpersonal Influence
This model of leadership holds the principle that all leadership is shared. Interpersonal
influence recognizes that there is a mutual connection between the leader and the followers.
Rather than the leader acting on followers, the leader acts with followers creating mutual
influence between a leader and follower (Drath, 2001). Members of the organization have a
relationship and that working together, they will use each other’s perspectives to create new
meaning, and connections thus increasing the organization’s knowledge and ability to avoid
pitfalls as illustrated in Plato’s cave. The discussion will continue to explore how this model
faces the adaptive challenge of social media and the internet within an educational setting.
Setting Direction
The interpersonal influence model is able to take into account differing perspectives and
concerns of the followers thus direction is not set from one point of view, but from multiple
vantage points (Drath, 2001) In a school division example, the superintendent not only
collaborates with experts but also allows them to question, to influence, and to create the vision
and values regarding how to incorporate social media and the internet into instruction effectively
while addressing the four concerns of how this issue impacts the school as an institution.
Therefore, the followers can see the part they play in the vision and own responsibility for it
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(Drath, 2001). The limits of this model occur when the stakeholders become increasingly diverse
across racial, ethnic, socio-economic, political, and religious lines. Our schools are becoming
increasingly diverse as global citizens move into neighborhoods, poverty increases within the
suburbs, sexual orientation diversity becomes more common, just to name a few of the many
changes. The leadership tasks cannot be accomplished through negotiation of influence because
there is little basis for mutual influence (Drath, 2001). While this model is preferable to the limits
of personal dominance, it is still not the ideal in an increasingly diverse arena.
Creating Commitment
When the vision is created with the influence of the followers and their perspectives are
included, then the followers will align their actions with the vision they have helped to create
(Drath 2001). There is a more dynamic interaction between the leaders and the followers as there
can be adjustments made as necessary. This is very important in the adaptive challenge schools
are facing. Technology is an ever-changing entity and schools must be able to adapt quickly to
these changes, using the advances to protect students and teachers, to increase learning, to
analyze and gather data, to prepare students for higher learning experiences, and to wield social
capital within its community. The limits of this view occur when it offers no effective tools for
creating commitments across global, social, and/or value-based boundaries. People with different
values are not likely to have influence over each other and influence cannot be negotiated
interpersonally (Drath 2001). In this model, creating commitment relies on how closely the
vision aligns with their personal value system.
Facing Adaptive Challenges
Interpersonal influence provides a more effective model than personal dominance to help
our educational institutions face the challenges presented by social media and the internet. Using
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this model, schools are able to use the expertise of teachers, community members, other districts
throughout the nation, and universities to set direction for these challenges. Current leaders must
be willing to relinquish the leadership dominance and truly give others the opportunity to offer
perspectives, differing viewpoints and creative solutions. However, the limitations of this model
happen when the perspectives veer too far from the values of the majority and too many diverse
perspectives negate any influence created between the leaders and the followers.
Relational Dialogue
This perspective views leadership as occurring in relational dynamics throughout the
organization and the focus is not on leadership behaviors or exchanges, but on the social
construction processes that emerge and are given privileged ontology (Uhl-Bien, 2006). The
first principle in this model is the acknowledgment of shared work. The focus is on the common
problems and that everyone is in this together (Drath, 2001). The second concept in this model is
that differing worldviews are held as equally worthy; each has its own meaning, integrity and
logic (Drath, 2001). The third thing to understand about this model is that the leadership tasks
grow out of a mutual acknowledgment of the shared work making the tasks relevant. However,
these concepts are not enough to accomplish the tasks of leadership. There must be a dialog
between the partners as they discuss varying perspectives, reframe, and suspend assumptions.
(Drath, 2001). As the world increasingly connects and tasks offer a variety of complexity, this
model offers another way to approach these challenges.
Conclusion
The challenges facing education today cannot be met within one leadership model.
Complex problems require more collaborative approaches. Is educational leadership willing to
take some risks and dive into more meaningful ways to lead?
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References
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leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(6), 635-653. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2008.09.003
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