Mgt 388G: Search for a Leader
Instructor: David Boje
Tu & Th 2:35 – 3:50
Room Guthrie 201
Office Hours: 3:50 to 4:20 Tu & Th
Home Phone 532-1693
Fax 646-1372
Web Page http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje
(from web page, click on “teaching.”)
November 29, 2000
Book and Web Materials

Nahavandi, Afsaneh (2000) The Art and Science of Leadership. 2nd
Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc.
Introduction
Do leaders exist? What is unique about leaders? How do we know? Can you
become a leader? I am in search of an existentialism of leadership? I want to know what
leaders do that changes society for the better (overcoming oppression, making peace,
relieving scarcity and widespread misery are examples). I want to propose a new method
of leadership that I think will enliven an otherwise dead science. It will give you a chance
to explore leadership and make it practical for your own life story.
Rules of the Leadership Game
You will do the following; it is what we call the structure of the course:
1. There are no texts, quizzes or exams. We do offer you structure: There
are a series of weekly assignments, which done week by week add up
to a final report.
2. Please keep up with your weekly assignments. Assignments submitted
on time and in good order will get full credit. We will give those who
turn in assignments on time a chance to revise if they so desire (within
2 class periods).
3. We will also ask for people from the audience to share their weekly
work, which will earn you more grade points. Because of the extra
credit points we build into the grading, you can earn a grade without
ever volunteering. Still, we do encourage it. And you need not
volunteer at every class.
4. First come first served. Each person will pick a leader who has
positively changed society. You own it once you are first to register it
by email with our TA.
5. Write a biography of this leader using the methodology and format of
questions provided below. There is no page minimum or maximum.
6. SCHEDULE - Produce this biography on the following schedule
Week
Book Topic
Homework
(Please read the
chapter before coming
to class; please bring
your book since we will
be using the
worksheets and cases
in class).
(If you miss a class
submit 4-5 page single
spaced paper by email
on the topic listed
below; each class
attended is 5 points).
TU
TH
1
Chapter 1 – Definition
and Significance of
Leadership
Review
P&G Case
p. 25 and
web links 1
2 & 3 (P&G
Leadership)
2
Chapter 2 – Leadership:
Past, Present, and Future
Brainstorm
a list of
leaders
who have
positively
changed
the world
Exercise
2.1 p. 43
Last name
a to N is
traditional;
O to Z is
new. Have
2 minute
speech
ready for
class
3
Exercise
2.3
Gender
roles (in
class)
4
Chapter 3 - Individual
Differences and Traits
5
Chapter 4 – Power and
Leadership
6
Written
Project
Section
Week 1 – Pick
your leader
(send by email;
1st mailed, first
choice).
Week 2 - Study
the historical
biography.
Week 3 - Study
the family
Week 4 - Study
to Maturation of
this leader.
Week 5 - Study
the dress style
Week 6 - Study
the ideas of their
time and the
differences
7
Chapter 5 – Using
Resources Effectively
8
Chapter 6 – Exchange
and Relationship
Development and
Week 7 - Study
the existential
structures.
Week 8 - Study
the dialectic of
Management
9
10
11
12
Chapter 7 – Participative
Management and
Leading Teams
Chapter 8 – ChangeOriented Leadership
13
Chapter 9 – The UpperEchelon View: Strategic
Leadership
14
Chapter 10 – What Will
We Be When We Grow
Up?
15
16
leader and
situation.
Week 10 - Study
and Tell the
stories of this
real person and
their impact on,
and their
transformation
by, the historical
process.
Week 12 - What
are the symbolic
acts of leader
behavior?
Week 13 - What
are the
Opportunity
Costs?
Week 14 Imagine you are
a Leadership
Theorist
Week 16 Submit Final
Copy.
FINAL
Grading Policy
Our policy is to do everything we can to help you earn an “A” in this class. This is
a class in leadership, and we expect you to take the lead in helping us run a great class.
You will get course credit every time you show up, volunteer, complete assignments on
time, and do extra credit. Here are our standards:
A – Never misses class. Volunteers to share their weekly assignments
with the class. Turns in a great final report rich in insight, high in
critical thinking skills, and completes all the steps in the report.
B – Comes to class often. Sometimes volunteers to share their weekly
assignments. Turns in a good report with a few insights, moderate in
critical thinking skill, and completes all the steps in the report.
C – Comes late to class; misses classes. Does not volunteer very often
to share assignments. Does not complete all assignments. Turns in a
report that is not complete and without critical thinking.
GRADE POINTS
Weekly assignments (15 times 20)
Daily attendance (5 times 30)
Volunteers for Class events (5 times 30)
Final Leader Bio Report
Service Learning Project
Extra Credit (e.g. web pages 100)
TOTAL
300
150
150
300
200
100
1,200
GRADE CALCULATION
Of the 1,200 points 200 are considered extra credit (so, yes you can get an
“A” without ever volunteering). We will calculate your final grade using
a base of 1,000 points earned and use percentages.
91 – 100% = A
81 – 90% = B
71 – 80% = C
THE “A” LOTTERY
People with perfect attendance will be entered into the “A” lottery.
Two winners will be drawn. There are no excused absences
allowed in our definition of perfect attendance.
Questions and Answers
 How do you record attendance? Easy, bring a 3 by 5 cord to class with your
name, SSN, and signature and your ideas for the topic we have scheduled that
day. Please do this before class.
 What if I miss class? Please write a 4-5 (single spaced) paper on the topic of
the class you missed, but on some other leader than the one you picked as a
term project. No need for doctor, athletic, interview, or any other excuse. Just
write it and send it by email by the following class meeting date.
 Can I come late to class? You will not earn full points, but please do show
up. Please work on being on time.
 What if I am too shy to volunteer? We will be happy to call on you. Let us
know who you are and we will volunteer you the military way. If you do not



ever volunteer, there are still enough extra credit options to earn you’re “A.”
You should, for example, plan on doing a web version of your final leader
biography.
How will I know how I am doing? Please just ask us. We will happily grade
you at each point in the semester that work falls due. We intend to help every
person who wants our help to get an “A” in this class. But you are welcome
to earn some other grade. Your choice.
What if I need lots of structure? Ask and we shall provide. Leaders learn to
dance around the abyss and provide structure for all who follow. We want you
to learn to lead yourself, but apprenticeship always helps.
What is critical thinking skill? There is a study guide on the web to answer
this one. A brief answer is critical thinking is like a diver’s dive, the more
difficult the dive, the higher its critical value. The lowest critical thinking
skill is “I like this, I don’t like this; they did this, they did not do that, etc.” A
moderate level of critical thinking goes beyond this all is black and white
opinion to looking at the systemic issues, what we call the leader in the social
field, in the historical setting of trends and contingencies. The highest level of
critical thinking skill is very self-reflective, applying the leader experiences to
your own life space, deconstructing your sources with a skeptical eye, and
mastering your own critical thinking and voice. We will invite you to seek
higher and higher levels of critical thinking, so you can improve and stretch
your mind.
Leadership Theory is a Dead Science
My hypothesis is that leadership theory has expelled the leaders, and created a
leadership science that is frozen in non-human reality and synthetic abstractions.
Leadership theory is a dead science because it has killed off the leaders. People make
history. Leadership theory is not about people anymore; it is not about living within a
whole human, animal, and plant universe, with history and social being. It is now a
leadership science that can no longer comprehend leaders changing the living world. It is
a leadership science without practical knowledge that has become empty abstractions,
reifications, and in the end not practical. Leadership theory ends up being a fantasy, a
fetishizing reification, an abstraction, and a romantic fiction. Theory X, Y, Z, situation,
charismatic, transformational, and servant leader theories have become clever
abstractions. They are not about people struggling with existence while changing society.
Bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic organization becomes a person, applying
democracy or social engineering (another person) and what gets lost is the existence of a
person. Leadership theory magically transforms people into an object with dead traits,
characters, roles, and variables. Leaders in leader theory are constituted objects totalized
by the situation of collective objects in the relentless move of market and social forces
(more objects). Let us return to the concrete man of leadership, not the so-called “great
man” that leadership theory sought to kill off, but real people with material existence
from the richest to the poorest, from those who change their communities to those who
change the world.
Finally, leadership theory in its intoxication with the statistical mean has turned
leaders into statistical fetish (Sartre, 1963: 161). A person with one set of scores is a
theory X leader, or another statistical mean is a theory Y or Z leader. These tests are an
absurdity. These empirical tests mean very little to the historicity of the individual leader
who makes history. What matters is the relationship of men and women among
relationships with other people and institutions that constitute our society.
Proposal: Let us Search for Leaders in Existential Leadership
The world is living, full of human, animal, and plant life. Leadership is a human
activity, a transformation of the living world, what I will call the “study of leaders in their
historical and social field.” We will put leaders in context and tell the story of their
struggle to change material conditions in society. Crafting analytic myths about leaderobjects does not help us breath life into leadership.
I propose an existential leadership that focuses on the individual and their
practical action and movement within a living collective (family, organization, society,
global economy). We are interested here in concrete and living actualization. Leaders
change the living world by inscribing that world with their own human action and
imagination. The leader is by definition able to surpass the given historical situation and
act upon the present to transform the future. Therefore the study of history is absolutely
critical to any real understanding of leadership. The leader is able to move from concrete
to abstract and from global to local, from past to future in affecting change. Abstract and
dead leader concepts such as motivation, trait, or attitude have no meaning in the
existence of real people changing their social field in the living world.
The Leadership Adventure Story
I am by nature a storytelling interested in story methods. I want to know how did
the leader become a leader? What was their family like? What was their historical time?
What class did they come from? How did these material conditions produce the
historical actions in an adventure of leadership?
Writing a Leader Biography using the Reflective Historical Method
You will do a retrospective study of leadership. I will furnish you with
techniques for reconstruction. I am interested in your establishing the concrete existence
of leadership, which transformed society.
We are interested in a leadership anthropology that is at once historical and
structural, one that inquires about the leader in his totality – that is, in terms of the
materiality of his or her condition (Sartre, 1963: 175). The leader surpasses family birth
order to become leader, is part of race, gender, class, part of historical society, and part of
a political economy of producers and consumers. The concrete reality of the lived history
of the leader interacting with society is not reducible to some trait or principle; this is
pure illusion. Reflective historical method explores the lived material conditions.
YOUR TERM PAPER: Use the Techniques of Reflective Historical Method –
You will progressively and regressively reflect on the existence and practical operation of
leader being. You will trace the source of every sign and symbol of those transforming
moments of a society where you come to comprehend leadership in existence. You will
examine the period in which the leader existed and discover the meaning of that social
field. This is called the reflective historical method. It is also called microstoria.
Microstoria is the dialectic between the macro story (the social field and its history; the
economy and the existential structures we call society) and the microstory (the biography,
family upbringing, dress style, and symbolic acts that constitute a life story). The leader
is the mediator of micro and macrostory. Please select a leader that had a positive change
on society and include the following sections in your reflective historical method report;
1. Study the historical biography. People, not leader theories make history. Be
a historian who recreates the life story of the leader from birth to death. A
historian who searches for connections, contradictions, and discontinuities.
Trace out the social situation, the evolution of institutions during that time, the
intellectual ideas of the period, the social and economic climate. Trace the
living universe of the leader as concretely as possible. The leader is a product
and a transformation of living historically, of writing and being written by
history. This is the opening section of your report. In say 5 pages (single
spaced) tell us the bio.
2. Study the family. Begin with the obscurity of lived childhood; reconstruct the
character of the family, the structures of this particular family in a group of
families, in a social class, with historical roots. Studying early childhood of a
living leader is a way to understand and reflect upon the consequences of your
own lived experience/ Determine the living conditions that allowed your
person to construct progressively their leadership. Was it scarcity or
abundance? Were they property owners, slaves, or empoyers? How was this
person raised? What was their birth order? Psychoanalyze their fixations on
father or mother? What are the major conflicts within this family and between
the family and its social field? What was the economic and social class they
were born into? How did all this affect their preparation for leadership? How
did this family shape their intellectual life? More important reflect on your
own life history and how it prepares you for leadership? Cross-reference the
leader’s family with other families of the same time period. Trace out the
family network to other families of the period. How are they similar and
different? Rediscover the particularity of the time. What is the social and
economic network, the web of relationship of this time? Where does the
leader fit in the evolution of society, its rising and falling classes, and its
economic maturation, everything about its productive economy?
3. Study to Maturation of this leader. What was their courtship behavior?
What was their lifestyle? Did they marry? How did this affect them? What
were the turning points in their life? What would have happened if they took a
different path? What is their religion and spirituality? Are they human? Do
they have a sex life, music and entertainment interests? What events changed
the course of their life?
4. Study the dress style of the leader and the styles of the time. Look for
differences that make this person stand out. What are the cultural habits and
etiquette of the time? How do they differ from that etiquette? Study not only
clothing, but grooming, the presentation of self in everyday life.
5. Study the ideas of their time and the differences and similarities of your
leader’s ideas. What are the significant dates? What is the framework of
contemporary ideology? Rediscover the social conditioning and knowledge of
6.
7.
8.
9.
the time. Did this leader live by any basic principles? What is this leader’s
ethical outlook?
Study the existential structures. Regressively trace, explore, designate, and
fully unveil the existential structures that impinge upon and suspend their
leader praxis. The leader cannot lead in a vacuum; leaders are part of
collectivity. What are the structures and conflicts in the collectivity the leader
lives within? This is a genealogy of the particular physiognomy of events and
their consequences to selecting this person for leadership at a time in history.
The leader is not some object-concept or set of traits in a list of some theory
X, Y, or Z. The leader has a being and an existence inside the world and its
structures. The leader has a being in history and in the transformation of those
very structures. Leaders possess material existence; leaders are within society,
impose their enterprises and projects on the social field. Study the conflict of
productive forces of their time, their impact on those forces, the impact of
those forces on their leadership. But, reconstruct progressively and
regressively the existence of specific particulars, not some abstract general
fantasy.
Study the dialectic of leader and situation. The leader’s immediate
existence is suspended in a web of structures and in a history, in a personal
project. Yet this project that changes society and the world, also has an
Achilles’ heel. The leader project changes the leader. In this sense the
relationship between changing the world and being changed by the world you
changed is a dialectic one. The leader is the anti-thesis to the status quo, to
the thesis of society. In their change project, the leader synthesizes the thesis
(the world that was) and the anti-thesis (their changes of it). It is your task to
unveil this dialectic. How die the leaders’ change of society change the
leader? This is what Sartre (1963: 170) calls “reciprocal comprehension.”
The changes change the individual.
Study and Tell the stories of this real person and their impact on, and
their transformation by, the historical process. Illuminate their life in story.
Trace and rediscover the footprints of the leader through the historical
landscape. How does this leader affect and change and get affected by the
material conditions? If the leader is part director, what is the script, who are
the characters, what is the plot of this leader adventure? How does the social
field conspire to demand that this leader story and adventure be created and
staged at this point in history? Determine all the possible deviations, the
choice points, and the crossroads, the pathways that were not taken. How did
this leader create and mature a social movement, or rise to the head of a
movement, or divert a movement that would change the social field? “The
problem is to recover the totalizing movement of enrichment which engenders
each moment in terms of the prior moment, the impulse which starts from
lived obscurities in order to arrive at the final objectification” (Sartre, 1963:
147).
What are the symbolic acts of leader behavior? Every leader action is
signifying and signaling a way of living, working and being to the social field.
Leadership is a live event, a lived situation, a specific behavior that has
collective meaning. The symbols are symbolic because of their context, their
embedded social situation. “Everything at every instant is always signifying,
and significations reveal to us men and relations among men across the
structures of our society” (Sartre, 1963: 156). People are not charismatic; they
invoke significations (symbolic behaviors) that seduce people to attribute
charisma to them. Leader project charisma by their symbolic actions. A
regressive method explores the movement of charismatic enterprise, the
concrete behaviors and projective moments. Charisma gets clarified in its
material situation, in its symbolic conduct and social conditions. Illuminate
the experience of charisma by studying its history, and not being confused by
its mask. Charisma is a succession of gestures that people are conditioned
comprehend. Charisma exists in a social field, not is some abstract list of
traits or behaviors; each has meaning in situation, in synthetic conduct of
social embeddedness. The leader is an actor, portraying a charismatic
character on a stage with symbolic props, to an audience waiting for a
charismatic leader to take them in tow.
10. What are the Opportunity Costs? What is the field of possibilities, out of
which the leader and the social field combined in only one invention? What
are the other inventions that did not happen? Could the story have had a
different outcome? If two characters had met, would the story have evolved a
different ending?
11. Imagine you are a Leadership Theorist. Perish the thought. What theory of
leadership would the study of this leader exemplify? Where does the theory
fall short or not fit? How would you modify the theory? Or, maybe you have
a completely original theory; what is it? Try not to build one more abstract
leader framework or universal theory. We have too many already.
12. Details. Please quote your sources; include references and a bibliography.
Single-space your text. Use headings, paragraphs, indent your quotes, and
spell check. Number your pages and provide a table of contents. Put your
name, address, phone number, class number, instructor, and date on the cover
page. If you want extra credit provide a computer disk that we can be
uploaded to the World Wide Web. It is your chance to change the world.
References
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1963). Search for a Method. Translated from the French by Hazel E.
Barnes. NY: Vintage Books (A Division of Random House).