Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference
The primary goal of Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference,written by Susan R. Komives, Nance Lucas, and Timothy McMahon, is to help undergraduate students develop their own philosophy and practice of leadership. The authors define leadership as "a relational and ethical process of people together attempting to accomplish positive change" (p. ix) and, as such, do not limit their audience to those in positional leadership roles.
Chapters follow a common format, opening with a brief story about students that illustrates the chapter's focus, then moving into a chapter overview. Each chapter mixes quotations from student leaders, theories from a broad range of disciplines, examples from college campuses and student organizations, and numerous charts and lists that will aid visual learners. Each ends with a summary of key ideas, an overview of the next chapter, discussion questions, and a brief list of additional readings.
The first three chapters form the theoretical grounding of the book, although examples set on campuses and in students' experiences make the theories clear and relevant. Chapter 2, "The Changing Nature of Leadership," presents an overview of both classic and contemporary theories of leadership and leaders. Reciprocal leadership theories and chaos theory receive considerable attention.
The third chapter covers the authors' "Relational Leadership Model" and details the five primary characteristics of effective leadership: It is purposeful, inclusive, empowering, ethical, and process oriented. This model serves as the guiding framework for the text as a whole, and the concepts and models covered in subsequent chapters are explained in light of the five principles of the relational leadership model.
The second portion of the book focuses on how individual and group identities influence leadership. The fourth chapter covers understanding oneself, with a primary focus on knowing one's ethics, values, self-concept, self-confidence, personality type, and the influence of one's social identities. Chapter 5 addresses the influence of social identities on leadership and groups. The authors do not essentialize identity. Rather they explore how socialization and expectations influence behaviors, examine the influence of gender, race, nationality, and privilege, and investigate how those differences manifest in verbal and nonverbal communication, conflict resolution, and decision-making. The final chapter in this section addresses leaders' ethical dilemmas, how to start discussions about moral issues, and questions to consider in resolving ethical dilemmas.
The third section contains chapters focused on the contexts in which leaders create change (teams and groups, organizations, and communities) and a chapter on sustaining purpose and passion. These chapters cover a variety of theories explaining the development of these settings, and how members interact in them. Aspects of the relational leadership model are highlighted in each chapter; and while theories and examples are drawn from a variety of literature bases, enough examples are set within student organizations and other settings in which students hold leadership roles to make the examples clear and relevant to the primary audience.
The fourth portion of the book addresses change directly—understanding it, shaping it, and dealing with its repercussions. Chapter 11 explains individuals' resistance to change and offers models of successful change. Chapter 12 covers strategies for creating change, including beliefs and characteristics of change agents; a detailed discussion of the social change model and its relationship to the relational leadership model; [End Page 110]coalition-building and the challenges of working in coalition; when, how, and whom to join with in creating change; and the distinction between service and social change.
The final part of the book addresses leadership development and maintaining energy and passion. Chapter 13 presents the leadership identity model, which describes the development of students' understandings of leadership and themselves as leaders, how relational leadership is manifested at different points in the model, and the conflicts that arise when working in settings and with others who do not operate from similar assumptions and values.
The final...
