Moving Towards a Justice-Oriented Leadership Model: Drawing from Barack Obama as a Transformational Leader
A critical analysis and reflection of leaders through a justice-oriented lens, informed by theoretical frameworks, provides valuable lessons for leaders with goals of making access to higher education equitable for all. Leader profiles such as this one focusing on President Barack Obama serve as a platform to utilize leadership theory as a tool to understand leader behaviors. Evaluating and reflecting on the effectiveness of such behaviors through a process of deconstructing assumptions of equity and justice followed by reconstructing them in more just ways can inform the actions of those leaders with such goals. To this end, this leader profile of Obama provides an opportunity to utilize the Transformational Theory of Leadership (Bass, 1985) as a tool to identify and analyze his leadership style. In an effort to deconstruct the theory, questioning “who has the power and authority to determine the style of transformation being pursued and the moral foundations that guide it” (Dugan, 2017, p. 197) is warranted. Attending to power and cultivating agency serve as useful reconstruction tools towards justice-oriented leadership models. Reflecting on justice-oriented reconstructions emphasizes the importance of creating collective capacity with foundations in grounded humanism coupled with the core values and leadership practices of all members to result in social action, such as making access to higher education more equitable for all. Background of President Obama
Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States of America, upon obtaining his law degree, worked as a community organizer in Chicago, Illinois for three years before teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago (Davis, 2012). He also practiced law, served as a member of the Illinois Senate and as the U.S. senator from Illinois, before his presidency between 2009 to 2017.
A thorough analysis of Obama’s leadership style across his career is beyond the scope of this leader profile. Therefore, to position him as a transformational leader, I highlight specific behaviors across his presidential tenure while primarily focusing on his leadership in community organizing. Obama served in various leadership roles in organizing communities including the Developing Communities Project, Altgeld Gardens housing projects, and the Gamaliel Foundation. Through his work as a community organizer he cultivated and developed collective agency and mobilized communities to effect social change. He believed in the power of the people within communities to effect social change that is justice-oriented. Using theory to analyze his leadership style serves to develop justice-oriented models of leadership.
Analysis of Obama’s Type of Leadership
In this section, Obama’s leadership is considered through the lens of transformational leadership. This theory is delineated and specific leader behaviors of Obama are highlighted in the following analysis. Finally, critical perspectives are used to deconstruct this theory and reconstruct it in socially just ways while applying it to Obama’s leadership.
Transformational Leadership Theory
The Transformational Leadership theory serves to illustrate the ways in which leaders influence followers to create social change, with ethical and moral grounding. This theory focuses on transformational, transactional, and non-leader meta-categories. Transformational factors include idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Contingent reward, active management-by-exception, passive management-by-exception make up transactional factors. Non-leader category includes the laissez-faire factor. This theory stages successful leaders as those who focus largely on transformational factors with minimal engagement in passive management-by-exception and laissez-faire. Staging Obama as a successful transformational leader, only transformational factors are considered in this leader profile.
Obama as a Transformational Leader
Idealized influence. This factor refers to the charisma of a leader and their effects as role-models for followers. Obama’s personality and behaviors align with this factor as demonstrated during his community organizing training. Abramsky recalls his ability to “stand in the back of the room, silently, arms folded, carefully listening to what was being said” (2009, p. 24). Yvonne Lloyd said, “if you get to know him, …you want to follow him, because you believe he can get things done.” [emphasis in the original] (Abramsky, 2009, p. 25). Obama’s homeroom teacher, Eric Kusunoki remembers him as “very calm, very poised, a good listener as well as a good talker. Very eloquent. He was bright, articulate, had a good demeanor, got along well with everyone” (Abramsky, 2009, p. 25). Colleagues and friends recall Obama as someone who follows through, and has control on his emotions and temperament (Abramsky, 2009).
Inspirational motivation. This factor involves the ability of the leader to inspire, motivate and challenge the follower “in constructing a shared vision for the group” (Dugan, 2017, p. 192). Obama’s ability to listen and learn by giving others his undivided attention and then drawing their ideas together to a focus on the main issues were inspirational for those working with him (Abramsky, 2009). His political campaign exuded a message of hope and possibilities for an American future that articulated his vision as a leader. Such a vision based on higher ideals and moral values, including a focus on access to health care for all, were “forward looking,…strong and motivational…and connected to the core values of the group” (Engbers & Fucilla, 2012, p. 1133).
Intellectual stimulation. This factor requires leaders to be creative in reframing old problems with new perspectives, while promoting the cocreation of solutions to problems. Obama has been known to challenge all members across different backgrounds to help them analyze issues, identify the middle ground and actionable paths forward. This intellectual stimulation is highlighted by David Brooks, New York Times columnist, as he recounts the way Obama “picked out the core point in any comment…Obama kept pressing them for areas of agreement. At the very end, the president summarized some possible points of agreement between the two parties, offered some concessions.” (Brooks, 2010). He looks at issues and problems in new ways as evident in a speech in which he states, “the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy” (Engbers & Fucilla, 2012, p. 1134).
Individualized consideration. While focusing on the collective agency of the followers, leaders continue to recognize individual contributions and needs, and respect individual differences. Many of Obama’s close friends, and members of the community organizations reflect on him being focused on them when he is talking with them (Abramsky, 2009). Gamaliel Foundation’s Mike Kruglik describes, “he (Obama) was very interested in people, very empathetic…listening to people, finding out their story, their passion, and their core motivation, their self-interest” (as cited in Abramsky, 2009, p. 35).
Considering these transformational factors that Obama engaged in, a deeper analysis of the effectiveness of his leadership as well as the ways in which he may have reconstructed his behaviors around a justice-oriented model is necessary.
Effectiveness of Obama’s Leadership Practices
In analyzing Obama’s leadership practices through his days as a community organizer, his consistency in engaging in transformational leader behaviors is apparent. As a transformational leader, he helped transform communities by “harnessing the internal productive capacities, both in terms of money and people, that already exist in communities.” (Obama, 1990, p. 3). However, applying transformational theory as a tool to understand Obama’s leadership style, requires critical considerations of his stocks of knowledge, ideology, and social location. These considerations play a role in the transformations a leader pursues, the moral foundations of such pursuits, and the risk of replicating dominant norms (Dugan, 2017).
Obama, African-American and Christian, was born to a white mother and a black father, who could not have been legally married in sixteen American states at the time, in 1961 (Davis, 2012). He first began his work as a community organizer helping church-based communities of the South Side, Chicago, Illinois with predominantly African-American residents. His experiences with race, and his own identity development likely plays a large role in his world view and need for social change within these communities. The types of transformations he seeks through organizing communities is a reflection on his stocks of knowledge, core ideology and social location grounded in morality. However, when considering transformational theory, there is the possibility that a different leader who may not share these experiences may pursue different transformations. Therefore, while transformational theory is focused on leaders influencing followers in co-creating social change, the decision on what change is pursued often lies with the leader. The flow of power serves as a deconstruction tool to explore this further.
Deconstruction of Transformational Theory
A critical perspective to consider in deconstructing transformational theory involves identifying power and understanding how it operates. In considering Obama as a transformational leader, his ability to stand back and listen, critically reflect on issues that members in the community raise, and then propose a vision to change structures around them demonstrates the intent of the transformational theory. However, in situations where a leader may not be able to reflect on experiences of those different from themselves, they may pursue transformations based on their limited understanding of issues, and these transformations may not address the concerns of their followers, or create the social change they intended. Worse, they may allow the repetition of dominant norms without giving voice to the concerns of marginalized communities. The transformational theory of leadership, while it focuses on the morality of social change, does not consider the role of power in the type of transformation pursued, and its perpetuating hegemonic norms. Achieving social change and focusing on a justice-oriented model then requires a reconstruction of this theory by attending to power and cultivating collective agency among followers or members of the community.
Reconstruction of Transformational Theory
Attending to power. Applying this tool for reconstruction will address the issue of power in choosing the type of transformation a community seeks. Focusing on the power followers have within their communities, followers can mobilize and create change. In such situations, the leader is “on tap, not on top” (Boyte, 2008, p. 143). By being a good listener, and listening to the concerns of followers, and having them identify those things they wished to change, Obama attended to power and engaged in a justice-oriented leadership model that did not perpetuate social stratification within his communities.
Cultivating agency. The transformational theory is leader-centric and does not consider the relationships between the leaders and the followers. It also does not focus heavily on the lived experiences of the followers who seek social change. Utilizing this tool to reconstruct transformational theory through a justice-oriented lens involves cultivating collective agency among the followers in the community by developing their power. “A sense of possessing power—of having the energy, intelligence, resources, and opportunity to act on the world—is a precondition of intentional social change (Brookfield, 2005, p. 47)”. Obama, through his tenure as a community organizer consistently engaged in bringing together members in the community. He states, “Once such a vehicle is formed, it holds the power to make politicians, agencies and corporations more responsive to community needs” (Obama, 1990, p. 2). By cultivating agency, communities can be mobilized towards their shared goals informed by their mutual values and act collaboratively to effect social change.
In his writings, Obama (1990) explains that issues facing certain communities are a result of the lack of power to implement effective solutions, not the lack of solutions itself. He proposes the creation of “long-term power…by organizing people around a common vision” (Obama, 1990, p. 2), and that such an organization can be achieved with home grown leaders instead of those leaders or experts from outside the community. Such ideas that informed the actions of Obama as a leader to the community empowered him to develop the power of the followers. The followers or members of the community could then leverage their relational power to create social change. Through his efforts in community organizing, Obama has consistently attended to power in his relationships with his followers and has cultivated agency among his followers to empower them to pursue transformations for social justice within their communities.
Reflective Commentary
Creating justice-based leadership models requires utilizing theoretical frameworks such as strategic social change leadership. Ospina et al. (2012) stress the importance of harnessing the power of those in socially unjust circumstances so that they may participate and alter their own circumstances. To do this, community members and leaders must adopt the worldview of grounded humanism marked by an understanding of the way in which society functions, and the role of power in leading social change (Dugan, 2017).
Grounded humanism emerges from leadership drivers such as a value for social justice, critical reflection on assumptions, redressing systemic inequities, and creating shared visions of justice. When leaders engage in these drivers consistently, informed by core values and practices such as reframing discourse, bridging differences, and unleashing human energies, they help build collective power among members of the organization. These intermediate outcomes, by creating collective power allows members to leverage such power to create long-term sustainable social change.
Creating justice-oriented models of leadership rely primarily on developing the collective power of ordinary people to act against unjust structures within their communities that oppress them. Consistent with Obama’s justice-oriented reconstruction of transformational leadership, a leader intending to address inequitable structures within institutions of higher education must cultivate the ability to develop individual, organizational and interorganizational capacity (Dugan, 2017). Creating collective capacity or power among members within the higher education community, within various offices as well as between offices will create relational spaces from which justice-oriented leadership will emerge.
Most leadership theories focus on a leader-centric, prescriptive approach to intended outcomes such as production or transformation. The strategic social change leadership offers a model with increased follower agency, allowing individuals to participate in and transform their communities and redress inequities within them. The concept of social change as resulting from the relational power within each individual instead of any single leader reduces the influence of the leader’s stocks of knowledge, ideology, and social location and focuses on collective goals. Such a framework towards a justice-oriented leadership will be crucial in developing collective agency within higher education, in efforts to make access to higher education more equitable.
References
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Ospina, S. M., Foldy, E. G., El Hadidy, W., Dodge, J., Hofmann-Pinilla, A., & Su, C. (2012). Social change leadership as relational leadership. In Leadership Horizons. Advancing relational leadership research: A dialogue among perspectives (pp. 255–302). Charlotte, NC, US: IAP Information Age Publishing.
