The Why of Leadership? COLLECTIVE SENSEMAKING

The Why of Leadership?

Leadership is relationship. It exists because we must find ways to coordinate, inspire, and care for one another across multiple situations and contexts. This includes navigating purpose, enduring highs and lows, and making meaning across varied settings. Leadership emerges because people seek trust, direction in uncertainty, and shared meaning through experiences. It does not exist as a power forced upon one another (Clarke, 2018; Wheatley & Frieze, 2011).

During disruptive change events, individuals experience a breakdown in their reality. They try to make sense of what is occurring, interpret a new reality, and curate appropriate responses (Clarke, 2018). Leadership is the relational act that arises from the space between people in these interactions. It isn’t based on traits or titles, but where mutual impact and influence, negotiated goals, and emotional connection shape people's actions (Clarke, 2018; Raelin, 2011).

Organizational psychology also supports this view, highlighting how trust, psychological safety, and shared meaning are foundational to high-functioning teams (Amabile & Kramer, 2011; Zhao et al., 2025). This paper explains why leadership is relationship by tracing its historical evolution through theories influenced by society, politics, and innovation. It also weaves a pathway into its present relational significance and envisions the future necessity of leadership as responsibility in a world increasingly defined by complexity and rapid change (Kotter, 1990; Clarke, 2018; Wheatley & Frieze, 2011).

Leadership Theorized

The context of leadership-style emergence has paralleled history (Northouse, 2021). Well before psychological understandings of today, early theories such as the Great Man Theory from the 1800s to the early 1900s focused on the innate qualities of “born” leaders. Trait theory, popularized by thinkers like Thomas Carlyle and later Gordon Allport, argued that leaders are born with specific characteristics such as intelligence, confidence, and charisma (Northouse, 2021). While compelling, this theory focused more on identifying potential leaders than understanding leadership's purpose or "what".

By the 1940s, Kurt Lewin introduced the idea that leadership could also be understood through styles, authoritative, democratic, and laissez-faire approaches that categorize how a person leads rather than who they are (Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939, as cited in Northouse, 2021). These theories emerged as a response to historical events of the time, including World War II, Pearl Harbor, and the Holocaust. They marked a cultural shift from fixed traits to learned behavior. Shortly after, Robert Katz advanced the skills approach, emphasizing that leaders could increase their effectiveness by developing specific technical, human, and conceptual competencies (Katz, 1955, as cited in Northouse, 2021).

Civil Rights, the Cold War, and technological advances such as television and DNA fostered Fred Fiedler’s Contingency Model and the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Model. These theories emphasized that effective leadership depends on the situation and place and highlighted context, such as task structure, follower readiness, and organizational environment. However, they essentially treated leadership as the responsibility of one central figure (Fiedler, 1967; Hersey & Blanchard, 1988, cited in Northouse, 2021; Northouse, 2021).

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, charismatic leadership theory, conceptualized initially by Max Weber and expanded by Robert House, claimed that leaders influence through vision, magnetism, and emotional resonance (House, 1977; Weber, 1947, as cited in Northouse, 2021). An example would be a leader such as John F. Kennedy, who is still identified as a charismatic and magnetic figure who resonated deeply within the culture. While charismatic leadership theory adds nuance to how influence operates, it further entrenches the image of the heroic, idealized leader.

Meanwhile, scholars like Michel Foucault and French and Raven pushed the discussion into power dynamics, examining how influence worked through coercion, reward, expertise, legitimacy, or identification (French & Raven, 1959; Foucault, 1977, as cited in Pfeffer, 2010). Their work theorized that power is not merely held but enacted through relationships and systems, making leadership less about position and more about the mechanisms through which authority is exercised and sustained.

Transactional and transformational leadership tried to reconcile the contrast between leadership as control and reward versus leadership as inspiration, growth, and shared meaning (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985, as cited in Northouse, 2021). Transactional leaders focused on performance and reward while transformational leaders attempted to inspire adding shared purpose and vision to their followers work (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985, as cited in Northouse, 2021). These frameworks brought the emotional and motivational dimensions of leadership into focus. However, they still often centered on the individual at the top and rarely paused to ask the deeper question: Why is leadership necessary? Instead, many of the theories above describe how leadership works without giving a meaning for its existence.

Toward Post-Heroic, Relational & Responsibility Theories

As the 21st century rolls around, a marked paradigm shift exists due to political division, internet and terrorism in 9/11. Leadership theory, moving away from top-down, individual-centered models, slants more toward more relational, distributed, and collaborative frameworks in response to growing complexity, globalization, and social interdependence (Clarke, 2018; Gronn, 2002; Raelin, 2016). Relational leadership, as articulated by Clarke (2018), Raelin (2011), and Wheatley and Frieze (2011), reframes leadership as the product of relationships, not individual action. As Penner stated in class, “Leadership happens at the point of contact.” From the front desk to the boardroom, leadership lives in the quality of our interactions (D. Penner, personal communication, April 2025).

Continued critiques of traditional heroic leadership as inadequate for navigating complex systems still loom in the early 21st century. One such critic is Joe Raelin (2011) who argues that heroic models overemphasize individual agency and assume that a single leader must possess all the answers and solutions. In contrast, Raelin proposes the leadership-as-practice (L-A-P) perspective, which views leadership as an emergent, collective activity arising from the interactions and practices of multiple participants. This approach emphasizes that leadership is not the sole responsibility of an individual but is co-constructed through relational dynamics and shared experiences within a community or organization. Liz Wiseman’s (2017) research on multipliers and diminishers reinforces this. Wiseman’s studies showed that when leaders are knowledge dominators, they reduce collective intelligence; when they act as multipliers, they expand the capacity of everyone in the room. Similarly, Clarke’s concept of leadership as a co-created process, shaped by trust, dialogic encounters, and adaptive responsibility, answers the “why” with clarity: leadership exists because people need each other to grow, decide, and act (Clarke, 2018).

Amabile and Kramer’s (2011) “progress principle” shows that what drives human motivation is not grand gestures but making progress in meaningful work. Setbacks, they note, are twice as emotionally potent as progress. Amabile and Kramer make the case that by encouraging meaningful work within teams, leadership helps to shape environments that nourish meaning, provide catalysts, and reduce toxins.

WHY IS LEADERSHIP - COLLECTIVE SENSEMAKING

Leadership also arises from our collective need to navigate power. French and Raven’s taxonomy of power includes six types: coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, referent, and informational (French & Raven, 1959; Raven, 1965). This taxonomy laid the foundation for understanding the different ways leaders exercise influence. Each reflects a distinct way authority can be asserted, through formal roles, the promise of rewards, the threat of punishment, recognized expertise, or the admiration of others. The sixth, informational power, describes the ability to shape outcomes simply by controlling what information is shared or withheld. What’s particularly important about this framework is that it draws attention to how power itself is not neutral; it either fosters trust or fractures it, depending on how it’s used. In relational leadership, this lens reminds us that real authority isn’t just about position or persuasion; it’s about how influence is exercised in a relationship and whether it creates space for mutual respect or reinforces hierarchy and fear (French & Raven, 1959).

Leadership becomes necessary when power is misapplied. The overuse of power can be humanized through leadership, which shares, negotiates, and aligns with community values. Empathy for one another becomes leadership in action. As Clarke (2018) reminds us, leadership emerges when followers see themselves in relationship with a leader. It is a mutual recognition, not a declaration.

Why Now? Leadership in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, & Ambiguous (VUCA) World

Today's world can be volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Artificial intelligence, climate change, and systemic inequality demand more from everyone: increased vigilance and an opportunity for additional empathy, adaptability, and shared meaning. Leaders must help teams interpret disruption, construct significance, and co-design responses. Herein lies an emerging form of leadership: Responsibility Leadership, which includes change event interpretation that seeks connection, not control.

Nicolas Clarke’s (2018) model of relational leadership has offered the path there, built on responsibility (moral, personal, and collective), relationship (trust, engagement, and commitment), and meaning (direction, significance, excitement, and community). In this way, “Leadership is creating an environment where people do the best work of their lives” (D. Penner, personal communication, June 2025).

Conclusion: Leadership as Responsibility and Relationship

Leadership is an act of relational responsibility, not for the reward or because others are watching, but as a moral covenant. This sense of purpose echoes John Kotter’s (1990) distinction between leadership and management. He notes that while managers cope with details and complexity, leaders cope with change (Kotter, 1990). Leaders set direction, foster meaning, and build momentum toward a collective future.

Clarke (2018) reinforces this view with a socio-constructionist lens, arguing that leadership emerges from sensemaking during moments of disruption. Leadership arises when individuals collectively rework their causal maps and interpret challenge not as chaos but as opportunity. In Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, Liz Wiseman (2017) identifies multipliers as leaders who enhance the intelligence and abilities of their teams, fostering a culture of growth and empowerment. This perspective shows that leadership is sought, or finds us, because we need one another to co-create coherence in uncertainty. During COVID-19, we desperately needed one another for solutions, comfort, and therapy. As quickly as scientists worked on a cure to the pandemic, technologists went to work on bringing people together through advanced computer technologies. These endeavors were life-saving physically (creating cures) and mentally (expanding online communication capabilities and creating accessible remote therapies). This unique time in our global history demonstrates the importance of staying on purpose and connected through massive change events. These challenges and change events define us as communities and individuals, as history has. Just as shared adversity can shape identity and purpose, so has leadership evolved in response to historical and social transformation demands.

Leadership exists because it is essential to make meaning together, foster shared responsibility, and shape the community's future. Leadership is not the domain of the heroic, but the outcome of developing trust and building genuine connections for sustainable resilience. It is an ongoing conversation. It is a public covenant of co-creation with witnesses that we endeavor toward something together (D. Penner, personal communication, May 2025). As Penner said, answering why changes the what and the when. And, perhaps more significantly, it changes who we become along the way.

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