Chaos Theory

This book is a product of multiple authorship. In so being, it acknowledges the complexity that characterizes leadership in the new millennium. It is no longer sufficient to consider leadership as an individual pursuit. This notion belongs to the increasingly outdated, yet in certain terrains still effective, concept of heroic leadership. We believe that it is not possible to write something worthwhile about leadership as an individual, because the perspective will be too limited. Hence this book is written by a team made up of South Africans and Americans, a tribute to the impact of modern technology and the Internet, but more importantly an acknowledgement that these two countries, for very different reasons, are fascinating laboratories for studying leadership.

The United States of America has produced many of the leadership gurus, including Peter Drucker, Warren Bennis, Tom Peters, Peter Senge, Stephen Covey and many others. However, very little research has been carried out in this field in South Africa, a country which experienced one form of leadership for most of the twentieth century — autocratic control under the guise of apartheid. The social, political, and economic freedom that now prevails in South Africa has provided for the emergence of new leaders in all sectors of society. This has meant that a whole range of new approaches to leadership is being experienced in business, government and civil society.

Seventeenth-century scientific thinking would have us believe that leadership is a mechanical process — if certain requirements are met (for example, if the leader has certain qualities and the followers have a certain level of maturity) successful leadership will result. What then can we learn about leadership from the experiences of the US and SA at the start of the twenty-first century? Firstly, that leadership is not all that it seems to be. Perhaps the US and SA experiences highlight for us that success (however we wish to measure this) does not necessarily depend on the performance of the person at the top, that is, the leader. We realize of course, that leadership takes place at every level in society and every level of every subgrouping thereof, organizations being the grouping in which most humans experience leadership. Hence, while Mandela speaks about reconciliation, the extent to which this has an impact on South Africa as a whole will depend hugely on the influence of the leadership that exists within the sub-groupings of South African society. Our seventeenth-century view of leadership would encourage us to see Mandela as the person with ultimate sway, but we are realizing more and more, as we enter the twenty-first century, that leadership is not only complex, but that it is more of a group process — a process of shared leadership. It may be argued that the success of the United States of America under Bill Clinton testifies to this understanding.