Orientations toward community leadership

Abstract

Communities need inclusive leadership that embraces adaptive change to address complex social problems. Implementing such a leadership has proven elusive, calling into question how people understand community leadership. Through interpretive analysis of autobiographical narratives, we identified three orientations toward community leadership, which we label traditional, liberal, and hybrid. Each suggests a different logic of community, power, and the will to leadership. We argue the hybrid perspective is most in keeping with inclusive and adaptive approaches and suggest ways community leadership educators might promote it.