Individual and collective leadership for deliberate transformations: Insights from Indigenous leadership

Deliberately transforming society toward equitable and sustainable futures requires leadership. But what kind of leadership? While the dominant understanding of leadership often centers on the individual, the concept of collective leadership is receiving increased attention. Yet, the relationship between individual and collective leadership remains elusive and has been given limited attention in the transformation literature. In this study, I explore how leadership is understood and enacted in an Alaska Native community engaged in transforming community systems toward enhanced sustainability. I draw on Indigenous leadership research, organized through four interrelated analytical lenses: the individual leader, leadership through culture, leadership through process, and leadership through integration. I find that leadership in the community can be seen as something simultaneously individual and collective and argue that an Indigenous relational ontology makes it possible to imagine leadership as an “individual-collective simultaneity.” In the discussion, I highlight the connections to emerging theories and approaches within “mainstream” leadership research, pointing to the potential for bridging disciplines and paradigms. For leadership and transformation researchers to engage in this bridging work, we must reflect on and reconsider our assumptions as to what agency for transformation is, with important implications for how we work to support transformations. While “ontological bridge building” creates tensions, it is through holding and working through these creative tensions that we can start to see pathways toward equitable and sustainable futures.