2.2 Entrepreneurial leadership for technology: an opposable mind  (Page 6/11)

Leaders who practice transformational leadership, on the other hand, pay special attention to the needs and desires of the followers and try to help members achieve their highest potential. Basically, the theme is to give more attention to the follower’s needs than the leader’s needs. Transformational leaders often exhibit strong values and ideals and can motivate people to act in ways that support the organization above their own interests (Kuhnert, 1994).

A conceptual framework for entrepreneurial leadership in technology

The technology leaders we will discuss in this chapter do not fit into any of the formal leadership theories just presented. One of the purposes in presenting the historical look at leadership over the last half century is to demonstrate that technology leadership is not so much a theory in itself, but rather a product of the progression of leadership theory. School leaders can certainly benefit from the work of Stoghill, Hersey and Blanchard, Fiedler, House, and MacGregor Brown. But the quiet, less visible, non-charismatic education leaders in technology presented in the last section of this chapter really spend more time and effort in an area not discussed by the authors and researchers above.

The opposable mind ² (ability to hold conflicting ideas in constructive tension)

The progression of leadership theory has led us to the seminal work of Roger Martin who has spent the last fifteen years, first as a management consultant and then as a dean of a business school, studying leaders who have striking and exemplary success records, trying to discern a shared theme running through their successes. The leaders he has interviewed and studied share a common trait, aside from their talent and innovation: “They have the predisposition and the capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads” (p. 6). And then with patience and without panic or settling for one alternative or the other, they're able to produce a solution that is superior to either opposing idea. Martin calls this skill and ability, integrative thinking (the predisposition and capacity to consider diametrically opposing ideas and then produce a solution superior to either of the opposing ideas).

A little more background of Martin’s work is necessary to lead into the conceptual framework for entrepreneurial leadership for education technology. As Martin worked on his idea of integrative thinking, he searched for a metaphor that would give us deeper insight and meaning to the opposable mind. “Human beings,” he reasoned, “are distinguished from nearly every other creature by a physical feature known as the opposable thumb” (p. 6). Because of the tension we can create by opposing the thumb and fingers, we do amazing things that no other creature can do – write, thread a needle, carve a diamond, paint a picture, throw a 90 mile per hour baseball, and guide a catheter up through an artery to unblock it. All these actions would be impossible without the crucial tension between the thumb and fingers.