The Nature of Ethics and its Relationship to Leadership
Transformational leadership, by its very nature is a relational reality. It is not a thing unto itself nor does it reside within a certain person or a certain act upon another, but rather as I stated in The Nature of Leadership: A Prolegomenon: “Just as one cannot have a clear idea of existence, because existence is an abstraction, so it is with leadership; because leadership does not exist ‘all at once’ but is rather a quality of being experienced within a dynamic, changing relation, gaining its ‘reality’ only from the (inter) actions of existing individuals.” (Israel, p. 6, 1989).
This idea squarely places the dynamic process of leadership within a relational context. Not only does this idea place leadership within a relational context but more importantly, within an inter-relational context. Leadership is thus a communitarian reality. Leadership occurs not in isolation from the other, but is implicated with and dependent upon the other. Not only is leadership implicated with the other for its existence, as a reality, but its existence is intimately tied up with the betterment of the other if transformation is to occur.
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