Leadership as the Direction of Being

Abstract

Throughout this book the analysis of being has provided an existential description of what it means to be and to be an individual in an organization. Regarding popularity in literature and in a general discourse in society, none are more so than those individuals at the top of the organizational hierarchy, often referred to as managers or leaders. This chapter will distinguish between managers and leaders due to the qualitative difference between the characteristics of the two roles. The two concepts can be defined in various ways but since the goal is not an etymological discussion, a brief definition of the two concepts can be presented: a manager organizes and distributes resources, as opposed to a leader who is highly significant in setting the cultural and/or practical direction of a group of people. This chapter will address the notion of leadership from an existential phenomenological perspective with the goal of providing contextual and cultural discussions regarding what leadership is and potentially can become. Leadership is missing in organizations today and it is substituted by managers who without explicit moral aspirations such as those found in leadership can without analysis accept and support ethically and culturally problematic assumptions regarding the human being.