Transparent Thoughts on Invisible Leadership: Review Essay

• Published date: 01 September 2013
• Date: 01 September 2013
• Author: Sean T. Hannah
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12104

Sean T. Hannah is the Tylee Wilson

Chair of Business Ethics and professor of

management, School of Business, Wake

Forest University, and is a retired U.S. Army

Colonel and decorated combat veteran.

He holds a doctorate in management from

the University of Nebraska. He researches

exemplary leadership and character and

has published over 50 papers on leadership

in top journals. He serves on the editorial

boards of four management journals,

including Leadership Quarterly and

Business Ethics Quarterly.

E-mail: hannahst@wfu.edu

Book Reviews

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

760 Public Administration Review • September | October 2013

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 73, Iss. 5, pp. 760–765. © 2013 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12104.

either leader or follower roles as needed without ego

or recognition.  is vision of a purpose-driven and

self-organizing organization is certainly intuitively

appealing from a prescriptive approach. Given what

we know about the prevalence of politics, self-interest,

resource scarcity, dynamics of market competition,

and other drivers of organizational conf‌l ict and

complexity, however, from a descriptive approach, we

must assess the extent to which it is plausible across all

types and forms of organizations.

Overall, I appreciate that the authors promote readers

to think beyond just positional leadership, which

is something I have embraced in my own writing

and research. Yet I do hold f‌i ve cautions about this

invisible leadership framework and measure in its

current state that should be noted by readers of this

book until the authors or other researchers conduct

appropriate additional research. First, the leadership

f‌i eld is overpopulated with a plethora of concepts

and theories of leadership (Bass and Bass 2008), and

thus it is critical that “new” leadership concepts be

clearly discriminated from existing similar concepts,

both theoretically and empirically, to show that they

provide a truly new and useful contribution.  is has

not yet been done. Second, the logic and evidence for

the proposed direction of causality between common

purpose and leadership is left unclear and untested,

and the role for formal leaders in this process, if any,

is left unspecif‌i ed.  ird, it is unclear and untested

whether their model is generalizable across a breadth

of organization types and markets beyond those of

social movements and nonprof‌i ts. Fourth, the sample

that Hickman and Sorenson use in their study is very

specif‌i c and thus raises concerns over whether their

f‌i ndings would generalize to other organization types.

Further, their use of this sample makes assumptions

that I will describe as the “Good to Great fallacy”; relat-

edly, the authors provide no evidence of what their

measure of invisible leadership predicts, leaving its

practical usefulness untested. Fifth, I am unconvinced

by the evidence currently provided for the validity

of the measure of‌f ered to assess invisible leadership,

Gill Robinson Hickman and Georgia J. Sorenson,  e

Power of Invisible Leadership: How a Compelling

Common Purpose Inspires Exceptional Leadership

( ousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2013). 120

pp. $42.00 (paper), ISBN: 9781412940177.

In  e Power of Invisible Leadership: How a

Compelling Common Purpose Inspires Exceptional

Leadership, Gill Robinson Hickman and Georgia

J. Sorenson endeavor to advance a new concept and

survey measure for leadership that is centered on the

common purpose of an organization.  ey def‌i ne

“invisible leadership” as “leadership in which the com-

mon purpose, rather than any particular individual, is

the invisible leader that inspires leaders and followers

to take action on its behalf” (1).  ey propose that

invisible leadership “embodies situations in which

dedication to a compelling and deeply held com-

mon purpose is the motivating force for leadership”

(4; emphasis added). Notably, they conceptualize

common purpose not as a product of leadership, as

is proposed in more traditional top-down models of

leadership, but as the foundation for the emergence of

leadership. Specif‌i cally, they propose that the existence

of a common purpose inspires organization members

to engage in the governance of the organization and

share leadership, each using his or her strengths and

talents where most applicable to achieve the common

purpose. Hickman and Sorenson also propose that

having a common purpose creates the shared bonds

necessary to connect and unify members.

 is concept of invisible leadership thus places less

emphasis on the positional labels of “follower” and

“leader” and more emphasis on the collective ide-

als, beliefs, and aspirations that drive members to

act in either follower or leader roles as the situation

most calls for.  is perspective emphasizes “leader-as-

role over leader-as-person” (5) and proposes that all

members, leaders, and followers alike are ultimately

“following the invisible leader—the common pur-

pose” (5).  ey note that this requires self‌l essness in

all members to step up and utilize their talents in

Transparent  oughts on Invisible Leadership: Review Essay

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Sean T. Hannah

Wake Forest University