Enablement theory of leadership

Enablement theory of leadership explains how three leadership processes enable emergent order within complex adaptive systems by balancing tensions.

Three leadership sub-processes, emergent, formal and shared, work in tandem to enable structuration, through significance, legitimacy, and dominance, to balance the tensions that arise among the three dimensions of emergence (heterogeneity vs homogeneity, interdependence vs independence, and choice vs compulsion).

These leadership processes extract cues that initiate the creation of tensions and require a balancing process in order for the system to take risk and rebalance the system. The balancing process is initiated by an extracted cue that leads to the perception of uncertainty that creates tensions that leads to an exploration of innovative alternatives that then leads to the taking of prudent risks to rebalance the system through new emergent order.

Structuration is the process used by these leadership processes to balance the three elements of emergence to create new order, where each leadership processes is aligned with a primary structuration domain, which is also aligned with a primary element of emergence. The three way pairing is as follows:

Shared leadership -> Significance -> tension between compulsion and choice
Formal leadership -> Domination -> tension between homogeneity and heterogeneity
Emergent leadership -> Legitimacy -> tension between independence and interdependence