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This paper is an edited version of a talk given in the USA at the Scientific Meeting of the AK Rice Institute which took place at MIT in the Autumn of 2003. The theme, ‘The Dimensions of Leadership and Authority in Uncertain Times’, was intended to provide a space to reflect on leadership in the context of societal dynamics post 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The talk focused particularly around the leadership of Tony Blair and the difficulties of taking his followers with him.
Having spent much of my professional life preoccupied with questions of leadership and followership, the way Tony Blair took up his role intrigued me. I have been involved in so many different situations - group relations conferences, and my assessment work with senior executives - where leadership was an major issue both for the individual and the enterprise, so I want to draw on these experiences to try to tease out whether fundamental changes are taking place in the nature of leadership and followership today.
I am going to talk about traditional concepts of leadership and followership and the dependency inherent in them, linking this to post Second World War societal dynamics and the concept of ‘failed dependency’ (Khaleelee and Miller, 1985; Miller, 1993). Secondly, I want to explore the question of leadership and followership further, at the societal level, by talking about what has happened to Tony Blair, with particular reference to his leadership leading up to, and following, the war against Iraq.