It turned out that looking up leadership theories – and there are a number of them, one website identifies eight – was not much use in devising the introduction to this special feature. Leadership theories tend to concentrate on definitions, on the style and the characteristics of the leader – what is a leader and what makes a leader? The articles in this feature concentrate more on what a leader does, rather than on who or what they are.

One of the things incumbent on philanthropy which has neither political nor financial axes to grind, is its freedom to pursue an ethical course.

One of the first things that readers will notice is the great variety of conceptions of leadership on show in what follows, from the application of feminine principles of leadership, the relational aspect of leadership, leadership as abundance, the role and value of lived-experience leaders in the sector, to the need for philanthropy to lead in the creation and sustenance of multi-sector collaborations.

I suggest that this variety – and the definitional reticence about what leadership is – shows a number of things. First, and most obviously, the breadth of ways in which leadership can be interpreted in philanthropy. Second, that leadership is less a set of characteristics residing in this or that person than it is a set of values which whole organisations embody. Third, philanthropic leadership has both internal and external aspects. One of the things incumbent on philanthropy which has neither political nor financial axes to grind, is its freedom to pursue an ethical course. Finally, the opinions and advice offered in these pieces might well be read more as directions for the way philanthropy should conduct its business than as a treatise on leadership. I believe that what this shows implicitly is not the irrelevance of the concept of leadership, but that it is crucial to philanthropy’s going forward in a way that makes sense of its work.

If all this seems fairly conjectural, what is clear is that leadership is not about giving orders. Certainly, foundation heads and boards have a responsibility to pattern in themselves and to inculcate in their colleagues the practices that guide their organisations, but sensing the spirit of the times and the changes it is giving rise to, hearing and knowing when to heed other voices, seem more important. That’s really a job for everybody. So maybe it’s not about leaders, but leadership.

Features editor
Andrew Milner
email: andrew@alliancemagazine.org