4: Leadership Development From Indigenous Perspectives

In order to be effective and valuable, leadership development initiatives need to keep pace with the challenges facing contemporary organizations. In the present article, we present an overview of leadership development from Indigenous perspectives in order to help organizations address these challenges by building relationships between the dominant, Western approaches to leadership development and Indigenous approaches. To accomplish this, we first provide an overview of Indigenous ways of knowing as a basis for understanding Indigenous approaches to leadership and compare Indigenous and Western notions of leadership. We then draw on this overview to offer ideas for how Indigenous ways of knowing, and Indigenous approaches to leadership and development can be related to the dominant approaches to leadership development for the purpose of making them more inclusive, and responsive to the challenges facing contemporary organizations. In addition to discussing implications for the practice of leadership development, we offer suggestions for future research.