Leadership Networks

We are pleased to share our paper, "Social Network Analysis and the Evaluation of Leadership Networks, " which is due for publication in a special issue of Leadership Quarterly (Elsevier) on the topic of evaluating leadership. Look for it on news stands in early 2010.

[Ed note: If you just want to print the paper, we recommend downloading it as a PDF here.] 

Abstract

Leadership development practitioners have become increasingly interested in networks as a way to strengthen relationships among leaders in fields, communities, and organizations. This paper offers a framework for conceptualizing different types of leadership networks and uses case examples to identify outcomes typically associated with each type of network. One challenge for the field of leadership development has been how to evaluate leadership networks. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a promising evaluation approach that uses mathematics and visualization to represent the structure of relationships between people, organizations, goals, interests, and other entities within a larger system. Core social network concepts are introduced and explained to illuminate the value of SNA as an evaluation and capacity-building tool.

Introduction

The emergence of leadership networks is a response to a rapidly changing world that is increasingly interconnected and that requires greater learning and collaboration for solving complex problems. Leadership networks provide resources and support for leaders, and increase the scope and scale of impact leaders can have individually and collectively. Nurturing and catalyzing leadership networks is increasingly a critical focus of many leadership development efforts, especially those that seek to develop leadership with a capacity to influence policy and bring about social and systems change.

In this paper we examine four different types of leadership networks: peer leadership networks, organizational leadership networks, field-policy leadership networks, and collective leadership networks. The choice to focus on these four types of networks grows out of our experience as consultants with clients who fund, run, and catalyze leadership networks. Often our clients are interested in using network mapping or other tools to increase the awareness of leaders about the power of networks, to further catalyze relationships and connections, and to strengthen the capacity of the network to act collectively. There is also growing interest in knowing what difference leadership networks are making.

As consultants, we often have multiple roles with our clients that include network monitoring and evaluation, and network facilitation and capacity-building. Some of our client relationships are multi-year, giving us a better opportunity to understand how networks change over time and how members begin to better use their networks to think and act strategically and collectively to achieve desired results.

From a scientific perspective, our research methods are non-traditional because we actively co-construct research projects with our clients to answer the questions they are asking about their investments of money and time (Ospina et al., 2002). While this approach gives us valuable access to leaders in the network and rich insights about how networks work, it does not conform to research studies that rigorously test hypotheses about leadership network development with experiments and control groups. We hope that our study will provide a framework that can be tested and further developed through additional research.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In the "Classifying Leadership Networks" section, we briefly describe our classification of four different types of leadership networks. The "Introducing Social Network Analysis" section overviews network metrics that can be used to examine leadership networks; that section is followed by "Evaluating Leadership Networks," which identifies general categories of questions that can be used to explore various dimensions of leadership networks. The body of the paper consists of four sections, one devoted to each type of leadership network, including its defining characteristics, its value, appropriate evaluative methods, and examples. We conclude the paper with a section discussing issues and risks of SNA and leadership network evaluation, a section outlining areas for future research, and some concluding remarks.