Rigard J. Steenkamp

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION
Authentic and wise leadership frameworks reviewed and explored  
The work-in-process paper revises and explores exemplary, authentic and wise leadership frameworks in the context of total quality and quality of life. The current world events, including cases of corruption and the variations of ‘misleadership’ presented in the media leave no doubt that leadership is in a crisis. How can so many corrupt ‘leaders’ be allowed to take office and be retained there? Business and government scandals should make us more alert to what authentic leadership is. The leadership crisis can be equated to an international pandemic and ancient leaders may indicate that the levels of leadership are very shallow. The cost of ‘misleadership’ is immeasurable, especially in terms of injuries and human fatalities in the manufacturing and mining sectors.
In search of authentic leadership, the paper reviews leadership theory, conventional leadership frameworks, exemplary leadership and identifies and explores some new (and unconventional) leaders (and their leadership frameworks) with the focus on well-known historic leaders with reputable legacies (with the aid of qualitative legacy-based research methods such as the Biggs legacy model).  The legacy-based method is powerful because a legacy per definition is a phenomenon worth looking at created over a long period of time and speaking for itself. Strong legacies are something handed down over time and examples of legendary business leaders, missionaries and spiritual leaders were examined. The purpose was to address the research problem by exploring leadership frameworks and leadership legacies to find new insight, new bodies of thought and potential new leadership frameworks for further research.