Leadership from the Edge: A Matter of Balance

Abstract

Leadership from the edge implies that subordinates are able and authorized to take the initiatives that are necessary to deal with the situations they encounter. Although leadership from the edge is considered important in crisis response operations that the military perform, on-scene commanders are often closely supervised. The reasons behind this tendency are explored by developing and using an analytical framework consisting of nine leadership dimensions. For each dimension the requirements of leadership from the edge are elaborated and compared to actual practice in the armed forces. The conclusion is that many leadership aspects in the military do not match with the requirements of leadership from the edge.