Skip to content
Skip to main content
header search
ahihi OpenLearn
OpenLearn
Menu
sticky search

About this free course

Become an OU student

Share this free course

Course content Course content
Introducing Black leadership
Introducing Black leadership

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

More free courses

4 Digging deeper: the Five Ps of leadership

Leadership practice should follow the definition provided. However, leadership can feel different depending on the emphasis taken in practice, or the approach you take to interpreting it. In this course you will learn about leadership through five different focuses, which are all different ways of knowing and experiencing leadership.

These are the ‘Five Ps of leadership’, which is a framework developed by Grint and Smolović Jones (2022). In this framework, leadership can be viewed through the focuses of person, process, position, product and purpose. The framework, alongside the definition, will act as an anchoring device for you to make sense of your learning.

Learn more about the Five Ps by watching the following animation.

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 4
Copy this transcript to the clipboard
Print this transcript
Show transcript | Hide transcript

Transcript: Video 4 Introducing the principles of leadership

NARRATOR
Leadership is a practice that influences perceptions and imaginations, disrupting status quo ways of doing, thinking and feeling, and generating new ways of doing, thinking and feeling in the process. But how do we make sense of everything that makes up leadership practice? Let’s imagine that we’re trying to build and unite a community using the Five Ps framework developed by Keith Grint and Owain Smolović Jones.
Leadership as person. It is the personhood of leaders that matters in leadership. It is often assumed that leaders are born rather than made. That they possess certain traits that are naturally suited for being leaders.
But this is a problematic view. Because what we identify as appealing is heavily shaped by what people in power think is important. And people in power can be racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist and ableist.
A better way of thinking about leadership as person is focusing on how leaders are made, how they can become more inspirational and ethical through practice, and also how groups of people can inspire one another and hold one another ethically accountable. Here you’ll notice that people need to work together in leadership. So let’s look at leadership as process.
It is what people do together that makes something leadership. A process view means looking at the various aspects and features of processes, types of communication, how people use their bodies and how technologies are used. These processes influence, engage the brain, fire up the imagination and disrupt. But process alone doesn’t explain how a geography can help or hinder leadership and it also can’t fully explain why leadership feels different depending on where it comes from in a hierarchy. That’s why we need leadership as position.
Position has a dual meaning. Leadership looks and feels different depending on where it is practised. Where can mean within an organisation’s hierarchy – from the top, bottom or middle. From the top, leadership can bring others along, giving them opportunities to develop. From the bottom, it unsettles conventional thinking, forcing change. From the middle, you can connect top and bottom, getting people talking and cooperating.
Leadership as position can also mean that practice looks and feels different depending on where, geographically, it happens. Leadership can be shaped by – and shape – physical spaces which restrict and enable certain practices. Spaces are distinctive and develop their character over time.
But look, over there. A tree planter’s followers are captivating an audience with their charismatic image and vision. What’s going on? This is leadership as product.
We need to understand that leaders and leadership are always packaged and sold to us. That this is done in person, but also through media – social media and the old-fashioned kind. You do always need to consider how to effectively package your leadership in ways that make it more attractive to your chosen audiences.
But who ends up with the most followers is not the same thing as who is most effective at leadership. Sometimes people can be dazzled by misinformation and easy answers. To make matters worse, who is listened to can depend on the kinds of identities that are more or less valued in a given society at a given time.
This narrow focus can overlook the importance of diversity and difference to making leadership work. An important task of leadership is harnessing difference and diversity as key strengths, valuing all identities. Very often, though, you need some kind of ethical awareness to be able to distinguish between right and wrong in leadership.
Leadership as purpose focuses on how the ethical purpose of a group drives practice. First, you need to be still and calm enough to appreciate the world around you. You need to be able to have the judgement to notice that something has an ethical component, that it involves judgements about right and wrong. You need to be able to empathise with others to feel how they might experience something as ethically right or wrong. You need the judgement to be able to practise purposeful leadership in wise, measured ways. And finally, you need the political will and skills to, firstly, adapt a purpose so that it brings more people with you, and secondly, fight effectively for what matters to you.
When the Five Ps come together, you have the potential for truly inspirational, impactful and ethical leadership – leadership that can change the world.
End transcript: Video 4 Introducing the principles of leadership
Download
Video 4 Introducing the principles of leadership
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

Now that you know a little about the Five Ps model, you can test your knowledge with the following short quiz.

Activity 4 Leadership Five Ps quiz

Timing: Allow around 5 minutes

Complete the multiple choice quiz to test your knowledge of the Five Ps of leadership. Choose the one answer you think is the most correct.

a. 

Focusing on personhood, thinking about how everyone can develop key qualities and skills.


b. 

Focusing on the key traits of the most successful leaders so that you can follow people who possess them.


c. 

Focusing on what leaders achieve so that you can follow similar people in the future.


The correct answer is a.

Discussion

Leaders can be more or less appealing to people. This does not mean that they were born with key characteristics – such as being innately more inspirational or ethical – but that all people can develop themselves to be more able leaders.

a. 

How people communicate to generate leadership.


b. 

How people use their bodies to generate leadership.


c. 

How actions between people create leadership.


The correct answer is c.

Discussion

Leadership as process can include communication and the use of bodies, but is more generally about any actions that people do together to make leadership happen.

a. 

Distinctive practice that is created from various places within organisations or from various geographical communities.


b. 

Using the authority of being in charge to get things done, either within organisations or within communities.


c. 

Using the authority that comes from being correct in the past within an organisation or community to reassure others.


The correct answer is a.

Discussion

Leadership as position focuses on both people’s position within and beyond organisations. Leadership will feel distinctively different, depending on the position from which it is practised.

a. 

How social media is used to effectively sell the image of a leader to the outside world.


b. 

Better understanding how leaders and leadership are packaged and promoted to the outside world.


c. 

Better understanding how leadership can be improved through gaining lots of feedback on social media.


The correct answer is b.

Discussion

By better understanding how appealing leaders and leadership are promoted in the world, you will become a better critical thinker, but also more effective at understanding how to work with images of leadership in the real world.

a. 

Identifying leaders with the most inspirational ideas.


b. 

Identifying and acting on ethical situations that can drive practice.


c. 

Identifying ethical problems that can only be addressed through collaboration.


The correct answer is b.

Discussion

Ethical purpose is something that can ‘lead’ groups and organisations. You can also become better at identifying ethical purpose and practising leadership in purposeful ways.

Now that you have been introduced to the Five Ps framework, you have completed the learning for this first week. You will explore each of the Ps in more depth in Weeks 3-8 of the course.