Cultivating Collaborative Leadership
in the Chinese Context

01 Introduction: A Question from Personal Experience

Throughout my personal growth and career as an educator, I have witnessed firsthand the power and limitations of one leadership model: the exam-oriented, top-down, authority-oriented leadership. It was like the "air" in my growing environment, ever-present, shaping our perceptions of success and value. I witnessed firsthand how peers "lost hope completely" under its immense weight, teaching me a powerful lesson that when leadership focuses solely on metrics while neglecting the inner state of people, it ultimately erodes an organization's most valuable asset—human curiosity, creativity, and psychological well-being.

The collaborative leadership I seek to explore is a fundamentally different management skill, one that requires leaders to work together consistently and design constructive cooperation by involving stakeholders (Fatima & Yandi, 2023), and whose core lies in shared decision-making, cross-boundary collaboration, and unleashing collective wisdom. This experience planted a seed in me: a desire to create a different kind="of" space, one where people feel seen for their intrinsic value, not just evaluated for their performance.

This review is a reflective journey of my inquiry into how collaborative leadership can take root and flourish in the unique cultural soil of China. My question goes a layer deeper: within a system accustomed to hierarchy and authority, how can we break ingrained habits and co-create the psychological space necessary for individuals and the system to grow together?

Collaborative leadership is a management skill where leaders consistently work together, designing constructive cooperation by involving stakeholders.

02 Theoretical Foundation: From "Theoretical Transplantation" to "Systemic Symbiosis"

My exploration began with theories encountered during my graduate studies. Initially, I naively believed the solution to China's leadership challenges was to find a "best practice" and perform a "theoretical transplantation." However, the framework from Moore et al. (2023) made me realize that collaborative leadership is a systemic practice that must function synergistically across macro, meso, and micro levels. I came to understand deeply that this practice signifies a shift in focus from the leader themselves to what can be accomplished through leadership (Moore et al., 2023).

At the macro level, it needs connection to broader goals of the "common good"; at the meso level, organizations must be seen as "complex adaptive systems," where leadership is collective, requiring a "leaderful" culture; at the micro level, it concerns relational interactions between individuals.

This framework illuminated my own blind spots. I realized that the authoritarian system I sought to change had also shaped me—my self-reliance, my unfamiliarity with seeking help, were adaptive strategies formed in an environment that did not encourage vulnerability. Therefore, genuine transformation is not merely about replacing one leadership theory with another, but how to foster the psychological conditions that allow both individuals and systems to collectively "unlearn" authoritarian habits.

This resonates with the finding of Finkelstein et al. (2025) in their work of reshaping educational leadership programs: the key to success is not running a more expensive program, but running a more intentional one. This intentionality must begin with the inner work and self-healing of the leader themselves.

03 Core Challenges: When "Guanxi" Meets "Power Distance"

Entrenched Cultural and Structural Norms

The high "power distance" in Chinese society, coupled with a culture emphasizing collective harmony, subtly suppresses open dissent and risk-taking. My own experience makes me understand that this silence is often not a lack of ideas, but a rational calculation of potential risks.

This finds complex resonance in educational research: as Alzahrani & Albeladi (2023) discovered, a direct correlation exists between collaborative leadership and student achievement specifically in high-achieving schools. This finding suggests that in underperforming environments, there may be deeper systemic barriers preventing collaboration from translating into substantive outcomes, and the positive impact of high levels of collaboration between principals, teachers, parents, and students becomes more pronounced and significant specifically in high-achieving schools.

Systemic Pressure and Resource Competition

The success metrics of the exam-oriented education system are singular and exclusive. This high-pressure environment is very similar to the "high work-intensity organizations" studied by Fatima & Yandi (2023), where inherent competitiveness fosters stress, while collaborative leadership has precisely been proven to be an effective solution for reducing work stress and improving employee performance. In this "burning house," any failure can be seen as a waste of scarce resources, making it exceptionally difficult to build trust and experiment with new collaborative models.

Internal Barriers and Learned Helplessness

Perhaps the greatest challenge comes from within. As I personally struggled with, seeking support felt "unfamiliar, almost unnatural" to me. This internalized psychology, which views vulnerability as weakness, is an invisible barrier that a collaborative culture must overcome. If leaders themselves have never worked in a psychologically safe environment, how can they create one for others?

04 Practical Opportunities: From "Self-Healing" to "Replicable Pathways"

Leader's Self-Healing as the Starting Point

I deeply appreciate that my leadership development is inseparable from my personal journey of "self-healing." This process of self-healing is not separate from leadership development; rather, it is the foundational work necessary for authentic transformational leadership (Gómez-Leal et al., 2022).

The practices of Finkelstein et al. (2025) demonstrate that intentional change begins with the reshaping of core beliefs. When we engage in self-interrogation through assignments like "critical family history," we are undertaking this internal reframing, which is the first step in breaking the intergenerational transmission of authoritarian patterns.

Leveraging and Redirecting the Strengths of Collective Culture

While China's collectivist culture may inhibit individual expression, it also contains a deep-seated yearning for belonging and common goals. Collaborative leadership can skillfully redirect this consciousness of "we" from passive compliance towards active co-creation.

This aligns with the advocacy of Moore et al. (2023) for complex systems, where the essential question becomes how to solve problems together, precisely because collaborative leadership is critical for realizing truly resilient and sustainable collaborative relationships.

Building "Replicable Peer-Learning Pathways"

My firsthand experience in the MEDL program—learning through collaborative assignments and reflective portfolios—became the prototype for my envisioned pathway. This corroborates the conclusion of Fatima & Yandi (2023) that collaborative leadership enhances team cohesion and creativity, thereby improving performance, through creating a supportive environment and participatory decision-making.

This lived experience serves as the prototype for the pathway I hope to create, a pathway grounded in the belief that sustainable change requires a transformative process centered on EI, relational trust, and shared growth. I hope to build a similar, replicable pathway incorporating practices like the "Listening Sessions" used by Finkelstein et al. (2025)—not collecting cold "data" through electronic surveys, but listening sincerely to each person's story, viewing community members as experts with valuable assets.

05 Critical Reflection and Ways Forward

As an "insider-outsider," I understand the nuances of relationships in the Chinese context while also being able to examine these norms through the lens of Western critical pedagogy. This dual perspective demands humility from me. I am keenly aware that collaborative leadership is not a "panacea."

As Finkelstein et al. (2025) succinctly noted, the focus should not be on running a more expensive program, but on running a more intentional one. This intentionality requires me to engage in continuous reflection and adaptation, tailored to the specific context and cultural background.

The research of Alzahrani & Albeladi (2023) serves as a warning: even when collaborative leadership is practiced, if it fails to touch deep-seated systemic cultures and beliefs, its impact may remain limited.

Therefore, my inquiry is not a quest for a perfect answer, but an ongoing, reflective practice. I must constantly ask myself:

• Is my current leadership model still viable?
• How can I do better?
• How can I ensure more voices are heard?

My preliminary conclusion is that collaborative leadership is an effective paradigm for addressing complex challenges, but its success depends on multi-level, multi-dimensional synergy. Its future in China does not lie in designing a grand blueprint, but in whether each of us, especially leaders, have the willingness to start from ourselves, engaging in these subtle and courageous daily practices, thereby creating "micro-ecosystems" of trust and mutual growth within the existing system, ultimately realizing the vision of Moore et al. (2023) to create leadership for the common good.

References

• Alzahrani, A., & Albeladi, A. A. (2023). Collaborative leadership and its relationship with students' educational attainment. Journal of Educational and Social Research, 13(4), 331-340. https://doi.org/10.36941/jesr-2023-0113
• Carmeli, A., Sheaffer, Z., Binyamin, G., Reiter-Palmon, R., & Shimoni, T. (2014). Transformational leadership and creative problem-solving: The mediating role of psychological safety and reflexivity. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 48(2), 115-135. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.43
• Fatima, A. D. C., & Yandi, A. (2023). Collaborative leadership: A solution for high work intensity organizations (A conceptual review of organizational behavior). International Journal of Applied Management, 1(4), 537-544. https://doi.org/10.38035/ijam.v1i4
• Finkelstein, C., Conley, B., Francois, C., Koh, P. J. H., LeNiles, K., & Shiller, J. (2025). A collaborative faculty approach to conceptualizing and implementing equity-centered leadership preparation. The Urban Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-025-00736-w
• Gómez-Leal, R., Holzer, A. A., Bradley, C., Fernández-Berrocal, P., & Patti, J. (2022). The relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership in school leaders: A systematic review. Cambridge Journal of Education, 52(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2021.1927987
• Moore, J., Elliott, I. C., & Hesselgreaves, H. (2023). Collaborative leadership in integrated care systems; creating leadership for the common good. Journal of Change Management, 23(4), 358-373. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2023.2261126