Connect and Inspire Leadership as a Coordination Mechanism for Stakeholder Value Creation in Customer-facing Organizations

Customer-facing organizations increasingly depend on coordination across employees, customers and external partners rather than on unilateral control. In these settings, command-based leadership assumes that alignment can be specified and enforced, but this assumption does not hold when value is produced through interaction. This article develops connect and inspire leadership as a leadership framework that conceptualizes leadership as a coordination mechanism for stakeholder value creation in customer-facing organizations. Rather than introducing another leadership style, the framework explains how leadership enables coordination among interdependent stakeholders when value is created through ongoing interaction rather than unilateral control. It shows that leadership creates value by enabling alignment across interdependent actors whose actions must fit together in real time. The argument explains how shared orientation, compatible judgment and feedback enable coordination when control is insufficient. By reframing leadership as a condition for coordination rather than as influence alone, the article provides a clearer account of how value is created and sustained in customer-facing organizations.