Leadership. How to Teach a Leader - Essay Example

Executive Summary Leadership is complex and is described in many ways, but it can be defined as a set of qualities a person has that makes others want to follow that person to do good or bad things. How people become leaders and how leadership can be taught, learned, and developed is an important topic because, according to experts from business and government, the future competitiveness of the UK economy and the survival of the nation depends on it. Leaders can make things happen and help business organisations and government offices, and those who work in them, perform according to high standards. Before leadership can be taught, it must be learned. By observing the behaviour of leaders, academics and managers have identified the qualities that leaders have, but certain analyses of leadership issues contain conceptual flaws and reflect the biases of those who study it. Knowing what a leader is supposed to be is never a guarantee that one with the potential to be a true leader eventually becomes one for a long period of time. Some great people have exercised leadership but only for a short period of time. An important reason why most people do not become leaders and why some are able to lead for a short period of time is that some critical qualities a leader must have, such as self-awareness and humility, are difficult to practice. Leadership can be learned, but strictly speaking it can never be taught because not everyone has the potential to be a leader. What would be more effective is to identify those with the potential to be leaders by giving them opportunities to grow in self-awareness and develop the leadership qualities. This demands effort and sacrifice. You Can't Clone Leaders; (but can you teach them) The starting point of this paper is finding answers to the questions as to what leadership is, why it is important, and how leadership is distinguished from management. The answers show that leadership is a complex issue and that finding a way to identify and train future leaders is like the quest for the Holy Grail: a near-impossible search for what may not even exist, a hunt for an object of desire which holds great promise of power, riches, and fame to academics, scientists, philosophers, and kings. What is leadership The definitions vary according to the professional biases of those who study it. Management scientists quantify and tabulate it whilst philosophers and political scientists discuss it to no end. Kings and CEOs endlessly search for it to justify their rule, satisfy their enlarged egos, or to identify the head that would wear their crown after them. An extensive search of the relevant literature gives the following concise definition: leadership is a set of qualities a person has that makes others want to follow that person whether to do good or evil. A leader is someone who has followers, people who are led to reach a definite destination or attain a specific set of objectives. Leaders are judged by their followers. All other definitions of leadership are mere exercises in semantics: complex-sounding, confusing, and ludicrous intellectual posturing by management charlatans paid by the hour who receive outrageous fees to further complicate, instead of simplifying, what is inherently complex. The multifaceted nature of leadership gives these fad-driven management gurus an edge over their audiences, and in their efforts to maximise their profitable gains in teaching others what they themselves neither have nor cannot do, they write books, deliver lectures, and engage in speaking tours mouthing kilometric definitions and mind-numbing clich-driven sound bites. Why is leadership a complex thing A look at some universally acknowledged leaders at one time or the other gives a partial answer. Take, for example, Churchill, Britain's Prime Minister during the War. With his inspiring words, he helped save the kingdom from annihilation and later on helped win the War, but he lost the first post-War elections as the people tired of his leadership. On the other side was Hitler: need more be said about the beast that rose from obscurity to lead his nation's army to commit unimaginable atrocities Or Welch, the CEO exemplar who ruled a business kingdom (General Electric of the U.S.) for more than two decades but was found after his tenure guilty (more or less) of smoothly managing earnings and (this one is certain) was caught having an extra-marital affair Leadership, it seems, is not a permanent set of qualities, and if this is so, why are we so obsessed with looking for it The simple answer is that it can make a difference. It is important because leaders make things happen. In the U.K., the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership (Council) came up with a study in 2000 that identified leadership as crucial for improving and sustaining the competitiveness of the UK economy. The Council declared (CEML, 2002, p. 1) that "deficiencies in leadership are a cause of poor productivity and performance" and that "high quality leadership skills are in short supply throughout the UK's workforce" In true bureaucratic fashion, the Council proposed thirty solutions that could be summarised into three points (p. 16): (1) tell people and companies they need to develop leaders; (2) improve the way people are trained in leadership; and (3) make sure those who think they have leadership potential avail of training programmes (for a government-subsidised fee, of course). Perhaps, the Council thinks that the leadership shortage problem is a simple economics problem where matching supply and demand would be the best solution, and that pouring financial and intellectual resources into such a project would churn out generations of leaders and CEOs in public and private organisations leading the nation to economic paradise. But leadership is not a bar of soap one buys to become something. One has to have the leadership potential, the right training opportunities, and time. The past and present crop of leadership studies can be compared to the findings of the seven blind wise men asked to describe an elephant. Each one came up with a different description depending on which part of the elephant they touched. Such is leadership. It has been defined as a way to combine people and process management as in a grid (Blake & McCanse, 1991; Blake & Mouton, 1985), as a contingent and situational quality (Fiedler, 1996/1967/1965; Fiedler & Garcia, 1987; Hersey & Blanchard, 1996), as the ability to specify paths and goals (House, 1971; House & Mitchell, 1974), as decisiveness (Vroom & Jago, 1974; Vroom & Yetton, 1973), and a set of qualities that transform others into high performers (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985/1990; Tichy & Devanna, 1986). What is common amongst all these (and others too numerous to mention) leadership studies is the focus on observable external behaviour or styles of dealing with reality, an aspect of leadership that has been intellectually analysed, dissected, synthesised, and encapsulated in best-seller format. Goleman (2000) used emotional intelligence to define leadership as an amalgam of six leadership styles. Bennis (1998) distinguished leadership from management using a clich similar to a well-known maxim of Drucker (2003): "management is doing things right, whilst leadership is doing the right thing." Or as Drucker puts it: managers are efficient; a leader has to be effective. Good sound bites, but they hardly clarify matters. The problem is that styles, like fads, are short-lived and situations for the practice of leadership are just like fads: they constantly change. What works in time of war may not work in time of peace, and what works in a private UK company may not work for the same company's branch in Africa. Best-selling books on leadership share many ideas on leadership, at times conflicting with each other, but all of them agree on an important point: leadership is at heart an animal quality and therefore partly genetic in origin. Goodall (2000, p. 32-34) studied chimpanzees, mammals genomely closest to humans, and was able to single out the pack's leader. Not necessarily the largest or the most frightening, the leader possessed certain identifiable qualities. This means that only those with the potential to become leaders, and who take advantage of the opportunities to perfect those potential, become leaders. Thus, Gardner (1989) is closest to defining leadership, enumerating the fourteen qualities they possess, most of which are developed from childhood or genetically inherited: (1) physical vitality and stamina, (2) intelligence and action-oriented judgment, (3) eagerness to accept responsibility, (4) task competence, (5) understanding of followers and their needs, (6) skill in dealing with people, (7) need for achievement, (8) capacity to motivate people, (9) courage and resolution, (10) trustworthiness, (11) decisiveness, (12) self-confidence, (13) assertiveness, and (14) adaptability or flexibility. If every leader in history possessed these qualities, why do some leaders fade away Why did Churchill lose when he showed his combative side to a people sick of war Why did Hitler lose control of his ambition for achievement Why did Welch allow his fame to get into his head This brings the discussion to an important quality that long-term leaders need and that has not been emphasised as much as it should: humility or self awareness. Lewis (2007), quoting LBS's Goffee, argued that "leaders who can be trusted are self-aware and know what differentiates them from their colleaguesthey are not afraid to reveal their weaknesses and know how to adapt their style to different situations." Legendary manager-leaders like Virgin's Branson (or would it be too soon to say) are secure in their self-image, ready to admit shortcomings; he was so acutely dyslexic that he could neither read, much less understand, the financial reports of his business empire, but he signed them just the same. Humility and self-awareness made him unafraid to ask "stupid" questions so he could make the right entrepreneurial decisions, thus endearing him to thousands of devoted employees. Rather than outshine everyone else around them, true leaders are like the light that attracts others and lets them shine (Hunter, 2007). Leadership can be learned, but strictly speaking it cannot be taught. The reason is simple: what may be an example of good leadership to the teacher - an incumbent CEO-leader guiding a potential successor; a brilliant professor teaching a class of wide-eyed MBA students - is not necessarily good leadership to the student. Leadership theory and practice are worlds apart, and the best a teacher or CEO can do is to point out the qualities that good leaders have, and to motivate their audiences to look within themselves and discover whether they have the qualities and the determination to develop their own selves into leaders, and whether they are willing to put in the necessary effort and sacrifice to perfect those qualities. Each leader is unique, like a rare diamond hidden in the rock thousands of metres under the earth's surface, waiting for the right time to be discovered by another leader, be it a teacher, colleague, or CEO, who would then patiently polish the gem like a craftsman jeweller, placing the potential leader under the bright light of human experience so that it learns to shine on its own. Reference List Bass, B.M. (1985) Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press. Bass, B.M. (1990) Bass and Stogdill's Handbook of leadership: Theory, research and managerial applications. New York: Free Press. Bass, B.M. (1990) From transitional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, Winter, p. 140-148. Bennis, W. (1998) On becoming a leader. London: Arrow. Blake, R.R. & McCanse, A.A. (1991). Leadership dilemmas: Grid solutions. Houston: Gulf Publishing. Blake, R.R. & Mouton, J.S. (1985) The managerial grid III. Houston: Gulf Publishing. Burns, J. McG. (1978) Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Drucker, P. F. (2003) Peter Drucker on the profession of management. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School, p. 66-67. Fiedler, F.E. & Garcia, J.E. (1987) New approaches to effective leadership: Cognitive resources and organizational performance. New York: John Wiley. Fiedler, F.E. (1965) Engineer the job to fit the manager. Harvard Business Review, September-October, p. 117-128. Fiedler, F.E. (1967) A theory of leadership effectiveness. New York: McGraw-Hill. Fiedler, F.E. (1996) Research on leadership selection and training: One view of the future. Administrative Science Quarterly, June, p. 241-250. Gardner, J. (1989) On leadership. New York: Free Press. Goleman, D. (2000) Leadership that gets results. Harvard Business Review, March-April, p. 78-90. Goodall, J. (2000) In the shadow of man. New York: Mariner. Hersey, P. & Blanchard, K.H. (1977) The management of organizational behaviour (3rd Ed.). Upper Saddle River N. J.: Prentice Hall. Hersey, P. & Blanchard, K.H. (1993) Management of organizational behavior. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Hersey, P. & Blanchard, K.H. (1996) Great ideas: Revisiting the life-cycle theory of leadership. Training & Development, January, p. 42-47. House, R.J. & Mitchell, T.R. (1974) Path-goal theory of leadership. Journal of Contemporary Business, Autumn, p. 81-97. House, R.J. (1971) A path-goal theory of leader effectiveness. Administrative Science Quarterly, September, p. 321-328. Hunter, C. (2007) "You can't clone leaders; (but can you teach them)." The Times, London: June 28, 2007, p. 10. ProQuest Document ID 1296005921. Lewis, C. (2007) "How leaders manage." The Times, London: May 31, 2007, p. 4. ProQuest Document ID 1279807461. Tichy, N.M. & Devanna, M.A. (1986) The transformational leader. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Vroom, V. & Jago, A.G. (1988) The new leadership: Managing participation in organizations. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Vroom, V. & Yetton, P. (1973) Leadership and decision making. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Read More