Content area
Full Text
CAN LEADERSHIP BE TAUGHT? MOST PEOPLE would answer this question with a firm "No!" But they might have a hard time explaining why this negative response seems to come so naturally.
First of all, if leadership can be taught, several assumptions would have to be true. For example, there would have to be leadership teachers, people who have a knowledge of leading and who can instruct others in the art.
The U.S. Army is a good example of institutions that try to teach leadership. The Army knows that by inculcating people with core values such as loyalty, courage, and respect and by teaching them how to communicate and work as teams, they can teach them to take action in the face of fear, danger, and travail. The Army places its emphasis on the "content," the knowledge and experience associated with acts of leading.
Certainly the Army's best leaders exhibit the behaviors it teaches. But when it comes right down to it, no one can predict which people will step forward in the heat of battle and act. Nor do these battle-- tried leaders point to their training as the source of this ability. There seems to be something else, something that transcends all the classroom work, the simulation games, and the other efforts the Army uses to try to produce leaders.
The claim that leadership can be taught also implies that someone wants to learn and that individuals believe that leadership education can help them become leaders.
The Center for Creative Leadership, an international institution, operates on the assumption that developing leaders relates to the "whole person." In other words, the Center believes that to discover your leadership talents and achieve your fall potential as a leader you must first come to terms with your character, ego, and upbringing.
While the "human dimension" of leadership certainly seems to correlate strongly with good leaders (people who have the human touch), this kind of self-discovery strikes many people as not particularly applicable to...