CHAPTER 8 TEACHING AND LEADERSHIP
3.5 ARE LEADERS BORN, BRED OR MADE?
“We arg’ed the thing at breakfast, we arg’ed the thing at tea, And the more we arg’ed the question, the more we didn’t agree.”
(William Carleton, 1795-1869)
Countless attempts have been made to show or prove that leaders can be ‘developed’ or
‘bred’. Such attempts aim to dispel the argument (or myth) that leaders are those individuals that are simply born with innate leadership skills. There are contenders for both arguments and as such there have been numerous verbal wars on the topic, multiple studies have been conducted, and many theories have been developed. Conger (1989, p.361) notes:
From ancient Greek philosophers to contemporary business executives, the issue of whether leaders are born or bred has been hotly debated.
Some have argued that the traits necessary for leadership are delivered to the newly born as a gift of genetics, and as such only the select few will eventually become leaders. Others, however, have argued that it is possible for almost anyone to become a leader (i.e. that most
60 people can be taught and acquire leadership skills). The implications of this argument have been noted by Handy (1976, p.92), who writes:
Assumptions about the nature of leadership have affected not only particular institutions and organizations, but the whole shape of the political system in individual countries, the design of the educational system and the management of the government.
Owen (2001, p. vii) describes ‘real leadership’ as:
A gift in every human being – be that gift small or large. It is part of being human and is expressed differently in every individual.
Gardner (1990, p.57) argues:
The notion that all the attributes of a leader are innate is demonstrably false. No doubt certain characteristics are genetically determined – level of energy, for example. But the individual’s hereditary gifts, however notable, leave the issue of further leadership performance undecided, to be settled by later events and influences.
Kotter (1990b, p.105) suggests that leadership attributes such as levels of energy and drive (encapsulated in this study through the term ‘surgency’), intelligence and intellectual skills (one’s ‘analytical intelligence’), mental and emotional health (one’s emotional intelligence), and integrity (one’s ethics) are “probably fixed or largely set early in life.”
The belief that leaders can be identified by a few basic characteristics that are either given to them at birth or developed in their early years no doubt contributed toward the influential growth of the public school system in Britain (and in other European and Western countries).
This system has served as a model to a number of other countries. It was brought to South Africa through British colonists. This country’s traditional schools, and particularly the boys’
schools, show evidence of this inheritance through traditions such as the prefect system and formalised systems of privilege.
61 A new appreciation for the potential in all to be leaders was instigated through the Second World War, when it was seen how effective leaders were emerging from all social ranks, educational backgrounds and origins. The groundbreaking work of men such as Lord Baden- Powell and Kurt Hahn (Hunt, no date) also helped develop this idea.
Drawing on the biographies of great and mediocre artists, painters, performers and composers, Conger (1989) noted that it is often the influence of other artists that enables one to develop one’s own individual style and technique. Conger then drew on this observation to make a similar judgement with regard to leadership, arguing that there is leadership potential in the population at large.
Adair (2002, p.33), in referring to the arguments of Xenaphon (the Athenian general and a follower of Socrates) on the issue, notes:
The ability to give people the intellectual and moral strength to venture or persevere in the presence of danger, fear or difficulty is not the common endowment of all men or women, (but this) […]
could be acquired through education – some degree of leadership potential has to be there in the first place.
Burns (1978, p.52) provides a neat summary of the prevalent understanding in this regard:
Some assume that the lives of the ‘greats’ carry more clues to the understanding of society history and current events than the lives of the great mass of people, of the sub-leaders and the followers. The truth of this assumption has never been demonstrated. Nor has that of the opposite assumption – that history is made by masses of people […]. The study of leadership cannot in my view ride on any single existing theory of historical causation; rather the study of leadership should contribute to developing more sophisticated theories of causation.
Warner (1993, p.102) has expressed this view:
62 And leadership isn’t genetic. You aren’t born with it, like ears or a
nose. You cultivate it. You grow it […]. The more you practice at it, the better you get at it.
Sweet (2004, p.12), with a touch of scorn notes the call to leadership through circumstance:
To put it bluntly: the whole leadership thing is a demented concept.
Leaders are neither born nor made. Leaders are summoned. They are called into existence by circumstances. Those who rise to the occasion are leaders.
This study adopts the emerging wisdom from above that leadership traits are, to a varying degree, distributed amongst all human beings. It also adheres to the notion that nurturing experiences, one’s education and training, personalities, and situational circumstances and eventualities (and one’s reactions to these) determine how one will emerge as a leader. This principle applies when considering the leadership of schoolteachers.