For those of you who like history, this will be interesting to you. But for those of you who are bottom-line people – that just like getting to the point and don’t need all the background information, this will be boring.
I’m going to say something that, as a writer, I probably shouldn’t say. Don’t waste your time reading this. Read the next article, So What is Leadership.
If you’re still reading, then you will find this just as interesting as I did when I was researching this topic.
Leadership is a new science…that is, the study of leadership. It began in the late 1920s. This may seem like a long time, but compared to the studies of science, math, and medicine, which have been studied for hundreds or even thousands of years, the study of leadership is relatively new.
And through the nine decades of study, scholars have been behaving like bullies and bratty little children in a school yard – always trying to one-up somebody else.
See-what-had-happen-was…the first group of psychologists in the 1920s and 1930s looked at great leaders such as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Winston Churchill. Their theory was that leaders are born with a ‘set of personality traits that made them great leaders’. They called this the Great Person Theory.
Then the next set of researchers came along in the 1940’s and debunked that theory. Their theory identified the ‘personal traits and attributes of highly effective leaders’. It was known as the Personal Traits Theory of leadership. This was slightly different than the Great Person Theory because it identified the personal attributes that are needed to become a great leader – not just that someone was born with these attributes.
About every decade thereafter, another set of researchers would come along with new theories and debunk the previous theories or replace them with more up-to-date ones.
I found it hilarious to read studies of empirically-proven leadership theories published in one year claiming they discovered what ‘true leadership’ is, only to have researchers in the following years claim that their research was wrong.
And they didn’t pull any punches either. Researchers from previous decades were called out. They named names, cited theories, quoted chapter and verse of their predecessors’ publications and plainly said that their research was incomplete or straight-up wrong.
The reality was, back then, and it still is now – the study of leadership is evolving. With every new leadership theory discovered, we all get a clearer picture of what leadership is…in all its various shapes, facets, and forms.
So, during this evolutionary period, I’m not going to set myself up and introduce a new definition of leadership. There have already been identified more than 220 different definitions.
But what I did do is research 90+ years of leadership research and discovered the 4 common themes that thread through all the definitions.
So what is leadership???
READ So What is Leadership to find out the 4 central themes that exist in all leadership. READ it today!
Lead & Trust!
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