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Critically evaluate the claim that some people are born leaders

Introduction

There is an understandable belief in many organisations in the importance of leadership. As Mole (2003) points out, there is now a widespread assumption in the popular management literature that leadership can be broken down into a number of easily digestible points or laws. The assumption here is that leadership can be taught. This is a long way from early theories of leadership that assumed that leaders were born. This essay will examine the underlying assumptions of some of the main theories of leadership.

Trait Theories

Early theories of leadership tended to emphasise the importance of a person's particular matrix of personality characteristics. There is something inherent about them, then, that makes them different to everyone else. Early research searched for the traits that were required to make a good leader. Many studies created long lists of positive personality traits such as being decisive, dependable, tolerant of stress and willing to assume responsibility. Stogdill (1974), in reviewing this research, found that, while there was a connection between these traits and leadership, it was only weak. The most obvious problem with this approach to analysing leadership is that it is too general and doesn't take into account the specific leadership situations in which people find themselves.

Behavioural Theories

The behavioural approach to leadership, in contrast to the trait theories, examined which behaviours were associated with leadership (Bryman, 1986). Lippitt and White (1943), for example, examined how the behaviour of leaders affected young boys in both their performance and their morale. Autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire leaders were compared. Similarly, Bales (1950) observed the problem-solving behaviour of different groups and came up with two different interaction styles. People tended to be either task-orientated or people-orientated. The research was starting to suggest at this stage that different people were suitable for different roles. Generally, though, these types of behaviour theories tend to support the idea that, if the behaviours associated with leadership can be identified, then they can be taught.

Contingency Theories

Having gone from one extreme to the other, first that leaders are born, and then that it can be taught, theories moved on to consider a balance between the two approaches. These interactional approaches tended to emphasise the importance of how the person and the situation come together. There are otherwise known as contingency theories and one of the first was put forward by Fiedler (1967). This attempted to match the leader to the situation, first by analysing the leader's style using the 'least preferred co-worker' measure, then measuring the work situation using task structure, leader-member relations and position power. Criticisms of this theory have concentrated on the fact that it over-simplifies the situation, but it was nevertheless important in introducing the contingency theory. The contingency theory tends to suggest that managers cannot change their management style, because they are either task or people orientated, which tends to suggest that leaders may be born for particular roles, but no leadership style is universally superior.

Transformational Leadership

More recent research has examined the idea of charisma in leadership. Originally this referred to the inbuilt, innate qualities of a leader, but this has now been conceptualised as residing within the relationship between leaders and those they are leading. Bass (1990), for example, has analysed the relationship between leaders and followers in terms of two different types of interactions. Transactional leadership describes a reactive type of leadership, while transformational leadership describes the situation where a leader provides a vision to his followers which motivates them to do more than they normally would. Again, this type of research tends to emphasise the importance of having the right leader for the right situation.

Leadership and Experience

Many management specialist point to the importance of experience, and especially the type of experience, as important in leadership. Kotter (1990) identifies a number of factors thought to be important in the development of a leader. These include, for example, being coached by superiors, and being involved in special projects. These types of ideas strongly suggest that leaders are not born, but made by their experience.

A constant problem in analysing whether leaders are born or made is simply in deciding what constitutes a leader (Yukl, 1989). Many different theorists have put forward different definitions which are ultimately too specific. The research and theories reviewed so far tend to suggest that the truth is that leadership means different things in different situations. Mole (2003) explains the ideas developed by Katz & Kahn (1978) to describe how leaders come to be defined. A leader's required characteristics emerge within a particular situation by a process of role receiving and role sending. A person within a group has an interest in the success of that group and so they have particular expectations of their leader. These are negotiated implicitly between people, such that leaders will emerge from leaderless groups. In defining leadership by the expectations of the group, therefore, it is clear that leadership will be specific to a particular organisation and a particular situation.

Twin Research

After theories that concentrated on situational factors, more recent research has returned, perhaps surprisingly, to the idea of heritable traits. A more direct approach to examining leadership is to examine genetics through twin studies. If leaders are truly born then there should be a correlation between the leadership abilities of twins. Johnson, Vernon, McCarthy, Molson, Harris & Jang (1998) examined 247 pairs of twins, 64 dizygotic - sharing about half their genetic code - and 183 monozygotic - sharing all of their genetic code. They used a variety of measures including The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and the Leadership Ability Evaluation. Transactional and transformational leadership was also measured. It was found in this study that a large amount of the variance was explained by heritability. This suggests that as personality traits are heritable, so the traits for leadership are also heritable. Again, however, like early research into traits, this kind of evidence does not begin to address the problem of fitting leaders to situations.

Conclusion

A cynic might claim that the multi-million pound training industry has a huge interest in showing that leaders can be made. After all, if leaders are simply born then there is no point in training. What the theory and research shows, though, is the importance of the interaction between the particular situation and the particular individual. Management gurus and organisations have often asked whether leaders are born, or can be trained, but perhaps this question is redundant. A better question might be, in the particular situation - whatever it may be - what can be done to improve the leadership? In answering this question, current theories provide some useful frameworks for analysis and possibilities for effecting change. And, like many theoretical struggles in psychology between nature and nature, the truth about whether leaders are born or made, lies somewhere in the balance.

References

Bales, R. F. (1950) A set of categories for the analysis of small group interaction. American Sociological Review, 15, pp. 257 – 263.

Bass, B. M. (1990) From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, (Winter): 19-31.

Bryman, A. (1986) Leadership and Organizations. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Fiedler, F. E. (1967) A theory of leadership effectiveness, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Johnson, A. M., Vernon, P. A., McCarthy, J. M., Molson, M., Harris, J. A., Jang, K. L. (1998) Nature vs nurture: are leaders born or made? A behavior genetic investigation of leadership style. Twin Research, 1(4), 216-23.

Katz, D., Kahn, R. L. (1978) The Social Psychology of Organizations. New York: Wiley.

Kotter, J. P. (1990) A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management. New York: Free Press.

Lippitt, R., White, R. (1943) The “social climate” of children’s groups. In R. Barker, J. Kounin, H. Wright (Eds.), Child development and behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Mole, G. (2003) Can leadership be taught? In Storey, J. (Ed.) Leadership in Organizations : Current Issues and Key Trends. Routledge: London.

Stogdill, R.M. (1974) Handbook of leadership: A survey of the literature, New York: Free Press

Yukl, G. A. (1989) Leadership in Organizations. (2nd ed.) London: Prentice Hall.