Can you teach leadership?

The Coffee Shop
1

So I’ve had the displeasure of having to read a whole bunch of chapters and papers about leadership.

I am a bit torn about this. Obviously the military appear (I only have experience of really knowing 2 officers and one was the next level down from head of the British army - a general of some type) to do quite a good job of developing leaders - Sandhurst for example, westpoint, naval and airforce academys.

I think lots of the skills the general I knew had are transferable. He was an excellent exec to work for.very competent.

I am just not entirely convinced about the degree to which leadership is a specific skill set that can be taught or developed.

A case in point, the person lecturing on a part of this - decision making - made the point that the more decisions you make the better you get at making them.

I asked if you got better at making good decisions or just better at making decisions. I don’t think it was appreciated.

So, what can you teach and what can’t you teach? And for those that have the experience of one of the academies, can you teach everyone or do you know it when you see it i.e. Some have it some don’t and some can only ever get OK at it?

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So I’ve had the displeasure of having to read a whole bunch of chapters and papers about leadership.

I am a bit torn about this. Obviously the military appear (I only have experience of really knowing 2 officers and one was the next level down from head of the British army - a general of some type) to do quite a good job of developing leaders - Sandhurst for example, **westpoint, naval and airforce academys. **

That’s funny. Just kidding to all the ring knockers. I actually taught an Intro to Leadership at the Naval Academy for 3 years to the freshmen (plebes) and the mids were still f’ed up eight different ways so that tells you how good I was at teaching. I hope I redeemed myself in the senior course for Marine selectees.

I think lots of the skills the general I knew had are transferable. He was an excellent exec to work for.very competent.

I am just not entirely convinced about the degree to which leadership is a specific skill set that can be taught or developed.

A case in point, the person lecturing on a part of this - decision making - made the point that the more decisions you make the better you get at making them.

I asked if you got better at making good decisions or just better at making decisions. I don’t think it was appreciated.

So, what can you teach and what can’t you teach? And for those that have the experience of one of the academies, can you teach everyone or do you know it when you see it i.e. Some have it some don’t and some can only ever get OK at it?

You seem to be combining management and leadership. I’d say Management is more of a skill and leadership is both a skill and an art.

Decision making is more of a management skill than leadership skill. People can be taught to make data based decisions, for example. As they get more familiar with tools to assist in data based decisions, it is likely their success rate will improve.

The military doesn’t always present a situation where there is data or intell… you need to based your decision on limited information and then lead (motivate, inspire, energize, etc) your unit to accomplish the objective.

Both the skills and, to a degree, the art of leadership can be taught, but those that lack the natural ability will only go so far compared to masters or naturals at the art. Leadership Principles can he taught. Leadership Techniques can be taught. Leadership Practices can learned by example (good and example) and experience. But knowing when and how to employ each is less rigid and gets into the art. Leading is to a making an emotional connection with those on your team to move them (move themselves at higher levels) to an objective.

Many of the services use personality tests (at least in they did in the past) to give a leader some insight into his natural style so that they could adapt a style to suit the situation. There are personality types that are predisposed to successful in a military leadership environment. However, they may fail in a corporate environment that is less structured. Different types of leadership is need to be successful in different environments. Those that can’t adapt will fail in a new situation.

So I would suggest that in the art aspect of leadership there is a human element that can be taught or copied or to some degree learned, but not all can master it.

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I think there are a lot of skills one can be taught/coached/mentored at that good leaders are good at (understanding your own strengths/weaknesses, understanding those in others, how to deliver feedback, how to evaluate decisions after the fact, planning/resource allocation) and there seems to be a real part of leadership that comes from an internal self drive that isn’t taught (leading a horse to water and all of that).

It almost sounds like you’re talking about the Peter Principle (promotion to the level of incompetence) where at some point you end up with leaders who have maxed out their own skill level but are being asked to operate above that.

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I think, to some degree, good leadership is more of a personality trait then a teachable skill. You can teach the individual skills that makes one a good leader, but knowing how/when to use those tools is a bit of an art. I’m sure, with practice and a desire to learn, you can develop your leadership capabilities but for some it just seems God given. Interesting topic for sure.

5

Yes. With an asterisk.

People must want to be leaders. They must be willing to put the work in (and leadership is work and often stress). They must actually want to be responsible for other’s performance, well being, etc.

There are certain traits that good leaders have. Some are inherent, like charisma, honesty and courage - these can be difficult to increase. But others, like communication skills, fairness, self accountability, decision making, delegation, creativity, etc. can be developed through practice, training, coaching and study.

As for the question about “if you got better at making good decisions or just better at making decisions.” - my answer is that its much better to have a leader who can make decisions when needed, even if they are sometimes not perfect, than to have someone who is too scared to make any decision.

I spent nearly a decade as a management consultant helping coach supervisors, managers and executives to be more effective leaders.

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I asked if you got better at making good decisions or just better at making decisions. I don’t think it was appreciated.

To a certain extent, you can get better at making good decision by making bad ones, and learning from it.

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When I am sober i will come back to this but I think your answer involves a large assumption… That people learn

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I asked if you got better at making good decisions or just better at making decisions. I don’t think it was appreciated.
Just having to make decisions will generally make you better at both making decisions and making good decisions.
It’s kind of like training to become a triathlete. If you are just starting, pretty much any training will make you a better triathlete. But that doesn’t mean all training is the same, and that all progress from all persons will be equal.

It’s not an easy concept to flesh out on paper here in the LR, but it should be pretty much common sense for most middle aged people with experience in these sorts of phenomenons.

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//
I think, to some degree, good leadership is more of a personality trait then a teachable skill. You can teach the individual skills that makes one a good leader, but knowing how/when to use those tools is a bit of an art. I’m sure, with practice and a desire to learn, you can develop your leadership capabilities but for some it just seems God given. Interesting topic for sure.
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I’d have to agree with this. I think you can teach management skills and some leadership in the military for roles within the military structure or similar structures. Outside of that world, I think leadership is more a personality trait that a teachable skill. Those with solid leadership personalities can learn and grow in their leadership but if you aren’t a natural leader, you won’t ‘learn’ to become one.

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It’s kind of like training to become a triathlete. If you are just starting, pretty much any training will make you a better triathlete. But that doesn’t mean all training is the same, and that all progress from all persons will be equal.

Take this shit to the other Forum!!! :wink:

11

You can absolutely teach leadership skills. Like anything else, some people have aptitude for leadership, and some do not. “Leadership skills” is really just a way to bin a bunch of different types of skills that someone needs to effectively lead. Those include basic personal skills, decision making skills, sometimes management skills, sometimes technical skills, as well as some skills specific to being in a leadership role.

I would say that leadership skills rely more heavily on practical application than some other things we teach. In other words, it’s very difficult to effectively teach leadership skills strictly from a book. People learn leadership skills by acting in leadership roles, acting in subordinate roles and figuring out what they’d want in a leader, by watching other leaders and taking away positive and negative lessons, etc.

As with anything, the very best leaders have natural talent, and supplement that with hard work to learn the craft. The worst leaders typically have no natural talent. For everyone in between, you take whatever aptitude you have and supplement it by learning techniques and principles that can increase your effectiveness.

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I think you can teach leadership, however every person seems to have individual limitations around it’s application.

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FWIW this is a great read – Barbara Tuchman on generalship for the Army War College
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The problem is, largely in the business world, a boss is still preferred to a leader. AKA, a professional asshole.

To me, I tend to agree that some level of leadership can’t be taught. Why? There’s a component to leadership that requires being a good problem solver. Not everyone has that bug.

You can try to teach folks things like LEAN and Sigma principles to people to give a science like approach to problem solving. But, they can’t take that outside of very specific job based examples. They can now problem solve a few machines and processes at work, but they can’t figure out how to install a ceiling fan or determine why something basic stopped working at home.

A good leader without “that” is more of just a “synergist”. I made that word up.

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that was so good i’m going to use some of it…