LEADERSHIP.

Although there are seemingly as many descriptions of leadership as there are men and women who fill leadership roles, most meaningful definitions echo the one commonly ascribed to former U.S. president Harry S. Truman: leadership is the ability to get others to willingly move in a new direction in which they are not naturally inclined to move on their own. While the related but distinct concept of authority has since antiquity been a subject for scholarly analysis, the field of leadership theory and development has emerged more recently. It is primarily an American phenomenon, although its influence has quickly spread across continents.

Leadership in Historical Context

Of the myriad forms of human and social capital, leadership may be the most rare and precious. One can point to hundreds of companies that were collapsing despite legions of consultants and new plans and policies, until finally its chief executive officer was removed, a new head was brought in, and the company turned around as though by magic. History abounds with similar examples among armies, universities, churches, and nations.

Conversely, the untimely loss of a talented and effective leader can prove disastrous for the organization she was leading. Try as they may, a succession of new leaders cannot stem the inexorable decline of the very same organization that a few months or years before was at the peak of health and vitality.

Moreover, sometimes whole societies lose their ability to produce great leaders. There are numerous cases of societies that lost their earlier, highly developed culture and retrogressed to a more primitive way of life. In some of these cases, external factors such as invasion or drought played a role, but in many cases it would seem that the retrogression was due to a failure of will and a lack of leadership.

History's Slaves or History's Masters?

A striking contrast in worldviews about leadership can be found in the writings of Leo Tolstoy, who believed that history shapes and determines leaders, versus those of Thomas Carlyle, who believed that leaders shape and determine history. In his epilogue to War and Peace, Tolstoy contended that kings and generals are history's slaves. Tolstoy believed that leaders merely ride the crests of historical waves that have been set in motion by myriad forces beyond these leaders' control or comprehension. "Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own free will," wrote Tolstoy, "is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole cause of history and predestined from eternity."

On the other side is Carlyle, the nineteenth-century British historian and essayist, who was convinced that "history is the biography of great men," the greatest of them being kings. The very word king, Carlyle contended, derives from the ancient word Can-ning, which means "Able-man" (although his etymology can be disputed). In Carlyle's view, the Ablemen (and Ablewomen) of the human species direct the course of history and determine humanity's destiny.

Leadership as a Skill

Learned examinations of the lives of great leaders abound, among them Arrian's History of Alexander and Plutarch's Parallel Lives, bona fide leadership manuals have been relatively rare; only a few have survived the centuries, among them Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince and Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Most such works were military in nature, where meritocracies tended to flourish.

Popular opinion through the ages has typically held that leadership flows from the throne of the gods to a privileged few, as evidenced by most societies' willing subjection to and adulation for inherited royalty. In the biblical account contained in the first book of Samuel, the Israelites beg Yahweh to abandon his plans for a pure theocracy, asking in exchange not for democracy but for "a king to lead us." The equation began to change at the end of the global tendency toward dynastic succession and the advent of republican government and other broad meritocracies.

Currently, in an era that can be considered far more Carlylean than Tolstoyan in its worldview, the analysis of living and dead authorities has given way to a dramatic development: the belief that leaders can and should be trained. The worldwide explosion of leadership study and leadership development is an even more recent phenomenon, launched primarily at American universities. Beginning in the 1960s, the most informed academic opinions held that leadership could be taught effectively if prevalent past assumptions about human nature could be overcome. The concept grew in popularity through the 1970s and 1980s, and the result by the turn of the twenty-first century was a $250 billion industry—the amount spent annually on management training and executive education around the world.

Leadership theory and development was to a degree an off-shoot of inquiry into organizational life, as industry and government bureaucracies evolved rapidly, with figures such as Vienna-born economist and management editor Peter Drucker forging roles as key commentators. Theories of organizational life gradually gave way to theories of leadership as an exalted vocation.

Once scholars began not only to assess the impact of leaders but to dissect the traits that fueled their success, a legion of authors and consultants rose up to offer seven habits, ten techniques, or twenty secrets of top leaders. Eventually American corporations, universities, and even secondary schools began setting aside funds for leadership development programs.

The Rise of Contemporary Leadership Theory

Theories of leadership in any period are driven by a set of convictions and hopes on the part of the theorist. One conviction is that rapid societal evolution makes it imperative to keep one's pulse on social changes and their implications for how groups of human beings can best be led, an inherent assumption in the writings of leadership theorist Rosabeth Moss Kanter and numerous other scholars. A competing view is that human nature is static and unchanging and that the lasting lessons of history provide surer instruction in leadership than do the passing ripples of modernity. Ironically, the exemplars of this view are relatively ancient figures such as Lao Tzu and Machiavelli.

A core Western assumption about leadership is that leaders who succeed have "vision," a tangible end goal toward which they and their followers can strive. But countless Eastern leaders have been more influenced by the worldview of Lao Tzu, who observed, "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving.… Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself" (Lao Tzu, chapters 27 and 57).

In a related manner, some maintain that the leader must be an idealist set on speaking to that which is highest, while others hold that a leader must be a realist who is aware of human limitations. Plato contended in The Republic that:

until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils.

Yet as though he were responding directly to Plato, Machiavelli soberly observed in The Prince almost two thousand years later:

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many who are not good. Hence it is necessary that a prince who is interested in his survival learn to be other than good, making use of this capacity or refraining from it according to the need.

The collective tendency has tilted toward idealism in recent decades. This shift is not a current echo of Plato's philosopher-king. It is, rather, an expression of democratic ideals, positing an assumption that intrinsic in human nature is a capacity to lead that only need be unearthed and cultivated in order to flourish.

The participative management and leadership style ascendant in the late twentieth century was exemplified by the work of Douglas McGregor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In his landmark work, The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), McGregor distinguished between a traditional Theory X, which fundamentally viewed humanity in a negative light (the view classically ascribed to Machiavelli), and a newly emerging Theory Y, which viewed human beings in a more positive light. Given Theory X's assumption that human beings are essentially flawed and resistant to work, a successful leader presumably needed to manage them in an authoritarian manner, with rigorous controls.

McGregor heralded his new Theory Y, which demonstrated that human beings are far more willing to invest themselves in their work if it bears personal meaning. If they can escape the suffocation of being overmanaged and begin to make a collaborative investment through their labor, they will bring untapped new fountains of creativity and energy to an organization or cause. The democratic model of organizational leadership began to develop, with its flattened organizational pyramids and concepts such as empowerment and shared vision.

Unlike the so-called hard sciences, the tenets of the social sciences cannot readily be subjected to the test of falsification, and, as a consequence, are often viewed with suspicion. Nevertheless, since the mid-1950s, the social sciences produced a large number of attractive theories of leadership. Management expert Tom Peters noted that Warren Bennis's work at MIT during the 1960s "foreshadowed—and helped bring about—the early twenty-first century's headlong plunge into less hierarchical, more democratic and adaptive institutions, both public and private." Bennis, a protégé of McGregor, found among other things that hierarchical and autocratic approaches were the best way for teams to carry out simple tasks, while democratic and collaborative approaches were the best way for teams to carry out complex tasks. In such cases, all team members experienced a high average level of contentment in their work, unlike in hierarchical arrangements, where the top person enjoyed maximum contentment and the others experienced minimum contentment.

American corporations were shaped most dramatically by such new models. The gradually increasing tendency toward participative management received a kick-start in the 1980s, when American and European business executives came to admire their Japanese counterparts. Japanese industry was remarkable for its emphasis on the group rather than the individual, and for team processes and a participative work style. Not out of idealism but out of pure self-interest, Western managers began to adopt similar practices. Within a few years, programs for and courses in leadership theory and development were more often housed in American universities' business schools than in departments of political science, psychology, history, or social science. For many years this resulted in an amoral emphasis on technique rather than ethics—in other words, democratic leadership was good for the bottom line as opposed to being intrinsically right—although some business-school-based experts such as Bennis and James O'Toole championed a more deontological approach.

By the last decade of the twentieth century, few successful American leaders in any profit-seeking or not-for-profit organization had avoided participating in at least one seminar, visioning session, or strategic-planning task force built on democratic management principles. However, the good intentions of democratically inclined managers and consultants collided with the limitations of human nature—and a wave of satire (as evidenced in the "Dilbert" comic strip) and public cynicism followed. This cynicism, or frustrated idealism, offers a study in contrasts with Machiavelli's brutal unsenti-mentality, which had seemingly been discredited by modern practitioners of democratic management and leadership. Machiavelli was above all a coolly detached student of human nature. His repeated advice to leaders was to believe in the reality of human nature, as opposed to what they wished it were.

Quoted again more widely in an era of renewed global realpolitik, Machiavelli has proved to be neither inerrant nor irrelevant. He illustrated sides of human nature that must be closely examined by every leader, painful though that process may be. The good news for leaders is that there are nobler facets of human nature that have just as great a chance of asserting themselves as those identified by Machiavelli. As such, his greatest legacy may be his ability to help leaders develop a more integrated understanding of human nature and leadership.

Theories in Flux

Just as popular and scholastic leadership theory has been shaped and reshaped by the epochs of industrialization, bureaucratization, the communications revolution, and the widespread entry of women into management, leadership theory will continue to undergo changes, determined in part by prevailing societal values such as idealism or realism.

Through it all, a middle ground appears to exist between Tolstoy's persuasive fatalism and Carlyle's enthusiastic activism. It may well be that this world is largely Tolstoyan, subject to historical forces that no man or woman can fully measure and analyze and the consequences of which no person can fully predict. To that extent, leaders are in fact history's slaves. However, Carlyle's Ablemen (and Ablewomen) have still made an impact on the course of human events; their decisions have had a lasting influence on the world, so that historical determinism has never quite had the final word.

Finally, leadership tends to be remarkably situational and contingent: what works for one person at one point in time will not necessarily work for everyone else or even for that person at a different time. Thus, in a very real sense, leadership is an art, not a science. Effective management may be a science (though that too is questionable), but effective leadership is most certainly an art. In this sense, leadership is more akin to music, painting, and poetry than it is to more routinized endeavors. And just as there is no comprehensive theory of art, there is no comprehensive theory of leadership.

Every leader is therefore locked in a moment-to-moment struggle with the context and circumstances of his own place and time. This excruciating yet exhilarating aspect of leadership is what makes the study of great historical figures so timelessly appealing—and, in this democratic age, makes millions of would-be leaders such eager students of this peculiar calling.

See also Authority ; Machiavellism ; Power .

bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES

Arrian. The Campaigns of Alexander. London: Penguin, 1976.

Bible, The. The life of David, in I and II Samuel; Jesus, in Matthew; and Paul, in Acts. Various editions, including the Revised Standard Edition.

Confucius. The Analects. Translated by Arthur Waley. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Dante. The Divine Comedy. Translated by John Ciardi. New York: Norton, 1977. Significant for its portrayal of the full range of human triumphs and foibles.

Lao Tzu. The Tao Te Ching. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Perennial, 1992.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Translated by George Bull. New York: Bantam, 1984. One of the most enduring and significant leadership manuals, with some fifty editions currently in print.

Plato. The Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Shakespeare's plays offer insight into the human condition and human motivations, a deep understanding of which is required for leadership. Hamlet, in particular, gives humanity a terrifying look inside itself.

——. Othello. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Offers a view of how a leader is undone by an evil lieutenant.

Sophocles. Antigone. Translated by Richard Emil Braun. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Notable for its display of the pitfalls of rigidity in a leader.

Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Translated by Ralph D. Sawyer. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Bennis, Warren. On Becoming a Leader. Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1989.

Carlyle, Thomas. On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History. New York: Ginn and Co., 1902. Notable for its theory of leadership in contrast to that of Tolstoy.

Drucker, Peter. The Essential Drucker: Selections from the Management Works of Peter F. Drucker. New York: HarperBusiness, 2001. A significant modern leadership book.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. The Change Masters: Innovations for Productivity in the American Corporation. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.

——. When Giants Learn to Dance: Mastering the Challenge of Strategy, Management, and Careers in the 1990s. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.

McGregor, Douglas. The Human Side of Enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.

O'Toole, James. Leading Change: The Argument for Values-Based Leadership. New York: Ballantine, 1996.

Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. New York: Oxford University Press, 1931. Of interest for its theory of leadership, in contrast to that of Carlyle.

Steven B. Sample