A633.1.2.RB - Leadership Gap

 My attitude towards and relationship with leaders has evolved throughout my life. As a child, I, like many, was frequently disobedient. That said, being a child, I was also rather unquestioning. Part of my maturation consisted in paradoxically becoming both more obedient and yet also more skeptical of those in positions of authority. My attitude now would be that those who legitimately hold authority are entitled to obedience and positional respect commensurate with their title, but must earn personal respect by demonstrating leadership competence. My understanding of what this competence entails has also morphed over time. As a teenager, I would have said that competence consists almost entirely of task performance. As a young adult with more experience seeing leaders in action, I now understand that to lead is to influence others to accomplish tasks. As such, I see interpersonal relations and care for subordinates as a much more important part of leadership competence.

Having arrived at a more mature attitude towards leaders and authority figures, I believe that I am mostly inline with the views of my parents and grandparents. In my experience, all three generations seem to believe that loyalty and obedience are owed to legitimate authorities, though there is a distinction between leading and being in-charge. That distinction is ability, and while we may have duties to those in authority regardless of ability, we only owe admiration to leaders with demonstrated competency. I think this consistency is due to a fundamentally conservative view-point held through several generations on both sides of my family. That said, some trends are noticeable. My grandparents tend to lean slightly more libertarian, and so are more apt to emphasize the skepticism of incompetent leaders than the obligations towards legitimate authority. My own parents lean slightly more authoritarian, and I myself lean even a bit further still, putting more emphasis on the duties of subordinates and commanders. I believe this change in my parents can be explained by the fact that, living in St. Louis, MO, they raised children in a less secure world than their own parents did, contributing to a higher regard for law and order, while my own views are likely influenced by my military background.

This discussion of incompetent authorities raises the question of why so many in positions of power lack the aptitude for their role despite the immense volume of literature readily available on the subject of leadership. This is a complex issue that is likely influenced by dozens of trends in social life, education, belief systems, et cetera. That said, I would like to highlight what I believe is an oft-overlooked contributing factor. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, students were taught a "Great Man" view of history: that the actions of certain monumental figures, such as Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon, were key to understanding the course of human events. In recent decades, pedagogy has turned to more sociological understandings, emphasizing the large-scale technological and societal trends that contributed to events rather than the decisions of key individuals. While it may well be the case that this later approach results in more accurate historiography, it is clear that it is inferior at the task of cultivating leaders. Whereas, in the past, youth were told that individual human agency was the determinant in history, they are now told that events are shaped by forces beyond their control. Is it any wonder then that they are less interested in the art and science of leadership?