After study both the Trait Approach and Skill Approach to Leadership, I am left puzzling over the idea of whether someone is born a leader or if anyone can learn to be a leader. The Trait Approach looks at personality while the Skill Approach looks at competencies (Northouse 2012). Personally, I lean more to the side of the Trait Approach because I have seen too many individuals in leadership roles who were not effective leaders. There are also many examples in history of men and woman with no training in leadership who were incredibly effective leaders.
Business programs in colleges are filled with leadership courses teaching both principle and practice. Smith and Forbes (2001) worked to create a leadership course within an MBA curriculum based on the Skills Approach. After a trial class they found that the most effective course of action was to assess their traits through testing (such as the Myers-Briggs personality assessment) and the student’s career goals. From the collected information a course of action would be put into place that would use both the student’s traits and personal goals to create an MBA program to suit their needs.
To me this shows that an effective leadership program is a combination of both the Trait and Skill Approach. It lends to the idea that there needs to be certain personality traits in an individual that can be augmented through skills training. You cannot teach things like charisma, but you can teach someone with charisma how to communicate more effectively.
Something else that is often overlooked about leadership is that a leader is not doing it alone. Taking the President of the United States as an example (and I am looking more at the title then the individual) he has a staff and a cabinet that help him stay up to speed on what is going on and give there expert opinions on situations that come up. It is not a single individual in a room alone deciding how the country will react to something, but a group of people working together towards a common goal. This holds true even looking at most businesses. A boss usually has support staff and managers that serve under him and are looked to for opinions on business related decisions.
In conclusion, I would just like to say that I don’t think a leader is born or made, but instead is a combination of both ideas.
References
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (6th edition). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
Smith, J. E., & Forbers, J, B. (2001). Creating a competency-based leadership and managerial skills program: A model for smaller schools. Journal of Management Education, 25(2), 209-230. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/195727192?accountid=13158
LUKE JOHN GRAHAM says
This is a great argument. I certainly agree with the fact that it there is a ‘happy medium’ between the trait and skills approaches. A leader could possess all the necessary traits that would make him/her be successful leader, but if they do not have any skills they would be useless. The other is also true. A leader may be very skillful in the area in which they are leading but without any of the traits that most leaders have, they would also be useless.
It is my argument that the trait approach might be where it all begins. We can start simply by taking the a few of the traits provided in Northouse(2013) such as self confidence, determination, and intelligence. If a leader is not confident, how could they ever expect others to follow him/her and believe their ideals? If a leader is not determined, how will they engage in practices to enhance their skills? If a leader is not intelligent how may they have the capacity to make decisions?
Certainly the answer to those questions is rather complex. I think your entry is a great way of combining the approaches to help rationalize some of those questions.
References:
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (6th edition). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.