The Article “Superheroes Are Fun in the Movies But a Myth in the Workplace” By Ric Kelly, gives a real-world perspective on how leadership has changed through the decades. As Kelly points out, at the beginning of the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th century abrasive leaders have sought after. As this was thought to display a sense of confidence, knowledge, and control. This correlates to much of what we have learned throughout the semester as it was a commonly held belief that leaders were born not trained. This view started to shift, as more of a psychological and methodical method began to be applied to the concepts behind leadership. No longer did one have to find the perfect leader, that just so happened to be born with the natural talent to be a leader, but one could find an individual with the traits of leadership and provide them the skills, knowledge, and opportunity to become a leader. This led to the ability of companies to train their leaders for multiple scenarios rather than hoping their leader was naturally equipped to handle whatever situation arises.
However, this methodology only prevails if the right resources are available and allocated to our leaders and future leaders. In order to obtain the best from our leaders, we have to provide them the best. As Kelly states “In short, we need to adopt a more systemwide, holistic approach to developing our leaders.” Meaning that we need to allow for the opportunity and support that a leader would need in order to be successful in the dynamic and complex economic environment that we live in today. This means as Kelly points out having the correct structure, connections, and mindsets. This ties into what we have learned about personality in the workplace and multiple intelligence theory. As Kelly brings to point in his article a leader can no longer work alone or be rewarded for simply being a leader. A leader has to be able to work with others and be relatable. One can see how this would tie into the Big 5 model of personality (which focuses on Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) would relate to this idea. In Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. In addition, the idea of multiple intelligences as well as emotional intelligence and the ability to relate to others relate to Kelly’s article. As Kelly writes on connections and mindsets he is talking about multiple intelligences as he leads the reader to understand the importance of leaders being able to identify networks and work appropriately through those channels. Kelly also directly talks about the idea of multiple intelligences becoming prominent in the ideas surrounding leadership and its functionality.
This ties into the idea of emotional intelligence. Lievens and Chan (2002) represent practical intelligence, emotional intelligence, and social intelligence as overlapping concepts. Each of these concepts helps to build upon the knowledge, skills, and abilities of an individual as they are aided by their intelligence. They found that KSAOs are often ignored when looking at intelligence and their importance to the equation (Lievens & Chan, 2002). In addition, they also feel that multidimensional measures and models more accurately predict on the job performance over singular unitary constructs (Lievens & Chan, 2002). One can see this come into play when looking the results from SJTs and Assessment Centers which has the individual rely upon the breadth of their knowledge, skills, and abilities in order to perform (Lievens & Chan, 2002). MacCann and Roberts (2008) propose that emotional intelligence is really just a set of abilities and should be limited to being contained within the intelligence domain. Kelly points out that the correct intelligence and being emotionally intelligent is a key part of being a leader.