by: Susan Hicks
How do you personally define Leadership? If you think about this question for a minute, do you have to stop because you can’t find the words? Do you instead picture someone who typifies a leader in your mind and use the characteristics and traits of this one person to fill in the blanks as justification of this definition? How does this make you feel? What is it about that one person that stands out among all others that you chose to derive your definition from? Or is it from many, those whom elicit emotions from their traits that in some way you aspire, respect, or have an interpersonal bond with that evokes memories of situations where their leadership has been substantially memorable to you? It is not like I am asking to you explain how you breathe, something so innate, common, personal, and every day that makes definition or explanation, due to its very biological need for survival, extremely difficult to verbally express. But don’t we also need leaders to survive? Where would the world be without those who take giant leaps of faith and lead their teams to research and develop cures for our sickness, to leap forth and lead teams to invent, develop, and manufacture those items we find so necessary in order to live (the automobile, the airplane, the television, computer, and smartphone). You may not be surprised that your definition of leadership will vary greatly from anyone else asked across the world. The difficulty in arriving at any one specific definition of leadership may be largely in part due to the differences of where we grew up and who helped frame our perspectives on leadership according to our particular survival needs at any one time.
The survival of each of us in the human race depended upon our parents leading us and protecting us as children from those things that could hurt us. “Don’t touch the stove”, “Don’t play in the street”, and “Do your homework” were heard commonly in most of our households. Preventative warnings provided to us by our parents that helped to keep us safe and to supplant into our developing memories, the ideas of what was good, bad, and expected of us. Alfred Bandura did research in 1961 of how our models, such as our parents, affected our ability to perceive what was good, bad, and expected of us in situations by our imitation of these models. He put 72 nursery school students through an experiment where he put them separately in a room with an adult model and an inflatable Bobo doll. The children played but observed the adult’s interaction with the doll. When the adult left the room, it was found that the children imitated the adult’s behavior whether that behavior was aggressive (the doll was bad) or non-aggressive (doll was good) toward the doll. It was significantly found that children imitate the behavior of adult models learned by observation (and quite possibly expectations) (Bandura, 1961). Therefore, adult role models we have encountered over the course of our upbringing set the stage for our expectations of good and bad leaders based in our perceptions of our own parent’s leadership.
These perceptions do not stop at our parents. Where we lived, our culture, societal expectations and associated norms of the time, also helped shaped our perceptions of leadership qualities. Although the Trait Approach to leadership focused on “innate qualities… possessed by great…leaders”, flaws in this theory arise when our defining qualities and traits of leaders become so long (such as the generality and inconsistent one definition of leadership), that we therefore cannot “delimit a definitive list of leadership traits” (Northouse, 2013). We are then left to our own perceptions of those leaders that have the traits we associate with good leadership and probably why we have to think of a good leader in order to define leadership. How this arises was posited in the Dynamic Social Impact Theory of Bib Latane. People differ on psychological experiences which are affected by their social influences (tastes, preferences, attitudes, cultural and social expectations, and norms). Latane labels these influences as “strengths” and defines this as the “net of all individual factors” that influences a person in a dynamic (situational) environment (Latane, 1996). As these influences (strengths), immediacy (importance), and the number of persons whom influence the situation increase, so too does the ability for us to imitate and conform to those persons who influence our environment and experiences. We adapt to the beliefs and expectations of our immediate surroundings and base our perceptions of leaders with those who have been culturally, socially, and environmentally depicted as good leaders. This portrayal of strengths may be different for those who lived in the inner city environments of New York in the 1950’s verses New York today or even between the Wild West of history and the California of our present day. As our environment changes, our society places greater emphasis on what is important (even concerning changes in survival… ie…killing buffalo verses owning a smartphone) our perceptions of those persons who lead the way evolve as we do and therefore, changing our definition of leadership.
We may never agree on the definition of leadership. We may never come to the consensus of innate traits, learned imitation, or social influence that creates great leaders. We will agree on one very important fact about leadership. If this society is to continue to progress, if the very nature of humanity is to survive, then therefore, we need leaders to provide that leap of faith that shows us the way and creates a greater place in which we will continue to flourish.
References:
Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S.A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63(3), 575-582. http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/h0045925
Latane, Bibb. (1996). Dynamic Social Impact: The creation of culture by communication. Journal of Communication, 46(4), 13-25. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1996.tb01501.x/abstract;jsessionid=7621183010E9DC24FF3323720B89F14F.f01t01
Northouse, P. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. (6th ed.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.