Leadership is a concept which is frequently talked about in our society. This is a presidential election year, and candidates of every party and at every level are proclaiming that they stand ready to provide "leadership" if only we will elect them. As a nation, we worry about what we perceive as a lack of leadership, not only in public affairs but in many walks of life.
"Two hundred years ago," writes Warren Bennis (1989: 33)
when the nation's founders gathered in Philadelphia
to write the Constitution, the United States had a
population of only 3 million people, yet six world
class leaders contributed to the making of that
extraordinary document. Today, there are more than
240 million of us, and we have Ollie North, the
thinking man's Rambo. What happened?
Yet leadership seems to be surprisingly difficult to define in a way that tells what leaders actually are, or what they really do. Joseph C. Rost (1991) examined writings on leadership through the twentieth century, and found that concepts of leadership changed over the years. In the first three decades of the century, definitions emphasized "control and centralization of power" (Rost, 1991: 47). In the 1930s, the emphasis began to change to an examination of the traits of leaders and of the groups they led. Group dynamics held the field through the 1950s. Then, in the 1960s, the focus turned toward the idea that leaders and their followers were brought together by shared goals.
By the 1980s, the focus turned back toward what has been called the "Great Man" theory of leadership the leader is anindividual who has the ability, in some way, to get others to do as the leader wishes. Rost (1991: 7071) notes that this is an old theory long rejected by most behavioral theorists, and antifeminist in its overtones even though one of the outstanding "Great Men" of the 1980s in world...