Leadership is a Learned Skill

"The one quality that can be developed by studious reflection and practice is the leadership of men." Leadership ability consists of learned skills that are developed throughout a leader's career. Of course, like most abilities, there are many factors in addition to learning that impact leadership competence, including one's personality traits and other inherited abilities. The scientific community has examined extensive data over the years on leadership emergence by using identical twin (MZA twins) studies to analyze the connection between genetics and leadership ability. The overall conclusion from one of the most extensive meta-analytic studies conducted on the subject (Ilies, Gerhardt, & Le, 2004) concludes that 17% of leadership emergence can be attributed to inheritance. This study, as with most studies on genetically inherited leadership skills, focused on what is known as the " Big Five " personality traits: (1) Emotional Stability, (2) Extraversion, (3) Openness, (4) Agreeableness, and (5) Conscientiousness. The finding of 17% was calculated by combining the Big Five traits with cognitive ability (IQ scores). While this definitely reveals that there is some genetic component to leadership ability, it also reveals that significant majority of it is learned. Certainly there is evidence which suggests some leadership aptitude can be predicted through assessing personality traits as part of the selection process. However, the tools used to measure personality are fraught with error, rendering the results far from certain. Therefore, predicting success through the selection process is not the lone silver bullet for selecting leaders. Personality theorist Seymour Epstein commented on one of the critical problems with using psychological trait categories (" factors ") to understand personality: " Rather than explaining behavior, they themselves require explaining. " This is an important hurdle to overcome, as it reveals face validity problems associated with personality testing at the time of selection. For example, while we do know that intelligence (as measured by IQ) is correlated to leadership ability, it is difficult to prove how the talent for flipping 3D shapes or to solve brain teasers correlates to say, motivational speaking or excellent customer service skills. The truth about strong leadership ability goes way beyond genetic inheritance. House and Mitchell (1974) advanced the proposition that effective leaders have the ability to influence and inspire others to voluntarily increase their level of effort to the organization. This is accomplished, according to House and Mitchell, through the leader's unique focus toward satisfying the needs …