This document discusses factors that contribute to the development of leadership skills. It summarizes that leadership is complex and influenced by a variety of variables, including personal traits, drives for power, training, experience, intelligence, competence, power, circumstances, and the needs of followers. The document then examines specific leadership traits, leadership drives, the debate around whether leaders are born versus made, formative experiences that shape leaders, the importance of both experience and training, different sources of power for leaders, and factors that enable charismatic leadership.

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
LEADERSHIP SKILLS
The Making of Leaders

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
There is a mystery about how leaders become leaders.
Some people are born into positions of authority but do not
have the skills of leadership; others are born into lowly
positions but rise to lead millions of people. This unit
explores the different factors which contribute towards
developing leadership skills. The factors are varied and
include education and power, personal drives and inherent
traits. It is hard not to conclude that leadership is not
something people have or are born with but a complex mix
of variables both within their control and outside it.

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
LEADERSHIP VARIABLES
The following are the key variables which will determine
whether someone becomes a leader or remains one of the
led:
1. personal traits such as integrity and enthusiasm
2. drives for power over others
3. training and upbringing
4. experience
5. intelligence
6. competence in handling difficult situations
7. power
8. circumstances
9. the needs of followers.
"Leadership is not a property of the individual but a complex
relationship among the variables." (John McGregor)

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
LEADERSHIP TRAITS
In his book "Leadership", John Adair argues that it is the
juxtaposition of certain traits that produces leadership
ability. These traits include: courage; integrity; enthusiasm;
warmth; calmness; toughness; and fairness.
Because these traits are in all of us, we all have the potential
to become leaders. What determines whether we do or
don't are the drives inside us, our experiences and training
and the circumstances in which we find ourselves that
necessitate the call to leadership. But the traits still have to
come through.
The idea that leaders became leaders because they had
certain inborn qualities that others didn't have can be
traced back to the assertion by Thomas Carlyle in 1849 that
“the history of the world was the biography of great men”.
This gave rise to the idea that leaders were born, not made,
a theory that held sway for over 100 years.

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
JJ DID TIE BUCKLE
The United States Marine Corps is one of the most
prestigious units of the American Armed Forces. One of the
reasons for its high standing is its focus on leadership
training and its adoption of 14 leadership traits that is
known by the acronym, JJ DID TIE BUCKLE.
This is what the 14 letters of the acronym stand for.
1. Justice (be fair)
2. Judgment (good decisions and common sense)
3. Dependability (be there for others)
4. Initiative (see what needs done and do it)
5. Decisiveness (quick and timeous action)
6. Tact (work without conflict)
7. Integrity (live according to values)
8. Enthusiasm (the can-do attitude)
9. Bearing (how you conduct yourself)
10. Unselfishness (put others first)
11. Courage (responsibility in the face of danger)
12. Knowledge (the skills to do the job)
13. Loyalty (respect and care for those above and below)
14. Endurance (keep going).

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
LEADERSHIP DRIVES
David McClelland has argued that we all have three
motivational drives: the drive for affinity, the drive for
achievement and the drive for power. In each of us, one
drive tends to dominate.
When the drive for affinity is strongest, this is likely to be
met at organisation levels where people band together in
teams. Achievement drives are most often met at middle
ranking levels of organisations where there is a high level of
operational work passed down from above or up from
below.
The drive for power is the predominant drive which pushes
people to the top levels of teams and organisations and is
thus the most evident drive in formal leaders.

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Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
MADE OR BORN?
There is an unresolved debate about whether leaders are
made or born. Some argue that leaders are those who
display leadership skills and that, like any other skill, these
can be taught and practised. On the other hand, some argue
that birth into certain environments pre-destines some of us
to be leaders.
Another case is made out for first-borns. The following
leaders were first-born: Winston Churchill, William the
Conqueror, George Washington; Alexander the Great; Joan
of Arc; Benjamin Disraeli; F. D. Roosevelt. Stalin and Hitler
were fourth children but the three older children died at
birth. Mahatma Gandhi was a fourth child but the first child
of his father's fourth marriage.
Adolf Hitler was the fourth child of his parents but the 3
elder children all died in infancy.
Florence Nightingale had an elder sister, Frances
Parthenope. She was born in 1819 in Naples and took her
name from Parthenopolis, a Greek settlement in Naples.
Florence was born in 1820 in Florence and similarly took her
name from the place of her birth.

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Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES
When leaders of businesses are asked what formative
experiences influenced them most, they often recall
traumatic experiences in childhood or youth and the
emotional impact of role models.
Martin Taylor, group chief executive of Barclays Bank, says:
"The loss of my father when I was eight, just when I was
coming to terms with going to boarding school, was a
traumatic experience. I had to learn to grit my teeth and get
on with life."
Ian McKenzie, chief executive of Blue Circle Cement says:
"Two people influenced me most as a boy: my father who
was very successful in the war and Sir Winston Churchill
whose writings and speeches conveyed to me the power of
communication and inspiration. Both of them gave me the
can-do mentality."

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Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
EXPERIENCE OR TRAINING?
John Storey, director of the Human Resource Research unit
at Loughborough University, has studied the early
experiences and training of top UK and Japanese managers
in the engineering industry.
His findings show that whereas education, early experience
and challenging assignments are important in the UK, one-
to-one learning from role models takes precedence in Japan.
1. 61% of Japanese managers rated having a role model as
the most significant leadership influence on them,
compared to only 20% in the UK
2. 5% of Japanese managers rated early education as the
most significant leadership influence on them,
compared to 28% in the UK
Both Japanese and UK managers rated early responsibility as
equally important in learning how to lead.

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Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
COMPETENCE
Most people acknowledge that their leaders should be
competent. The stories of incompetent generals in wars
from the Crimean War to the First World War provide
evidence that some basic skills and knowledge of events are
essential in leading others.
Competence can come from two sources: experience and
innate intelligence. Professor Fred Fiedler has studied the
respective merits of experience and innate intelligence in
leaders. His conclusion is that...
1. When leaders are in high stress situations (for example,
the heat of battle), experience is more valuable than
intelligence
2. When leaders are in low stress situations (and perhaps
have more time to think), intelligence is more valuable
than experience.

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
POWER
How much influence a leader can exert over others depends
on the type of power that he or she can wield and how
important this is perceived to be by the leader's followers.
One of the most important studies on power was conducted
by psychologists John French and Bertram Raven, in 1959.
They identified five types of power which they increased
later to seven. Since their study, the ability of leaders to use
some of these powers has significantly decreased in favour
of others.
In addition to these traditional sources of power, a leader
can use any other kinds of leverage that will give him or her
influence over others, eg age, experience, admired deeds,
charismatic personality, sexual attractiveness, and high-
profile visibility.

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
TEDDY BEAR LEADERS
Manfred Kets de Vries of Insead, the management school in
France, says that it is common for chief executives to be
egotistic, irrational, neurotic and hooked on praise.
In a study of top chief executives, he found that a large
number suffered from mid-life crises; had psychiatric
symptoms; suffered from depression (23%) and alcohol
abuse (16%). Additionally, many were victims of the 4 P's:
power, perks, pay and podium (self-presentation).
Good leaders were always very competitive; more extrovert
than introvert; energetic and conscientious. They also had
what de Vries calls a "teddy bear" quality, creating the
illusion that every person who entered their office was the
object of their tenderest concern, the only one in the world
that mattered to them.

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
FRED FIEDLER’S MODEL
One well-known model of how to adapt your leadership
style to stay in tune with your followers is Fred Fiedler's
Contingency Model.
In this model, Fiedler suggests that a leader always has to
decide where to focus his or her efforts; at one end, on the
task, at the other, on the team.
Using a questionnaire which asked leaders to select their
Least Preferred Co-worker throughout their career, based
on scales such as friendliness, openness, and
cooperativeness, a leader could be judged to have either a
human relations orientation or a task orientation.
Successful leaders are able to adapt their leadership style to
the circumstances they find themselves in. At different
times during the Second World War, Winston Churchill
addressed himself with the same vigour to both task and
people, pursuing the task of winning the war as well as
addressing the morale of the country through inspiring
speeches.

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
CIRCUMSTANCES
History shows us again and again that certain people come
to the fore when the time is right and they are needed.
Often these are people who were failed leaders, voices in
the wilderness or discarded men and women, such as the
Winston Churchill of 1940.
Somehow a moment arrives when the circumstances and
the individual seem made for each other. In organisational
terms, these critical moments may be when the company
faces change, when the present leader's style is no longer
right, when there is a threat from outside, or when people
need inspiration. Leaders emerge ready for the task.
However, it is not enough to rely on being appointed leader.
You have to maintain your credibility or you will find that
you no longer have any followers behind you.

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Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
FOLLOWERSHIP
No leader can be successful without good followers but
good followers are not inevitable just because you are the
leader.
John McCallum of the University of Manitoba says there are
8 skills needed to be a good follower and it is as important
in the making of leaders for them to develop these skills in
their followers as it is for them to develop them in
themselves.
Without followers there are no leaders: followers and
leaders exist in a mutually-dependent relationship.

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Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
CHARISMATIC POWER
Oberg has researched the quality that inspires followership
and calls it a leader's charismatic power.
It involves six factors:
1. the leader's ability to demonstrate past success
2. the leader's ability to empathize with their followers
3. the amount of insecurity felt by the followers
4. the age of the followers (the younger they are, the
more open to influence)
5. a situation which involves unclear goals
6. the leader's ability to use symbols and myths to
communicate concepts and ideas.

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Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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The Making of Leaders
Leadership Skills
MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn