How Leadership Should Be Learned

Over the last few years there has been a remarkable amount of words written and spoken about leadership. We have heard about visionary and charismatic leadership and wonder whether or not there is anything left to be said. The discussion has been loud and long about what leaders do, how they think, what sort of critical characteristics they possess, analyses of their "competencies" and, of course, how these can be imparted through education and training. One thing is absolutely clear, our leadership training is failing.

Our leadership education is dominated completely by what could be described as an institutional learning philosophy. The business schools of the country and the corporate training programs revolve around reading about leadership, listening to experts talk about leadership and discussing leadership. When you think about it, some expert somewhere has decided what people should learn about leadership.

What happens then is that experiences are designed for learners so that they can all have the same experiences at the same time, the same place all from the same teaching resource. At the universities, the learners are graded on their understanding of the principles and practices of leadership. This sort of training is failing because it's inappropriate and it has lost the leader centered focus.

It has been suggested that leadership is a learning experience. When you are in a leadership position you will often be so busy getting things done that you will pay little attention to the process of your own learning. The speed and magnitude of change for leaders has placed them in a maelstrom; an environment of turbulence. Institutional learning assumes that leadership can be learned and therefore sets out to teach it. This teaching takes place in a university classroom or a corporate training centre.

None of this can ever adequately teach or train the person who is currently a leader or about to become a leader. Every day a leader is faced with situations that they have never faced before. In this environment they are constantly learning because effectively, they are beginners. They are beginners no matter what training they have received because the training can never anticipate what these leaders are going to face on a day-to-day basis.

At a substantial financial cost, thousands and thousands of learners are trying to learn leadership. And the question has to be asked. "Can you learn something when every day makes you into a beginner?" Leadership is not learned; it is learning.

Leadership is learning every day and having a commitment to learning for life. There is no way that you can stop learning in a leadership position because you don't know what tomorrow will bring. It is time to have a very close look at the way we teach leadership, how people learn leadership and what processes we can facilitate the development of learning leaders.

Peter L Mitchell is a business consultant who has helped many businesses to lift their labor productivity in the workplace at little or low cost.