While researching how successful people were in transferring leadership skills from one type of business to another (like the route of going from acting to politics that a number have traveled), I came across an article entitled “7 Reasons Leaders Can’t Transfer their Success to Other Organizations.” It sounded like a good place to start digging for ideas. Only the seven reasons were a list of universal characteristics of that could be applied to leadership at any place[1]– not the challenges which leaders face making it hard for them to succeed in another organization.
Why did the title not match the content? The author’s main premise was that leadership was either something you had or didn’t have, showing definite bias towards the belief that leaders are born. But the article hedged on the saying that leadership was strictly innate, instead ambiguously stating that “Leadership can be taught, but leadership is more of an attitude than a set of learned skills.”[2]
Research has been done on how to change attitudes, and apparently attitudes are not stable. They can change due to social pressure. Often people assimilate the behaviors of people around them, even when it rubs against their beliefs because that causes less friction.[3] However a resulting cognitive dissonance occurs. A longitudinal study found that most people change their beliefs to match their actions.[4] Other researchers have found that there is not a high correlation between attitudes and overt behaviors.[5] People can comply with the demands of peers without changing their internal beliefs.
Individual motivation can also cause as change in attitudes. Often this is generated by a traumatic event, or a long period of suffering. Sometimes the resulting attitude is a stronger desire to be inclusive, or do what one considers right, and sometimes it is a retreat into bitterness. This is probably not a technique that people would be willing to pay for in order to learn leadership skills. Also, there is the likelihood that it will not work.
How about people who march to a different drummer, for whom the pressures of society have little effect on their attitudes. They may become a leader or an outcast or sometimes both. How many leaders can you name than were imprisoned at one time? Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Fidel Castro, Leon Trotsky, Adolf Hitler…. Now, you may not agree with all of their ideas, but enough people did for them to become leaders in their countries. You may recognize that these people are exceptions, typically when it comes to leaders, the majority of people prefer someone who supports the status quo, or a return to an idealized past, something that they can picture because they are familiar with it.
So this leaves us with few options for changing of attitudes (if leadership skill is actually based on attitudes). People can either surround themselves with those who have the leadership style attitudes and try to imitate them, or start acting like they own these attitude, whether they do or not. However, this very behavior has a common nickname, “Fake it ‘til you make it,” that brings it inyo obvious conflict with “Be Authentic” another attitude in the article “7 Reasons Leaders Can’t Transfer their Success to Other Organizations.” [6]
My conclusion? Have a healthy suspicion of anyone who claims to be able to easily improve your leadership ability. It is a long hard road, which does include extensive learned skills and the willingness to go through experiences that will stretch you and even make you suffer.
In centuries past leadership was earned by people as they aged, survived difficulties, gained wisdom, and expertise through years of experience, or often it was grasped by ambitious persons with a touch of ruthlessness. Throughout the history of humans, leaders who rose above the rank and file bestowed leadership positions on their progeny. Two or three generations after the founding of a dynasty, there was frequently trouble within. Evidently bringing up children in a privileged state was not ideal for turning them into good leaders.
As people age they get more experienced handling the real world. So older people will tell stories about the younger generation throwing tantrums, crying and protesting over elections. However, riots over elections has occurred before. Ever hear of the Chicago eight? Or the Kent State riots? I recall a lot of Baby Boomers taking to the streets to protest what went on when they were young. In fact, we did a lot more protesting than the millennials have done.
It was April 22, 1970, and I was so envious of my friend. Warm buttery sunshine flowed from a mostly cloudless sky, and the breeze was just a gentle brush of air. Basically a picture perfect day in the small college town in the middle of the Illinois prairie. And I was stuck in the confines of a brick and concrete high school while my friend had joined a group from Illinois State University outside. All my parents had to do was sign a form permitting me to go, but my mother didn’t think it was wise for me to be mingling with the much older college students.
To my grandparents, born around 1900, money meant a kind of stability that allowed them to stay in one place and raise a family. Both of my grandparents had moved frequently as children. My grandfather wanted to buy a farm to provide a living that didn’t have depend on the whims of working for a boss in a company. Inauspiciously, he borrowed money to do this a few years before the crash of 1929. During the depression the farm provided food, but very little money as most people simply didn’t have the extra funds to buy fresh produce. Sometimes they would receive clothes or other goods for fresh truck crops. The person who loaned him the money was wise enough wait to for his money rather than take over a farm he probably could not sell to anyone else. My grandparent’s less fortunate relatives came to stay with them, so having the money was not as important as a place to call home.
What turns an ordinary person into a leader? Is it an inborn aptitude; is it a learned skill? More than anything else a chance to practice leading provides the key. Leaders learn by leading. One of the things that Millennials are finding is they are just beginning to get opportunities to do this, but a large percentage of the smaller Gen X group that preceded them had even less chance to do this.
You have heard it so often that it may seem cliché. What Millennials want at work is not more money. They want a higher quality of work/life balance. That means more flexibility… to work from home in pajamas, to take time to flesh out their new ideas, or to be given an opportunity to be in charge. The increase for ranking wealth as very important by college freshman, from 40% for Boomers to 70% for Millennials
Earlier this week was the 75th anniversary of “A date which will live in infamy” as President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in the U.S territory of Hawaii. The fact that the United States was vulnerable to such a destructive attack shook American confidence to its roots. The United States wanted Japanese to leave China and Southeast Asia, and had finally halted oil imports, but the two countries were not at war, and this reason for this unannounced aggression seemed unfathomable.
Early in my career at the turn of the decade (between the 1970s and 1980s) my boss gathered everyone in the office to watch a film on generational differences. When the polished speaker concluded his presentation, I noticed an interesting omission.
By Gage – 2012 Electoral College map, CC BY-SA 4.0, 
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