Can Leadership Be Taught? Perspectives From Management Educators

This article presents the results of a survey of management educators on business leadership education. The management educators consulted here generally concurred that leadership requires a particular kind of education. Leadership education, like leadership itself, must rely on heuristic approaches such as mentoring, coaching, patterning, and, trial-and-error experience. Most educators agreed that individual personality traits provide at least part of the basis upon which leadership skills are built, and such characteristics reach stability by adolescence. Hence, a frame is established that drives how future managers view their roles, their style of communicating, and their modes of interaction with others. Clearly, these frames can change, and individuals can learn to view things differently. Managers, like educators, continue to grow socially, physically, and intellectually. However, this early grounding and foundation may strongly influence the choice of career or profession, the style or attitude toward work relationships, and the approach of managerial roles and interactions, including leadership roles.