Leaders: Myth and Reality

by General Stanley McChrystal

The first real competitor to trait-based leadership was introduced in the mid-twentieth century by behavioral theorists, for whom leadership involved an education; they insisted that leaders were made, not born. On that assumption, leadership was less intrinsic to a person’s character and was more about learned behavior, and therefore more accessible. Not surprisingly, it was about then, when the Great Man seemed to be losing some of his luster, that would-be leaders stopped reading Plutarch. This transition also coincided with the post–World War II boom in industrialization, which created strong demand for management of factory workers. In this new reality, leaders could now be fashioned from whole cloth. Also not surprising, this period saw the rise of a for-profit “leadership industry” to train and develop leaders. In turn, the view that leadership could be taught only helped spur the idea that it was a learnable set of skills. And while thinking about leadership as a set of learned behaviors was democratizing in its implications, it ultimately did little to divert attention away from the individual leaders themselves.