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What Is Leadership? Can It Be Learnt?

In: How Managers Have Learnt to Lead

Author

Listed:
  • Steve Kempster

    (University of Cumbria)

Abstract

Warren Bennis has wonderfully captured the essence of leadership as being ‘like beauty, it’s hard to define but you know it when you see it’ (1989: 1). Our ability to judge what is beautiful is learnt through our lives but we struggle to understand how such personal judgment is acquired. The complexity of the phenomenon of leadership and the obscurity of the sources from whence it is learnt tend to lean our orientation to suggesting the people who are born to lead. This chapter will outline the case for the argument that leadership is a socially constructed process and, as such, it is learnt through our social interactions. Leadership appears not to have certainty of definition but is ever present in daily usage and is understood, constructed and practiced in an idiosyncratic way. In this sense, leadership practice is learnt, but importantly, not necessarily in a conscious manner. The inability of scholars to agree on a universal definition is testimony to this socially constructed and learnt process.

Suggested Citation

  • Steve Kempster, 2009. "What Is Leadership? Can It Be Learnt?," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: How Managers Have Learnt to Lead, chapter 2, pages 27-52, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-23474-1_2
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230234741_2
    as

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