Leadership, Part 2

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Oct 2022

Leadership is the art of influencing human behavior so as to accomplish the mission in the manner desired by the leader.  In part 1, we saw how deep the army went into the psychology of leadership in 1964-65.  It examined the philosophy of John Locke because his philosophical outlook was most influential to the North American mind and likely to reflect the outlook and assumptions on life of the members and future members of the army.  The philosophy of Immanuel Kant was found to deliver the basis for military values: sacrifice, duty, a moral imperative.  The army determined that these two philosophies could be combined harmoniously into a single, coherent leadership doctrine.

Locke and Kant provided the philosophical and psychological basis for a leadership theory, and we left off with the introduction of Dr. Ralph Stodgill, professor of psychology at Ohio State University, and the world’s expert on leadership theory from 1930 through the 1950s.  Since leadership requires followers, both psychology and sociology are involved in the explanation of leader-follower phenomenon, and it was a short step for the army to put together a Leader-Follower-Situation concept.

Previous to Stodgill was the trait theory of leadership, believing that “great men” had certain leadership traits that others don’t have, and that all great leaders are born leaders.  That theory sought to determine the traits that great leaders had that distinguished them from lesser mortals.  The weakness of this approach was these traits couldn’t be transferred to or adopted by others looking to become leaders - great leaders are born that way.  So, what was the point of knowing?

Stodgill began undermining trait theory by observing that certain traits, while they may be useful in some situations, may not be useful in others.  This opens the door to “the situation” as an element of leadership theory.  Nevertheless, the army thought that some leadership traits were significant enough to list ten that distinguished a natural leader from followers: sociability, initiative, persistence, knowing how to get things done, self-confidence, alertness and insight into the situation, cooperativeness, popularity, adaptability, and verbal facility.

This list opens the door to a behavioural understanding of leadership rather than by traits.  Some specific traits, which can be interpreted as being manifested in certain behaviour, gave further evidence that the purpose of the group played a role in the group’s selection of its leadership.  These findings further strengthened the conclusion that a leadership theory ought to be developed along the lines of a leader-follower-situation concept.  Such a concept was highly useful to a military because the army had a fair idea of who the followers would be and the likely situations the group - consisting of leader and followers - would face, namely military ones.  It was also highly useful to develop leadership on the basis of behaviour, which could be taught, rather than personal traits, which could not.

Continuing the justification for adopting its leader-follower-situation concept as the foundation for leadership development in the army, the study went beyond Stodgill to others in the field who observed that leadership is associated with the attainment of group objectives; that leadership implies activity, movement, and getting work done.  The leader seemed to have a position of responsibility in the co-ordination of activities toward the achievement of the group’s goal.

Another significant observation was that there can at times be a figurehead.  In World War 2, it sometimes happened that when the group came under fire, the group looked not to the titular commander but to the guy who knew what to do. Everybody followed him.  When the battle was over, the group reverted to the army imposed configuration.

Hence, the study concluded that a new leadership theory should be based on the leader having personal characteristics manifested in behaviour that bear some relation to the character, activities and goals of the group.  These ideas produce numerous variables that interact in complex ways, meaning that change is a constant factor of the situation.

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