INSPIRING LEADERS AREN’T BORN, THEY’RE MADE

Abstract

The authors (Galinsky, a Columbia Business School professor), and Levin (research associate at Columbia University specializing in the dynamics of power and status), write about “three insights about leadership, and about human nature.” Their research focused on leaders who were inspiring, as well as, on the opposite side, those who were infuriating. In their words, the first insight is that inspiring and infuriating leaders exist on an enduring continuum that is made up of three universal factors. They begin with an anecdote about an airline pilot, Tammie Jo Shults, who captained her passengers to safety in 2018 when the plane’s left engine exploded. “As Tammie Jo Shults illustrates,” the authors write, “an inspiring leader is Visionary, an Exemplar, and a Mentor.” For the second insight, they write “Visionary fulfills the need for meaning and purpose. Exemplar fulfills the need for protection and passion. Mentor fulfills the need for belonging and status.“For insight three, as to the longstanding question of whether leaders are born or made: they write that ”this universal set of inspiring behaviors can be taught, developed, and nurtured.” “To be visionary,” they write, “you need to a) craft a big picture, values-based, optimistic vision of the future, b) simplify and visualize into its core and c) repeat it again and again.”