CommerceUVA Fall 2007 (Investors' Report) - McIntire School of ...

likewise, greatness isn’t merely thrust upon a few people who
happen to be in the right place at the right time. What a contingent
view of leadership does mean is that all sorts of people
can emerge as leaders when there’s a happy fit between their
particular traits and skill sets, and the context in which they
find themselves.
“sometimes people who’ve been successful will have this
attitude that ‘you can put me in any situation, and i’ll put my
leadership skills to work and lead effectively,’” Cowen says.
“But this is a misconception. think about those ‘turnaround
specialist’ Ceos who come in and do a fabulous job of reshaping
corporations in crisis, or about entrepreneurs who are able
to create fantastic businesses from scratch. often, the same
people are completely ineffective as leaders a few years down
the road, when things have changed. their skill set or style may
no longer be appropriate to the situation at hand.”
Learning to Lead
so what does this mean for managers who want to improve
their ability to lead? the answer, as it turns out, is actually quite
encouraging. if leadership is about matching the right skills and
traits with the right situations, then people who can develop a
firm understanding of their own strengths (and weaknesses),
and who can also learn to assess situations with honesty and
analytic rigor, can begin to create—or place themselves in—
contexts that allow them to become outstanding leaders.
14 • CommerceUVa
The notion of the “naturalborn
leader” has been
discredited, and there’s a
growing acknowledgment
that leadership can be
taught.
—Gary Ballinger
Know Thyself
indeed, says mcintire professor Gary Ballinger, who also teaches
“organizational Behavior” in iCe, as well as a fourth-year course
in leadership, “there’s been a real change in academic thought
over the past few decades: the notion of the ‘natural-born
leader’ has been discredited, and there’s a growing acknowledgment
that leadership can be taught.”
the crucial first step in the leadership learning process,
Ballinger says, is to come to recognize not only your particular
set of strengths and weaknesses, but also your values and the
associated goals toward which you’re willing to work. “people
often giggle at the notion of a leadership coach,” he says. “But
these coaches exist for a reason, and they can be a critical factor
in a leader’s success. a good leadership coach can help you
do something incredibly difficult—and that’s engage in disciplined
self-reflection, so that you come to really understand
your own skills and character traits, as well as your goals and
values.”
it’s precisely this sort of self-knowledge that mcintire professor
karen Jansen advocates and that she works to cultivate
in the “reflected best-self” exercise through which she leads
third-year students as part of the iCe curriculum. the sevenstep
exercise involves having students compose a “best-self
portrait” by contemplating the circumstances under which
they’ve performed to the best of their abilities, then integrating
their own thoughts on the matter with those solicited from