Leadership Understanding
In leadership theory, there are many statements that caught our attention for the relevance of their truths. In this case, James McGregor Burns offers that “Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.” (1978, p. 2). Based on my experience in learning and applying leadership, I will present the merits of his statement.
One of the merits of this statement is the awareness of the leadership concept. The statement creates the idea that many people around the world are noticing the importance of observing leadership, because it is the ability that is able to change and challenge the current human processes. According to Greenleaf, “all of this, a truly remarkable social, political, and social transformation, stemmed from one individual’s conceptual leadership.” (2002, p. 48). The significance of the observation in a phenomenon is the idea that this can create real change and give answers to problems that humanity faces, as Greenleaf’s statement denotes that remarkable transformation can come from leadership.
Also McGregor’s statement is that people are trying to understand leadership, although with not much success. When a person is trying to understand a concept, there is real interest in the person to know that concept really well in order to put it into practice. That relevance of people that are trying to understand this leadership phenomenon is to know how practice this ability with more efficiency. Although, there is much to learn in the process, the merit for giving an effort to understand leadership provides a hope for the future.
In contrast, there are two main shortcomings of McGregor’s statement. First, since leadership is not really well understood, there could not be enough progress in its implementation. The lack of understanding of the concept creates a big gap between the internalization of the concept, and its correct implementation, which delays the results that...