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8/25 Blog Post Elina Bhagwat

All three readings assert several claims about the true meaning of leadership and how history relates to leadership. Corfield makes an interesting claim that “all people are living histories.” This means that everyone has a past and events in their lives that have brought them to their current point in life. I think that this concept is important to look at when studying leadership and how to act as a successful leader. With studying history also comes examining human beings and how humans have learned from the past. This relates to Bass’ claim that the “leader should be the most important element of government.” This claim may have been more relevant while monarchies were more common, but as times progress and we learn from history, so does leadership. In the same sense, Corfield mentions that humans have the ability to learn from “vanished” cultures, further supporting the claim that history can tell us a lot about successful leaderships.

Bass makes a claim that leadership in itself has many definitions and meanings depending on the institution and environment in which the leadership is discovered. This directly relates to Corfield’s ideas about the distinction between cultures and societies throughout history. Corfield says that one cannot learn from the future but humans must learn from the past. History is always being made and with this, we learn from events that have occurred and people that have lived in the past. What I think Bass really means when he says leadership has many definitions is that leadership is constantly evolving just like history. How we learn from history and the past is also how we evolve our leadership styles and use prior leaders to change what makes a successful leader in the present day.

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3 Comments

  1. Delaney Demaret Delaney Demaret

    Great point! I think that both authors reflected the idea that evolution through time, as a concept, heavily affects academia and the way we progress our studies. One must consider time (and its constructs) as an added matter of complexity. For example, while leaders and the concept of a successful leader has long been discussed worldwide, the study of leadership as a collective movement and theory began much later in time. Thus, students of leadership should keep in mind the presence of evolution as we learn.

  2. Zachary Andrews Zachary Andrews

    I completely agree with the statement made by Bass and reiterated by you stating that “leadership in itself has many definitions and meanings depending on the institution and environment in which the leadership is discovered.” This statement is very valuable because of the different variations of leaders. There is not one good leader, there are numerous good leaders and they are all good because they focus on a different aspect of life. Some leaders run countries, others run civil rights movements whiles others run sports teams. There are so many different types of leaders and that’s why this statement is so powerful, becasue there is no “right” or “correct” leader, there are so many different types of leaders that can fulfill that role while other leaders just don’t. Those leaders that don’t fulfill that role; however, are meant to lead other teams/movements/partake in another leadership role.

  3. Annie Waters Annie Waters

    Your point about the contingency of leadership is really important! It was one of my biggest takeaways from the readings as well; leadership is extremely contextual, depending greatly on time, culture, societal history, and in individual leadership positions, individual history as well. It’s interesting to think about these parallel factors in the examination of individual leaders–a biographical study of a past presidents might focus on his personal life experiences while a more political study would be centered on his actions as driven by large-scale societal pressure, but rarely do we discuss the interactions between these forces. I think this really begs the question as to whether leadership positions can be truly individual, or if they are inherently communal by nature of their role in society.

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