{"id":100,"date":"2018-02-08T16:03:41","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T21:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/?p=100"},"modified":"2018-02-15T09:50:31","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T14:50:31","slug":"great-people-vs-context","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/2018\/02\/08\/great-people-vs-context\/","title":{"rendered":"Great people vs. context"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

For many years, leadership scholars have attempted to pull the conversation away from the person in the position to a discussion about context, situation, or how the person or people in charge were affected by time and place. Think of the historian Thomas Carlyle\u2019s \u201cgreat man\u201d theory of leadership: an account that gave the leader credit for so much of what happens that it left no room for context, time, and place.<\/p>\n

Writing in the mid-nineteenth century, Carlyle opined that we learn best from such great leaders: \u201cGreat Men, taken up in nay way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such an approach has great appeal; we all love to read the biography of a \u201cgreat leader\u201d who saved a country, took a company to a new level, or created a new product. It\u2019s entertaining and inspiring. We see a glimpse of our own potential and wish to emulate the heroes of such stories. We also take comfort in such dramatic human agency: if Churchill [or any great leader] was fully in charge, then leaders can achieve anything and we, too, are in control of our future.<\/p>\n

However, this is the stuff of entertainment rather than the stuff of everyday leadership.<\/p>\n

Most leadership is not so much the product of a great person in control of time and place. Instead, leading is the very messy combination of people, context, and culture. Leadership \u201cbreakthroughs,\u201d<\/a> then, are rarely the result of a great person or people; instead they reflect the steady, context-laden efforts and give-and-take of persons working together to obtain the result.<\/p>\n

Similarly, a new product is created when an idea builds on an idea until the cumulative effect bursts forth in what seems to be a sudden bolt of lightning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many years, leadership scholars have attempted to pull the conversation away from the person in the position to a discussion about context, situation, or how the person or people in charge were affected by time and place. Think of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":592,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72455,75706],"tags":[72456],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership-theory","category-theories-models-of-leadership","tag-leadership-breakthroughs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/leadershipspeculations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}