BUSI 503 Week 1 Discussion Board Forum 1 Example

Discussion Board Forum 1: Leadership Defined and the Trait Approach

BUSI 503 Leadership Theory, Discussion Board Forum 1 Thread and Reply

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The forum prompt and the classmate are composites; the textbooks, the research and the Scripture cited are real.

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Northouse (2019) treats leadership as a process of influence, one person moving a group toward a goal its members share. The word process matters. It means leadership is something that happens between a leader and followers, not only a quality a leader possesses, and it means leadership is available to anyone, not only to those born with certain traits. That definition is a helpful starting point for the forum's question, whether leaders are born or made, because the honest answer from research is that leadership has a trait component and a learned component, and the process view holds both.

The trait approach, which Northouse (2019) traces to the early "great man" theories, has real evidence behind it. Judge et al. (2002) combined studies of personality and leadership and the five broad personality traits, taken together, turned out to track leadership closely. Outgoing people stood out most often, and dependable and curious people also had an edge, whereas anxious, easily upset people were less likely to lead. Those traits shape who gets noticed and chosen in a group, and who is later judged to have led well.

Some of this tendency may be inherited. Arvey et al. (2006) studied identical and fraternal twins and estimated that about 30 percent of the variation in whether men occupied leadership roles could be attributed to genetic factors. Read the other way, the same study suggests that roughly 70 percent of the variation came from something other than genes, such as experience, opportunity and learning.

That remaining share is where development matters. Lacerenza et al. (2017) combined studies of leadership training programs and showed that well-built programs paid off at every level they measured, from what participants thought of the training to what they learned, how they behaved back at work and how their units performed, especially when programs built in practice, feedback and sessions spread over time. Traits influence where people start; training and experience influence where they finish.

Scripture offers an example of a leader made more than born. Moses protested that he was not eloquent and asked God to send someone else (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Exodus 4:10-13). God did not wait for a more naturally gifted leader; he equipped the one he had called, and Moses grew into the role over forty years.

Reply to Brittany

Brittany, your story about the shy colleague who became an excellent store manager after years of small leadership assignments fits the research well, and I think it shows something the trait debate often misses: leadership develops over time, not in a single training session. Day et al. (2014) surveyed twenty-five years of leader development research and concluded that growth unfolds across years, fed by challenging experiences, honest feedback and a person's own drive to improve, and that it happens within relationships rather than only within individuals. Your colleague's assignments, each slightly harder than the last, are exactly the kind of developmental experiences the review describes. They gave her chances to fail in small ways, to get feedback and to try again, which no classroom course can fully reproduce.

Northouse (2019) would describe your colleague as someone who became a leader through the process of influence, regardless of her traits. One question your story raises is what her supervisors did to make those assignments possible. Did someone deliberately stretch her, or did the opportunities come by chance? If organizations want more leaders like her, they may need to design those experiences on purpose, for example by rotating promising employees through short projects with a mentor attached.

References

Arvey, R. D., Rotundo, M., Johnson, W., Zhang, Z., & McGue, M. (2006). The determinants of leadership role occupancy: Genetic and personality factors. The Leadership Quarterly, 17(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2005.10.009

Day, D. V., Fleenor, J. W., Atwater, L. E., Sturm, R. E., & McKee, R. A. (2014). Advances in leader and leadership development: A review of 25 years of research and theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 63-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.004

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 765-780. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.765

Lacerenza, C. N., Reyes, D. L., Marlow, S. L., Joseph, D. L., & Salas, E. (2017). Leadership training design, delivery, and implementation: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(12), 1686-1718. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000241

Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (8th ed.). SAGE Publications.