Leadership, Change, and Life-Long Learning

Life is unpredictable and change is an iron law of life. Leadership is one of the processes human groups generate in response to change and one of the processes that creates change. But how can leadership be effective if people naturally tend to resist change and if things are changing so rapidly and so profoundly that it’s hard enough just trying to figure out what’s going on?

The frantic pace of change in our technologized, computerized world is one of the most difficult problems facing leaders in all sorts of groups and organizations. How can leaders help their groups solve problems if those problems keep changing from day to day?

Nine or ten generations ago, tradition was as strong a force as change, and people mostly grew up to be whatever their parents had been. Nowadays no generation faces the same problems or circumstances as their parents, and a generation gap seems built in to contemporary history even when the generations get along fairly well.

At the same time, all our social organizations were built to solve yesterday’s problems, not necessarily today’s or tomorrow’s. In our educational institutions, which are supposed to prepare leaders for the future, all we can really hope to teach most of the time are the lessons of the past. Nevertheless, education is still the key to leadership for the future.

Not necessarily just the kind of formal education that takes place in schools during youth, but the kind of education that continues throughout the life cycle. That kind of education is based on curiosity and recognition of problems needing innovative solutions. It’s also based on flexibility of character and a willingness to break old habits and look for new answers to new dilemmas.

When it comes to effective leadership, old dogs have got to keep learning new tricks, or their followers won’t keep following.

The Drive to Achieve

What motivates people to seek leadership roles? Well, some people who wind up in leadership roles don’t seek them at all but find themselves accepting leadership through accidents of fate or circumstance. Some simply enjoy relationships in groups and like working with followers and peers. Some seek power, prestige, and other forms of ego gratification.

Over the long haul, however, the most effective leaders tend to be motivated by achievement and problem solving.

A number of years ago, a psychologist named David MacClellan did a series of studies which suggest that a very important motive for many people in leadership roles is achievement. Subsequent studies seem to agree that some people simply like to accomplish things and take great satisfaction in setting and achieving goals.

Business leaders and entrepreneurs seem to be particularly driven by achievement motives, even more so than by dreams of wealth or material comfort. The most effective leaders of all, in fact, seem driven not only to solve problems for their group or community but also to seek new problems to solve. Such leaders are particularly effective because they never cease to help their group or community to identify and address the problems confronting them.

Solutions to social problems always contain the seeds of new and different problems, so leaders who rest on their laurels don’t stay leaders very long.