The Hindu Business Line : <I>Images of leadership </I>

A survey conducted over three years by the faculty of Wharton School of Management is both novel and revealing. It sought to elicit from 1918 newly admitted students their images of leadership with brief reasons for their choice. As is only to be expected, a good number selected Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Napoleon on horseback, George Washington crossing the Delaware river, Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, Confucius, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and New York City firemen after 9/11, and sports figures like Michael Jordan.

There were surprisingly quite a few for whom inanimate objects represented leadership traits of one kind or another. A sampler: Trees (leaders are grounded yet visionary); a sieve and funnel (leaders generate or collect ideas and get them into focus); a crew team (pulling together to provide leadership); silly putty (a leader must be flexible); a pillow (accommodating); and geese flying in formation (suggesting that leaders often work both separately and interdependently).

Some even saw in padlocks, clasped hands, charm bracelets and puzzle pieces the essential multiple, interlocking elements that make for mutual reinforcement and action in tandem. Luckily, there was no mention of vultures, crocodiles, jackals, vipers, scissors or knives, as might have been the case had a similar survey been conducted among Indian students!

Another interesting finding of the Wharton survey is that students explain their choice by the use of "transformational" verbs with a dynamic purport such as lead, make, follow, inspire, achieve, believe and become in preference to "transactional" (or authoritarian) verbs such as take, order and give.

(See Web site knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1417.cfm for a report on the survey)

B. S. Raghavan