Can Leaders be Modelled ?

After my long date with leadership issues I related them back to what we practice in the field. Everywhere I see some kind of modelling practice in place to determine the behaviors that make up a successful leader. All is well if these behaviors are universal and unaffected by time factor. But we are faced with a tough answer to the question : Would copying behaviours of "current" leaders would produce successful "future" leaders?

It seems to me perfectly natural to model a technical job or a purely managerial job but leadership is something special , something different isn't it. They are the ones who break conventions who strikes gold and who scales unknown peaks that others haven't even dreamt of. Are we not arresting the whole idea of leadership and by modelling it? I set out to find what is going among people who think on similar lines.

I found a perfect companion in Margot Cairnes author of best selling book "Approaching the Corporate Heart". Here are some of quotes from one of her articles titled "Competency theory Leadership". The full article is available here http://adtimes.nstp.com.my/jobstory/feb26b.htm

Dr. Mcelland (proponent of Competency theory and associated practices) believed he could take pieces of different men, sew them together, charge them with current and create a superior being. So he took features he admired in different people, joined them up, applied electricity and created a monster.

Competency theory is based on studying successful people, breaking down their behaviors, attitudes and skills into measurable bits, and then looking for ways of sewing those bits together to create beings who (most likely) demonstrate superior performance. Based on competency theory leadership development involves training the FUTURE leaders to mimic the observable competencies OF CURRENT LEADERS.The competency theory has even stretched to the realm of emotion where, through work on emotional intelligence, we have managed to turn how we feel emotionally into measurable competencies

Tomorrow's leaders cannot be created by having them mimic the competencies of yesterday's leaders. At best a competency approach can create managers - controllable cogs to grease the organizational wheel, without too much imagination, innovation or change. At worst competency theory can kill the innate brilliance of those with the spark of originality, creativity and inner power that lies at the heart of real leaders.

Leadership comes not from without but from within. Real leadership development involves nurturing the unique potential of each individual, having them be as much themselves as they are capable of being. Real leadership development encourages people to follow their own interests, develop their own unique insights, motivations and capacities. It helps them
bring their innate gifts into relationship with the people and the world around them, encouraging them to make their distinctive contributions to the greater good."

The madness of trying to mimic future leaders with yesterday's competencies comes to light fully when remember the incredible rate of discontinuous change currently occurring globally.Could Bill Gates have been created by training him to behave like the people who headed IBM when Gates worked there? It was those managers who rejected the notion of the operating system that formed the basic product upon which Microsoft was built. Would the competencies of the people who made sliderules have been of any use at all to Tom Watson when he developed IBM? The idea is ludicrous - yet it is the basis of competency theory.

Well that figures the answer isn't it?