Leadership Cannot Be Taught

Because leadership is essentially an aesthetic activity, it can't be taught. The most schools can do is provide some of the tools and techniques that can be used in cre­ative work, but they cannot create creativity. One can be taught to draw, sculpt, compose, and write better than one would otherwise, but one cannot be taught to do so with creative excellence.

Students are taught to seek solutions that their teachers expect; student success depends on it. This even carries over to corporate managers who, when presented with a problem, want to know what kind of solution their bosses expect. This approach precludes creativity because creativi­ty is the production of solutions that are not expected. Transformational leaders are driven by ideas, not by the expectations of others. They are skillful at beating the sys­tem, not surrendering to it.