Most people live much of their lives in groups—when they work, when they worship, when they play, when they learn. And it seems all groups do need leaders, for better or for worse. But leaders can make or break a group. Their attitudes and behavior strongly influence the group’s performance and also the amount of satisfaction enjoyed by group members, as everyone knows from direct experience with teachers, administrators, supervisors, committee chairpersons, coaches, managers, clergy and elected officials.
It is equally true of our society, and a fact often overlooked, that most people at one time or another are thrust into a position of leading a group. Most people become parents, for example, a leadership position in relation to the children. The teacher, too, is a leader of his classroom of students. Each person is a leader who gets chosen to direct a committee or task group, who is elected president of a volunteer organization, who assumes responsibility as a scout leader or camp director. Of the countless people who take on these varied leadership roles, how many find it a truly rewarding and fulfilling experience?
How many can honestly assess their performance as a “job well done”? How many encounter troublesome resistance to their conscientious attempts to lead—or even hostility, jealousy, unfriendliness? How many end up saying, “Never again!”? If being a leader turns out to be a bad experience, it is almost always because of the leader’s own ineffectiveness. And considering that few people ever get any kind of specific training in leader effectiveness, it is easy to understand why being a leader so often is difficult, draining and disappointing.
Research has shown that one of the primary reasons leaders fail is that they are promoted into positions that make it necessary to work closely with others. Being untrained in the requisite skills for building good relationships and group-centered teams, they are unable to harness the creativity of team members. They fail because they do not know how to build equalitarian or partnership relationships.