Leadership - Art or Science?

Check out this post from Slow Leadership called, Don't Be Fooled, Leadership is NOT a Science. As the title suggests, Adrian believes that leadership is an art. I agree. I love this line:

Leadership is an art, not a science. It depends mostly on sensitivity to circumstances, courage to face reality and a continual willingness to do whatever it takes to bring others along.

Ah, yes, sensitivity to conditions - one of the elements of chaos and certainly a good thing to think about when discussing leadership. How do we interview for the ability to be sensitive to circumstances? There's a nice challenge. This post draws heavily on the notion of complex systems (which human systems are) and chaos theory and it is a good read. Check it out.

Comments

[d a morton]

As art does not have laws but does have theories I would agree that leadership is closer to an art than a science. I would also add to that quote that leadership requires vision - like art.

[The Ross Leadership Academy]

Leadership is an art and a science. The people skills, going with your gut, taking risks require an "artistic eye" for the future. But the science is in the collection and accurate assessment of the available data and then thoughtful planning of the path to the future. The best leaders have an appropriate mix of art and science in their leadership style.