B Schools Can Play A Key Role in Grooming Leaders Of Tomorrow

Beyond just disseminating knowledge, B Schools can become holistic learning centres to create leaders.

- Abinash Panda

The corporate world today needs real leaders—those who can mobilise resources and help organisations deal with adaptive challenges to confront the new realities and succeed against competition. Leaders may not have answers to all the challenges of today, which are unique and different from the past. Their expertise may not be enough to deal with these problems, and they need to rely on the collective intelligence of the group. Having desirable leadership skills—ability to visualise, persuasively communicate, motivate the team—may not be enough; individuals in leadership positions need to use these skills to mobilise followers to collectively solve problems. Business schools are expected to groom such leaders, and thereby contribute to society at large. In fact, leadership courses are now a part of nearly every major business school’s curriculum across the globe.

Can leadership be taught or learned?

There is a debate on whether leadership can be taught in business schools, given that it is both a skill and a behaviour that exhibits that skill. Critics argue that becoming a leader is not about acquiring knowledge and skills.

In reality, leadership is essentially a social behaviour, which requires an individual to be self-aware, knowing one’s life goals besides understating and relating to followers in a meaningful way. It requires one to be contextually intelligent.

Studies on leadership have revealed that executives learn to lead through experiences. It is an on-going process of reflection on those experiences to distil insights that inform future practice. Hence, it is argued that those who aspire to lead, gain precious little by removing themselves from the ‘real world’ of practice. Hence, business schools are ill-equipped to teach leadership.