The Art…nay… Science of Leadership

Talk to almost anyone about leadership for more than 5 minutes and eventually they will say something to the effect of “leadership is a true art”. Until a few years ago, I was one of those proponents of this line of thinking, and I spread the good word every time I would speak on leadership. However, in the past few years, I have done some deeper reflection on leadership and I now completely disagree with this sentiment. To me, this line of thinking comes from a lack of knowledge in the difference between art and science…it also comes from “parroting”.

Art is about free expression and emotion through creative mediums, while science follows a specific method to make testable claims. If leadership was an art, then the leader would be expressing their emotion and creativity through their followers, which is an incorrect portrayal of this relationship. However, a leader can make hypothesis about ways in which to lead their followers and then put them to the test, which does encapsulate the relationship adequately.

Specifically, leadership would fall into the realm of psychology. Although “soft”, psychology is still a science, and therefore the hypothesis made within its confines are testable. Let’s dive quickly into an example to help clear things up.

You have an employee who you want to be more productive at work. So at first you sit the employee down, explain how much you value them and then you go into your concerns about their productivity. The meeting ends and the employee goes back to work. A week goes by and there is no change in the productivity. So, you try a different approach by walking by the employee and reiterating how much you value them. You repeat this every day for the following week and there is still no change in productivity. Next, you decide to incentivize productivity by telling your employee that they will receive a bonus of $200 at the end of the month if their productivity increases 10%. The following week, the employee’s productivity has increased 10%, and so you happily give them a bonus.

You artfully employed the tenets of leadership, right? No! You employed the scientific method by testing out 3 different hypotheses until you found the one which worked. Each person has motivators, and it’s up to the leader to find out what those things are and then use that knowledge to successfully motivate their followers.

When you’re thinking about leadership and working on an issue in your organization, I would implore you to remember that successful leadership is rooted in knowledge of psychology principles. Now, some leaders get lucky enough to be able to lead without knowing how they are doing it, but accidental leadership can only take one so far. The best leaders take the time to read and understand all they can about the science of motivation in order to be more effective.

If you still don’t believe me, here’s a link to a short article from Psychology Today: How Psychology Helps Us Understand Leadership | Psychology Today

I am not affiliated with them, but I found the short article worth the read, and I hope that you will too.