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Writings by Sun Tzu on military leadership, Plato and Aristotle (Plato "intellectual
competitor"“ and student) work questioning *ƒ²*ƒ"€š?who should rule us, philosophy by
Castiglione and others work jointly summarise classical leadership. In order to capture
what can be said of today leadership with regard to classical writings on leadership one
must question whether leadership is a changing phenomena over time or rather, whether
there is a single "best"“ leadership style that suits all leaders in all situations over time.
There are more studies on leadership today than previously and leadership is being
researched by a wider range of people than before. Today writings offer a different analysis
of leadership from classical writings because some classical writings were written by
leaders themselves and therefore, often bias. There is a relationship in some behavioural
patterns between classical and contemporary leaders in terms of military leadership, the
use of rhetoric in learning leadership skills and lastly, of leaders extending their framework
of control causing conflicts occurring that, with the help of others, could otherwise have
been avoided.
To begin, one must define leadership. The way individuals become leaders and what their
role is as leaders will be considered in this essay in a comparative form, relating classical
with contemporary leaders. There are two forms of classical leadership which set classical
leadership writers such as Plato, Aristotle and Castiglione apart. One leadership style
assumes leaders learn leadership skills and the other that leadership skills are something
some are born with and therefore those with the inherited skills will naturally lead.
Contemporary research on power by Raven and French (1959), found there to be two ways
an individual gets power (Boddy, 2002). Their research implies there is legitimate power
and reward power. Leaders with legitimate power assume authority from their job title.
Reward power is the ability of the leader to reward in hope to get the reward of power in
return. Drawing from classical leadership research, one would assume George Bush, the
present president of the United States, to have gained power through legitimate power. As
will be argued later, Bush "capitalized on the base of power the job itself gave him"“ . It is
interesting to question whethergaining power through the job title itself is healthy, or
rather, whether the individual leader should own the characteristics of leadership before
being assigned as leader.
The "Great Man Theory"“ holds that leaders are "born to lead and emerge to take power in
