Can Leadership Development Be Taught?

Formal education may be a good vehicle for imparting specialised knowledge or domain expertise. What it does less well is to teach leadership development, hence the moral vacuum sometimes evident at the upper levels of society from business to politics. This dilemma was the focus of a recent talk by Banyan Tree Holding’s executive chairman, Ho Kwon Ping, as part of the CEO Talks series organised by the Wee Kim Wee Centre of Singapore Management University (SMU). Ho, who won the CEO of the Year 2007 award in Singapore, is chairman of SMU’s Board of Trustees and of MediaCorp, Singapore’s national television and radio company. He is also a board director of Air Seychelles, and a member of several business and university councils here and abroad.

The role that companies and universities could play in filling the leadership gap is a key issue for Ho. He has often wrestled with the question of whether enough is being done to develop leadership qualities both in his own group of upscale resorts and in educational institutions such as SMU. At the Banyan Tree, for instance, his goal is to develop a cadre of middle management staff to be the leaders of tomorrow. Similarly, says Ho, universities need to ask whether they are doing a good job “to develop the inherent leadership in students and grow this trait further”.

Who is a Leader?

“I define a leader as one who takes initiative to change the status quo, not for his personal benefit but for the common good,” said Ho. “The status quo need not necessarily have to do with the business situation. Essentially, you have at every moment the status quo that needs to be changed. It takes courage and initiative to do that -- in other words, someone with leadership quality.” Ho noted that all organisations needed leaders with a small ‘l’, at various levels, the big ‘L’ referring to CEO positions and above.

He highlighted four key points pertaining to the leadership issue: the crisis of leadership; the inability of...