Where do people learn leadership styles from?

Answer 1

They look for leaders they admire in various fields and study their habits and mannerisms and try to emulate them. Some people are just born leaders, but it can be cultivated.

Answer 2

That's a good question, but doesn't belong in philosophy.

For philosophy, you might want to ask where people should learn their leadership styles from?

As for where they actually do, try sociology or psychology.

My guess is that all too many people learn from movies and TV. The number of examples we see in our personal lives is actually rather limited, so when we want to find a larger universe of possibilities, we now turn to movies and TV.

In the past, people often turned to books for examples to learn from, but fewer people read these days. Still, it is very interesting to see leadership fads from books (particularly books on Management) operating in practice.

For example, "The One-Minute Manager", by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, was published more than 25 years ago, but I still run into managers who use a technique (which I find very offensive) described in this book.

Of course we do still learn some of our leadership styles from the people around us, parents, teachers, older kids, our cohort, our bosses, etc. and I have no hard data on just which source actually dominates. I'll be interested to see if you get any really knowledgeable answers.

Answer 3

History. And those around them.