The New Psychology of Leadership

While going through an airport last month, the cover of Scientific American Mind had a cover highlighting recent work in the study of leadership. Having an armchair interest in the subject [nurtured by 4 years at RMC], I picked up a copy. You can read the article here. While the essentials of leadership remain unchanged [integrity, domain knowledge, etc.] what I found most interesting is the approach that leaders are more effective if the followers believe that they can somehow relate to them. If you can stomach the first paragraph, [the part about Bush being a great leader] you’ll see that they make a pretty good case.