In a sense, all leaders are in part "born leaders," in that somehow "nature" plays a decisive role in their abilities and actions. But even more surely, no leaders could exist without being "made," in that the essence of leadership lies in what leaders do and in what they say, and in what others make of those actions. The essence of leadership lies within communicative processes. Things that can be learned.
Bennis states it more unequivocally, but without the explicit connection to communication: "True leaders are not born, but made, and usually self-made" (Bennis, W. G., & Nanus, B. 1985). The most fundamental, essential raw material for "making" a leader is communication.
Leadership fundamentally involves influence. The ability to influence requires power. Influence processes and perceptions of power depend on communication. One important resource of leaders is vision, along with the ability to encourage and integrate individual visions into a compelling shared vision. The visions that leaders fashion and convey consist of symbols, of images, of language, of symbolic action. Visions, quite simply, are made up of communication.
So much of what's important in leadership has an essential dependence on communication activities and processes.
there's much more that could be said about the pervasive and consequential role of communication in leadership: missions are formulated and articulated through communication; decision making is informed (or uninformed) through communication; innovations are disseminated through communication; people are hired, oriented, trained, evaluated, promoted, passed over, transferred, developed, and fired through communication; instructions are given through communication; leaders lead through communication; performance is monitored through communication; activities are coordinated through communication; authority is expressed (and challenged) through communication; people are empowered through communication; departmental and divisional conflicts are waged through communication; friendships are nurtured through communication; and so on. Communication is indeed an essential part of......
