Reflections from Critical Perspectives in Leadership, Module 3
The question of whether leaders are born or made turned out to be the starting point of Module 3, not the destination. The real work was questioning the assumptions underneath leadership theories themselves. Professor Kevin drove one point home repeatedly: leadership is not value neutral. Every theory carries beliefs about people, power, and who gets recognized as a leader, so instead of asking whether a theory is right, we learned to ask why it exists and what structures it reinforces.
The readings traced that evolution. Spector showed how Great Man Theory credited history to extraordinary individuals. Jalšenjak and Richards dismantled that idea, arguing that shared traits among successful leaders don’t mean those traits create leadership. Weber pushed further, shifting the focus from personality to legitimate authority (traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational), showing that leadership depends on institutions and the willingness of others to recognize it. Coming from healthcare and healthcare technology, this hit close to home. We’ve heard people called “natural leaders” for being confident or experienced, and before this module, we wouldn’t have questioned it. Now we look at the culture, opportunity, and power structures behind who gets recognized.
Our peer mentoring team’s article, “Virtuous Leadership Bridging Ethical Ideology and Nurses’ Patient Safety Advocacy,” put these concepts into practice. The authors found that virtuous leadership translates nurses’ ethical beliefs into action, not through innate traits, but by creating environments where nurses feel safe speaking up for patients. No single characteristic guaranteed effective leadership. Trust, ethical decision-making, and supportive culture did the work, which aligns directly with Weber’s legitimate authority and Jalšenjak and Richards’ critique of trait checklists. We’ve seen this in our own roles: organizations that encourage open communication get employees who raise concerns about patient safety, technology issues, and workflow problems. Effective leadership is less about finding natural leaders and more about building cultures that reward ethical behavior and accountability.
Our advice to students…It’s easy to associate leadership with this bucket of cookie cutter traits and characteristics, but leadership is more than that. And even though sometimes we see leaders who are often described as having charisma or great management skills or being amiable, these traits are not always apparent in all leaders. All leaders do not share the same traits because all leaders are uniquely different, coming from various backgrounds, biases, experiences, beliefs, and frameworks. One of the primary pieces of advice we have to students is to not assume leadership means one thing; the definition is never solitary.
Something to be careful with, and if not, can create precarious systems and values within organizations, is to question the traits we feel are dominant and consistent in leadership, and how these traits could be defining, architecting, and orchestrating the very systems that organizations are built upon. Leaders define organizations. If you want a certain outcome, choose your leaders wisely.
Finally, a set of questions to never let out of sight include: why do organizations select certain leaders? What about those leaders makes them more appealing to move into those roles? Are there any patterns that show consistency of the selection criteria? Is anyone questioning what the selection criteria are? When you think about the organizations and companies that you’ve worked with, have you noticed any patterns or systemic results of the people in leadership within your organizations? Do the leaders carry certain traits? Do the leaders behave in certain ways? Do the leaders have certain values? Are the selections arbitrary? Are you often surprised at who’s in leadership versus who’s not?
Holistically thinking of this module altogether, you must question what makes up a leader, why is this so, and why might certain leadership traits be gold for one organization and perilous for another.
References
- Jalšenjak, B., & Richards, R. L. (2023). Traits and behavior theory of leadership: Critique from undistributed middle.
- Kamel, H. F., Araby, S. M., Ali, H. M., & Othman, A. A. (2026). Virtuous leadership bridging ethical ideology and nurses’ patient safety advocacy. Nursing Ethics.
- Spector, B. A. (2015). Carlyle, Freud, and the Great Man Theory more fully considered.
- Weber, M. (1946). Politics as a vocation.