Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Gifted in Leadership

Self-awareness means a critical assessment of your strengths, weaknesses, personality, and affects on other people.

It's a rare trait among homo sapiens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

Certainly some people are much better at attracting followers than others, both for good and for ill. It helps to be tall, good-looking, and outgoing. But I don't see what the common educational needs are of one student who has an IQ of 145 and can handle academic work that is several grade levels ahead and other student with IQ of 100 who is popular and a natural leader.

"Natural leader" and "gifted leader" are very different things. Your hypothetical natural leader will probably enjoy a long career at a management level, where he'll spout a meaningless stream of buzzwords and largely stand in the way of people getting things done. The person with a real gift for leadership, on the other hand, will be someone people naturally gravitate towards, who also exhibits a number of traits consistent with intellectual giftedness in general.

As for educational needs... honestly, I don't think real leadership is something that can be taught through a vehicle other than personal experience.

I recommend that gifted leaders be encouraged to develop their natural tendency to grasp, incite, forge, and transform.

Alternatively, we could just recognize this as the HR and marketing fluff that it is. Developing leadership skills with tried-and-true rules to follow has nothing to do with natural aptitude, nor is charisma intellectual giftedness.

If a gifted person has leadership ability, so much the better for them, of course. But it's obvious to me why the sometimes-repeated "leadership capacity" wording appears in the Marland Report and was subsequently adopted in some legislation, such as the Javits Act: it allows inclusion of some non-intellectually-gifted people, and also simply because it makes polticians, who are leaders themselves, feel good.

Yes.

I'm not sure that I call this "gifted" in the way that we usually mean it here.

I do think that the traits are distinct, however. Being charismatic is a part of "leadership" skill, and it goes along with "social" giftedness, for lack of a better term.

But that is very far from being intellectually gifted. I also believe it to be a far cry from true leadership skill/gifts, as well. If one were to represent this as Venn diagram of differing skills or areas of competence/excellence, there might well be three or four different spheres of potential overlap (and yes, a regular Cartesian coordinate system might soon break under the strain of this, I suppose);

a) intellect

b) social awareness/empathy skills

c) charisma (this one is very hard to define, but everyone seems to know it when they see it-- it's the cult of personality, effectively)

d) common sense/courage/ethicism (this would be a component of leadership, certainly)

e) organizational/strategic skills

There are others, of course. I'm not really referencing anything here since this is simply my own hypothesis of how this all works together to produce seemingly savant talent in "leadership" on the one hand, versus baffling celebrity in instances where the object of it is neither intelligent nor particularly ethical/talented at anything.

My point is that what one might reasonably term an extraordinary "leader" (as opposed to managers) is someone who needs to have well-above-average traits in ALL of those areas. People who are good "managers" tend to be missing at least the charisma portion, and often the ethical and intellectual ones, too. Oh, they may be fairly cunning or have an excellent sense of self-preservation, well implemented thanks to extraordinary empathy/social skills... but there is a dark side of that, obviously. It's called being a master of manipulation.

I think it's clear that politicians tend to be of one stripe or the other these days.

So what to do with a child that seems to have the complete package of those traits?

Well, assuming that the child is also an extrovert by nature (and many of them are NOT), providing opportunities to act in leadership roles seems to me to be the best way of developing that packet of skills in concert with one another.

Scouting, faith communities, 4-H, sports, and clubs seem to offer some of the best chances to do that. We've also used community service and entrepreneurship, since those are perhaps better suited to kids who are not seeking the spotlight.

Does any of that help?

Sorry to veer off topic here, but how can a GT program be 40% of the school population? If it's that many kids, why isn't the school curriculum simply enhanced?

Back to answering the post mode now.....

polarbear

Old Dad, our kids schools define leadership in much the same way as the article and our older kids' school (7th and 5th grade currently) purposely works to nurturing and developing these skills - it's as much a part of the school mission as advanced academics. Specific things the school does are team activities (in project work at school, in PE), working across grade level so that older children have opportunities to act as mentors to the younger children, taking part in class and whole-school volunteer projects that benefit others in our city, and taking part in opportunities to do projects that link students in other parts of the world together. All students are also expected to participate in all the "all-school activities" in some way - so this stretches kids who aren't by nature singers or theater-nuts or whatever to find a way to fit in and be a helping part of each important event at the school. The thing that I see having the most impact is that advisors and teachers taking a personal interest in each student from the perspective of their "whole", not just their academic grades. When we have student conferences much of the talk focuses on the teachers talking about ways that our kids have "stepped up" to help in some way, how they interact with their peers, how they are viewed by classmates and peers, and how they have impacted others by being a role model. There was also discussion of personal responsibilities - not just the responsibility to do your homework and do it well, but to treat classmates kindly, to participate, to act as a leader. Just having another adult outside parental units look for those qualities in my ds and then reinforce that they are important and well-received helped my ds build self-esteem and motivation to *be* a good citizen/role model etc.

Although my kids are in private school now, their previous public school had a similar mission and did much of the same approach, but fell down (in a big way) on the mentoring and personal investment in developing individual students by the teachers. I don't fault the teachers for that - I think it was due primarily to the school's administration.

Leadership.  People "buy into" your vision, not necessarily all the details. That's what you need for intelligent co-operation, anyway.  As far as other resources I believe Toastmaster or toastmaster jr. would be great but it's too far to drive to join for me to find out.  Locally the school I believe teaches book reports, show and tell, and the science fair which promote leadership skills because they help you get your plan together and present it coherently. That sounds like the skills you need to develop your vision and get it out there.

That's what I've heard anyway. Funny how I'm always looking for ways to say whatever I have fits what I need.

I think leadership, as Old Dad defines is a cultural thing. You had some visionary entrepeneurs who built companies in the beginning of the Internet boom. But since all those companies produced so many instant millionaires in the boom, CEOs of regular corporations demanded higher salaries and incentives and you got outrageous pay for management and a change in attitude towards shareholder profit rather than corporate health.

I think that having a healthy, cohesive corporate organism was a flash in the pan idea in the 80s, after the Japanese management style invaded the bookshelves.

Regarding a gifted leader vs. academically gifted person, I did always wonder if the boy I thought of as possibly a gifted leader, and his mom, were in that 'ideal iq' range of approx 120...gifted but on the cusp, and I further wondered if part of their draw/approachability (sp?) was that they were fairly self-effacing. They were certainly both bright.
Possibly perfectly positioned to bridge between the mg/eg folks and the nd folks...?