Today is the first day of the 4-day long 10th Asia-Pacific Conference on Giftedness @ NTU/NIE.
The opening keynote address titled “Teaching for Leadership” was delivered by Prof. Robert Sternberg, a renowned psychologist on intelligence and creativity.
Why on earth do we need to teach leadership, you may ask? He explained that we ought to teach for leadership to satisfy the world’s need for great leaders and to imbue a sense of ethics in the students of today – something which is apparently lacking in many youths today. He related his experience of presenting an unethical situation in a narrative to his students who surprisingly did not pick up on the unethical behaviour. Hence, no matter how much one studies, or how good a school one goes to, leadership encompasses more than the traditional notion of intelligence…
In his keynote, he claimed that students of today aren’t acquiring the necessary (and comprehensive) skills they need to become leaders, primarily because traditional teaching tends to “shine the spotlight” on a select few almost all the time (primarily the memory learners and those who do well on achievement tests) and almost none on the rest who may be gifted in non-traditional ways (especially students who are stronger in other kinds of skills such as analytical, creative, practical, or wisdom-based skills). However, he noted that “students who are not placed in an optimal position to achieve may be just as able to achieve at high levels as the students placed in a position to achieve. Moreover, the advantaged students will not necessarily be more successful later in life.”
Hence, there exist a partial disconnection between traditional achievement testing and achievement in the real world, for which we should teach in a way to meet all of these needs of virtually all students – those gifted in the traditional way, as well as those gifted in the non-traditional way. Based on his WISC model (Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity Synthesized), he argued that success in life requires creative, practical and wisdom-based skills as much as it requires memory and analytical skills – and these can be taught.
Nevertheless, those aside, what intrigued me the most was the first point he made about taking on a leadership position. He defined leadership as “making a positive, meaningful, and enduring difference to the world, at some level” and he argued that one becomes a leader by
(1) deciding for leadership and
(2) developing one’s academic and practical intelligence, creativity and wisdom.
In a nutshell, leadership isn’t an innate characteristic. Of course, there are individual differences, he said, but they can be compensated extrinsically to allow all individuals to progress from their baselines to achieve more than what they can without any guidance.
Leadership is a DECISION. When one decides to become a leader, he or she will enact the role of being a leader and eventually, one internalises and truly becomes a leader. That was how he managed to take up the president position of the American Psychological Association (APA) years back=p Well, that’s true to a certain extent, but whether one becomes a GOOD leader probably depends on how well he or she utilises the academic and practical intelligence, creativity and wisdom to the best of ability to lead and rise above the rise.
