Leadership Intelligence

Book excerpt: Much like Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, Maulding-Green and Leonard have, in Leadership Intelligence: The Journey to Your True North, postulated a theory regarding the age old question, ‘are leaders born or are leaders made?’ This theory is predicated on the idea that there is a genetic predisposition toward leadership via the vehicle of imprinting. The five critical factors which undergird the tenets of Leadership Intelligence, are delineated and developed through the lens of the soft skills of a leader. There is further clarification as to why some leaders seem to have ‘a greater intensity’ of these factors than their peers. To aid the reader in relating to the theory, a conceptual model based on a GPS is threaded throughout each chapter interweaving both examples and understandable content. The model relates keeping the organization moving in a true north fashion. The final chapters reveal how a leader can develop or enhance these skills and how he/she can avoid leadership derailment, due to neglecting them.