Drucker on Leadership: New Lessons from the Father of Modern Management

Chapter 12. Training and Developing Leaders

In 1954, in his very first book specifically focused on management, Drucker wrote, "Leadership is of the utmost importance. Indeed there is no substitute for it." Unfortunately, in the same book and only a short few sentences later, he wrote, "Leadership cannot be taught or learned."^[107] It took him more than forty years to change this opinion, and, in 1996, he demonstrated a complete reversal. In his foreword to The Leader of the Future, he wrote, "Leadership must be learned and can be learned."^[108]

Although at first he believed leadership to be unlearnable, Drucker documented the importance of training right from the start. He fully understood that those he referred to as "knowledge workers" must ...