Once again, the debate about whether leaders are born or made is brought up. John Gardner rejects claims that leaders are born and insists that leaders are made. I believe that a good middle ground that incorporate both sides is that people’s talents and leadership potential are stimulated and developed through challenges. However, I was a bit confused when Gardner differentiated between explosive and creeping crises. My understanding of what he means is that sudden crises can throw people into chaos and uncertainty. Also, the fact that these crises are explosive implies that the people are caught off guard and thus may be in confliction as to how to respond. Like so, this situation is the perfect opportunity for a person to step up and implement their leadership skills. On the other hand, I was unsure about the part about how creeping crises do not have the same effect of creating great leaders. This may be because unlike …show more content…
This made me appreciate the liberal arts education that I am receiving at Oxford because I admit that I am taking a larger variety of classes that I never thought I would take otherwise. A commonality is that I was reluctant to enroll in the courses such as philosophy or women gender studies. However, I ended up really liking those classes and the same applies for this leadership class. The different structure and material in this seminar class allowed me to expand my knowledge on more than the typical hard facts, but more importantly, they taught me a lot of important general life skills and lesson. In this way, I think that this leadership class supports the claims of John Gardner because he said that leaders are generally converted from specialists to