Writings by Sun Tzu on military leadership, Plato’s and Aristotle’s (Plato’s “intellectual competitor” and student) work questioning ‘who should rule us’, philosophy by Castiglione and others work jointly summarise classical leadership. In order to capture what can be said of today’s leadership with regard to classical writings on leadership one must question whether leadership is a changing phenomena over time or rather, whether there is a single “best” leadership style that suits all leaders in all situations over time. There are more studies on leadership today than previously and leadership is being researched by a wider range of people than before. Today’s writings offer a different analysis of leadership from classical writings because some classical writings were written by leaders themselves and therefore, often bias. There is a relationship in some behavioural patterns between classical and contemporary leaders in terms of military leadership, the use of rhetoric in learning leadership skills and lastly, of leaders extending their framework of control causing conflicts occurring that, with the help of others, could otherwise have been avoided.
To begin, one must define leadership. The way individuals become leaders and what their role is as leaders will be considered in this essay in a comparative form, relating classical with contemporary leaders. There are two forms of classical leadership which set classical leadership writers such as Plato, Aristotle and Castiglione apart. One leadership style assumes leaders learn leadership skills and the other that leadership skills are something some are born with and therefore those with the inherited skills will naturally lead. Contemporary research on power by Raven and French (1959), found there to b ...