English Language Resources Online - series on leadership, power, politics, part 9

English Language Resources Online - series on leadership, power, politics, part 9

In the previous sections, on Virtue and Leadership, you have been reading my term paper and its various sections. Firstly, the introduction to the essay; the body of the essay/ the main body of the essay; and then in the previous post, the suggestions to answer the second part of the essay question.

For easy access, the posts on my Virtue and Leadership term paper are:

series on leadership, power, politics, part 6 (intro)
series on leadership, power, politics, part 7 (body)
series on leadership, power, politics, part 8 (suggestions)

In this post, you will be reading the carefully crafted conclusion. Be sure to ask yourself questions and see if you can improve on the writing.


"Are leaders born or educated? Suggest a leadership education for Singapore."


Conclusion to my analytical essay
(my very long term paper, which took me hours to write and to craft carefully, as well as almost endless revisions; edited by Tiffany C. May)

In summary, leaders usually are born with natural character traits which are the potential for leadership. There is a link between nature and nurture because these natural characteristics can be enhanced and developed by education. Certain types of leaders need certain types of education which are not intrinsic in humans. We examined military leadership and political leadership from two of our course texts, Cyrus and Machiavelli. In addition, we explored a historical figure – we looked at Bismarck’s political and diplomatic leadership. Therefore the thesis holds, firstly, that leaders are born and bred, and concomitantly that any attempt to separate nature from nurture is unwarranted because there is a close and mutually reinforcing relationship between nature and nurture, where I suggested that distinguishing the two as separate or different may be a false dichotomy. As for a leadership education, much was discussed: a selection process should ensure that the trainee has the required natural qualities that have potential to be developed for leadership, in an attempt to use the results from the first half of my discussion in application to Singapore’s context. I suggested that a leadership education for the good of Singapore should have the following elements: training in military affairs and national defence, international relations and diplomacy, political leadership, and the development of character. To conclude, this is a complex but very relevant topic in Singapore’s context, and although any education models suggested will be sure to have some flaws, I hope I have contributed to the debate.


This conclusion makes some moves that are very standard, and yet has aspects that one could learn and adapt from. What are the ideas and concepts that you can learn from this conclusion?

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