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  3. Leadership is hardly a new area of research, of course. For years, academics have debated whether leaders are born or made, whet

Leadership is hardly a new area of research, of course. For years, academics have debated whether leaders are born or made, whet

admin2010-09-25  41
问题     Leadership is hardly a new area of research, of course. For years, academics have debated whether leaders are born or made, whether a person who lacks charisma (capacity to inspire devotion and enthusiasm) can become a leader, and what makes leaders fail. Warren G. Bennis, possibly the world’s foremost expert on leading, has, together with his co-author, written two bestsellers on the topic. Generally, researchers have found that you can’t explain leadership by way of intelligence, birth order, family wealth or stability, level of education, race, or sex. From one leader to the next, there’s enormous variance in every one of those factors.
    The authors’ research led to a new and telling discovery: that every leader, regardless of age, had undergone at least one intense, transformational experience -- what the authors call a "crucible" (severe test). These events can either make you or break you. For emerging leaders, they do more making than breaking, providing key lessons to help a person move ahead confidently.
    If a crucible helps a person to become leader, there are four essential qualities that allow someone to remain one, according to the authors. They are: an "adaptive capacity" that lets people not only survive inevitable setbacks, heartbreaks, and difficulties but also learn from them; an ability to engage others through shared meaning or a common vision; a distinctive and compelling voice that communicates one’s conviction and desire to do the right thing; and a sense of integrity that allows a leader to distinguish between good and evil.
    That sounds obvious enough to be commonplace, until you look at some recent failures that show how valid these dictums (formal statements of opinion) are. The authors believe that former Coca Cola Co. Chairman M. Douglas Ivester lasted just 28 months because "his grasp of context was sorrowful". Among other things, Ivester degraded Coke’s highest-ranking African-American even as the company was losing a ＄200 million class action brought by black employees. Procter & Gamble Co. ex-CEO Durk Jager lost his job because he failed to communicate the urgent need for the sweeping changes he was making.
    It’s striking, too, that the authors found their geezers ( whose formative period, as the authors define them, was 1945 to 1954, and who were shaped by World Wm’ Il) sharing what they believed to be a critical trait -- the sense of possibility and wonder more often associated with childhood. "Unlike those defeated by time and age, our geezers have remained much like our geeks (who came of age between 1991 and 2000, and grew up ’ virtual’ , ’ visual’ , and ’ digital’ ) -- open, willing to take risks, hungry for knowledge and experience, courageous, and eager to see what the new day brings", the authors write.

The passage indicates that leadership research ______.
选项 A、has been a controversial study for years
B、predicts how a leader comes to be
C、defines the likelihood to be a leader
D、probes the mysteries of leadership
答案D
解析 首段最后两句对Warren G. Bennis的研究做出了总结；第二段和第三段指出作为一皂成功领导需经历什么样的严格考验和具备什么样的素质(文中指出四大素质)，由此可知这些关于领导的研究是为了探索领导才能的秘密(probes mysteries of leadership)，故答案为D项。文中并未提出任何争论观点，也未对领导人进行预测或下定义，故排除其他三项。
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大学英语六级

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