There is an ongoing debate about whether leadership can be taught, and whether business schools, in particular, are teaching it.

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问题     There is an ongoing debate about whether leadership can be taught, and whether business schools, in particular, are teaching it. There are fair arguments on both sides, but I would broaden the discussion. Our entire education system, from elementary school to graduate school, is poorly constructed to teach young people leadership. Schools do many things well, but they often cultivate habits that can be detrimental to future leaders. Given that most of us spend 13-20 years in educational institutions, those habits can be hard to break.
    Consider first the emphasis schools have on authority. Schools are hierarchical: The teacher is the authority in the classroom. Principals or deans preside over teachers and professors. Seniors "rank" higher than juniors, and so on. In our years in the educational system, many of us become obsessed with hierarchy. We think we’re leaders if we’re the "boss" , and if we’re not the boss, we should simply do as we’re told. In reality, even the most senior people in organizations can’t rely solely on hierarchy, particularly given the much needed talents, experiences, and intelligence of the others who surround them. Leadership is an activity, not a position, a distinction explored deeply by Ron Heifetz in Leadership Without Easy Answers. Many great leaders like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela have led others, despite having little to no formal authority, and writers are now exploring methods for leading without formal authority. While some hierarchy may be needed, leaders who learn to lean too hard on formal authority often find themselves and their organizations frustrated, stunted, and stagnant.
    Schools also teach us to deal with information as if it is certain and unchanging, when there’s rarely a stable " right answer. " In my first job, I was constantly frustrated by the lack of guidance I received. If you gave me a textbook, I could learn almost anything. But in the workplace, there were no textbooks. Real world problems are complex. They evolve. They’re organizational and analytical. And success is often driven as much(Or more)by successful and rapid implementation as by developing the "correct" approach. Understanding that there’s rarely one right answer can make a person more adaptive , agile, and open to the thoughts of their peers. But that understanding is rarely cultivated through textbooks and multiple choice tests.
    Critically, these failures teach us to reflect and to ask questions—of ourselves and of others—so that we can learn and grow(one of life’s worst failures can be wasting a failure). And failure itself indicates that we are taking on challenging tasks and stretching the limits of our current capabilities. A lot of people are raising questions about the way business schools and corporations teach leadership, but we need to dramatically broaden the scope of that question. In a world that’s growing ever flatter and more complex, we need societies full of capable leaders. But the only way to raise those leaders properly is to structure our educational system—from elementary school through graduate school—to train them.
Compared with studying at school, working in society requires______.

选项 A、practical scheme to implement
B、formal authority to obey
C、one guide book to refer to
D、one fixed answer to consult

答案A

解析 信息题。根据题干定位到第三段。第三段第四到第八句指出“职场上是没有教科书的。现实世界的问题是复杂的,一直在演变,是组织化和分析性的。而成功往往也有赖于成功且迅速的执行,不只是想出‘正确的’方法。”由此可知,与在校学习不同的是,职场上需要快速的执行方案,故[A]选项正确。由原文可知,学校的学习一般会强调authority,所以[B]选项并不是学习和职场工作的区别,故排除;职场上没有教科书和指南手册,故[C]选项排除;由第三段倒数第二句“只有一个正确答案的情况很罕见”可知[D]选项说法不正确,故排除。
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