Research on Leadership Selection and Training: One View of the Future

I wish to express my particular thanks for their helpful, critical comments to Lee R. Beach, Judith Fiedler, Susan Infield, and Chad Lewis. Their suggestions contributed materially to the final version of this paper. Address correspondence to the author at 1250 N.W. 126th Street, Seattle, WA 98177-4343 (e-mail: (fiedler@uu.washington.edu)). The past 40 years have seen considerable strides in our understanding of leadership, which until recently focused on inherited traits and abilities. Although we now see leadership as a complex interaction between the leader and the social and organizational environment, this lesson is frequently ignored in personnel selection and leadership training. At this time, most leader selection and leadership training approaches have not been adequately validated. Further progress in these areas requires that we focus research on methods that integrate situational components into personnel selection and leadership training.'