Martin Luther Skinner's Leadership Style

Much like Luther, Skinner had people who encouraged him and impacted the leader he would become later in life. These fictive kin “helped to satisfy and provide a model for his cultural aspirations in a way that his own family did not” (19). During his formative years in his hometown Skinner came to know a teacher, Miss Graves, who modeled “scholarliness and culture, which became his own hallmark” (13). Watching the model Miss Graves exhibited through her daily life allowed Skinner to see as a young man how scholarliness and leadership can be implemented into his own life through his behaviors. Miss Graves kept a notebook of the flora and fauna she encountered and had an “intellectual life with her parents far beyond what other families in Susquehanna …show more content…
He struggled with expressing his affections toward others, Wiener describes this characteristic as a “coolness of feelings” (59). This might not seem like a hindrance to his leadership, however it could have and often did encumber his interactions with colleagues, friends, students, and family members. He “rarely discussed his feelings about his marriage—or anything else about his personal life” (58). Regardless of his difficulty expressing feelings and personal emotion to others, students enrolled in his classes loved him and learned a lot from him even though Skinner utilized teaching largely to organize his data and ideas. He was not fulfilled by teaching, but rather “tried continually to enlarge his areas of influence” (72). His inability to feel successful when students enjoyed his courses could have impacted his desire to increase his sphere of influence, which had both positive and negative effects. It allowed him to focus on his experiments and studies and furthered behaviorism research and it also negatively impacted his family and intimate, personal …show more content…
He might not have chosen this field of study because he was yearning to become a leader, but, his willingness to dive into the unknown allowed him the opportunity to develop into a well-known name in psychology, and unknowingly or not he did. Skinner might not have had leadership thrust upon him, but he chose to enter into a field beckoning for new perspectives and a fresh voice. In this way, he was both thrust into leadership and developed leadership qualities and characteristics from a young age. Much like Luther, Skinner was born with the capacity to lead introduced to him by his parents and fictive kin. Martin Luther and B. F. Skinner have their differences, but they both pioneered their fields of study—Luther with the Protestant Reformation, and Skinner with behaviorism. Their impact and leadership is still experienced today, they both shaped human thought and history, which is what leaders strive to