Isn't the answer to the question a function of who is being led and to what end they're being led?

I think leadership has more to do with how you act than what you know, although knowledge (or even better yet - wisdom) helps. Attitude, vision, passion, ethics, willingness to challenge the status quo and ability to motivate are leadership characteristics. Everybody has the opportunity to be a leader, whatever their personal or professional station in life. Common sense would seem to tell us that as an individual becomes responsible for management responsibility in areas outside of their core expertise that political savvy and an ability to listen, learn, and surround yourself with people with the right mix of expertise become increasingly critical for success. I think specialists can learn to become good managers in areas outside of their core expertise. To the extent that there is any objective evidence that supports a contention that specialists have a lower success rate than generalists as they are placed in higher level less specialized management roles, I suspect it does have something to do with less developed knowledge of overall the business, markets, and finance and risk management (i.e., 'the big picture'). However, I'm not sure that generalists have an edge on specialists in regard to leadership ability, and at end of the day what typically separates the men from the boys at the top is leadership ability.

I'm also a specialist at a company with the desire to lead and am currently learning as much as I can about all of my co-workers responsibilities.

I believe the Crown Jewel of a great leader is being able to sell his vision to all his co-workers while reassuring them that their needs will be met and then of course implementing this vision for the benefit of the whole.

Our company has a generalist as a leader. Unfortunately he's a person who is into control/command management and has been unable to "connect" to his specialists with any type of vision or satisfaction of their needs.

I think he's clueless to this since their isn't any "real" open dialogue which is another critical skill of a great leader.

Is the leader secure enough with their abilities that he is able to speak literally as "one human being to another human being"?

Can that leader promote that type of communication as part of his vision of everyoone's long term success? Being able to implement that discussion from worker to worker and as importantly between worker and customer?

Rather than speaking at you as your "leader", "President", "SrVP" or "Manager" does he understand that we're all just boys and girls going to work trying to make the "best" and the key is "best" of that part of our day.

Rather than speaking in terms of channels,demographics and market penetration, is the leader able to speak to the person (not company) who buys your product in an honest and non-legalize manner?

And most importantly, does he understand the benefit of all of your co-workers being able to do the same?

Frankly, this co-worker who is a revenue producing specialist hopes our "Pres" gets the ax asap, because I'm tired of the lack of dialogue and his silly memos which have no credible meaning to either his co-workers or our customers.

I'm getting tired waiting for our highly profitable product to take off :-( and our continued experience of its flatline growth over the past 6 years.

You ain't gonna like my answer...

What does "best" mean? "Best" depends on the situation. There are times where the "best" guy is a specialist - for example, a turnaround specialist. Most ongoing concerns, however, probably thrive best with a generalist. After all, the leader is the vision guy - he hires people to be good at the details.

Which brings up another problem - what makes someone a "generalist" or a "specialist"?

I'd like to make a proposition: let us consider someone who has industry (or related) background a "generalist" if their focus is more holistic. A "generalist" knows how to lead a company by being able to articulating and communicating a vision that is cognizant of the playing field the company chooses to play on.

That might allow us to weed out trophy CEO industry-hopping, which often ends in tears. If we allow "generalists" to still have industry or related process focus, then we might be able to better quantify who leads best.

Subject to the above restriction about particular company (or industry) "special circumstances."

Eric