Through the years, our view of what leadership is and who can exercise it has changed considerably.Leadership competencies have remained constant, but our understanding of what it is, how it works, and the ways in which people learn to apply it has shifted.We do have the beginnings of a general theory of leadership, from history and social research and above all from the thoughts of reflective practitioners such as Moses, Julius Caesar, and James Madison, and in our own time from such disparate sources of wisdom as Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Mao Tsetung, and Henry Kissinger, who have very little in common except that they have not only been there but tried with some fairness to speculate on paper about it.

　　But tales and reflective observation are not enough except to convince us that leaders are physically strong and abnormally hard workers.Today we are a little closer to understanding how and who people lead, but it wasn’t easy getting there.Decades of academic analysis have given us more than 350 definitions of leadership.Literally thousands of empirical investigations of leaders have been conducted in the last seventy-five years alone, but no clear understanding exists as to what distinguishes leaders from non-leaders, and perhaps more important, what distinguishes effective leaders from ineffective leaders and effective organizations from ineffective organizations.

　　Never have so many labored so long to say so little.Multiple interpretations of leadership exist, each providing a fragment of insight but each remaining an incomplete and wholly inadequate explanation.Most of these definitions don’t agree with each other, and many of them would seem quite remote to the leaders whose skills are being examined.Definitions reflect fashions, political tides and academic trends.They don’t always reflect reality and sometimes they just represent nonsense.It’s as if what Braque once said about art is also true of leadership: “The only thing that matters in art is the part that cannot be explained.”

　　Many theories of leadership have come and gone.Some looked at the leader.Some looked at the situation.None has stood the test of time.With such a track record, it is understandable why leader- ship research and theory have been so frustrating as to deserve the label “the La Brea Tar Pits” of organizational inquiry.Located in Los Angeles, these asphalt pits house the remains of a long sequence of prehistoric animals that came to investigate but never left the area.
“The La Brea Tar Pits” in paragraph 4 probably signifies things that _____.

A.can be traced back to the prehistoric age

B.are traps for those who want to inquire

C.are located in one place forever

D.don’t deserve full investigation