Leadership Quote by Cyril Falls

Leadership, Falls implies, is not a credential you earn and then deploy; it is a muscle that thickens under strain. Coming from a military historian who watched reputations harden in the mud of real campaigns, the line carries a quiet rebuke to the fantasy of “born leaders.” It also side-eyes the bureaucratic idea that leadership can be fully prepackaged in manuals, exams, or pedigree. Falls is arguing for a feedback loop: authority practiced becomes authority refined.

The specific intent is pragmatic. Put people in situations that require judgment, responsibility, and the management of risk, and they develop the very competencies we later pretend were prerequisites. The subtext is that “capacity” is often misdiagnosed as temperament when it’s really exposure: the confidence to decide, the tolerance for ambiguity, the ability to read people under pressure. Those aren’t downloaded; they are rehearsed.

Context matters here. Falls wrote in the shadow of two world wars, when societies had to expand officer corps, administrators, and organizers quickly, often drawing from civilians who weren’t groomed from youth. The remark defends that improvisation as not merely necessary but productive. It’s an argument for opportunity as training, and for institutions that rotate responsibility rather than hoard it.

There’s also an ethical edge: if leadership is developed by being allowed to lead, then exclusion becomes self-fulfilling. Deny people the exercise and you can later cite their “lack of capacity” as proof you were right all along. Falls’ sentence is brief enough to sound like common sense; its bite is aimed at the gatekeepers.