Managing Leadership^®

A leadership seminar was recently held in London, featuring seven of the world’s leading icons or experts on leadership. As it turns out, the sort of leadership they were presumed to be experts on was the charismatic individual variety. It also happens that all of them were Americans.

According to The Economist, the presentation was reminiscent of a revival meeting, a peculiarly American phenomenon, with the speakers striding about the stage exhorting the crowd. One of the seven made the participants stand and hold hands, while he declared that they were all going to cross the road together.

The Economist gently notes that the audience of London businessmen complied, but with a sort of clumsy, hesitant, and self-conscious discomfort. Generously concluding that Brits simply may not understand leadership as well as Americans, the paper suggested that this might be due to the monarchy’s traditional discomfort with unduly charismatic and influential church leaders. Since before Henry VIII, England has struggled to establish governmental authority over the Church and its leaders. Even today, the Archbishop of Canterbury is chosen only with the approval of the Prime Minister.

The American experience with religion is, indeed, different. A fundamental element of the culture is informed by the experience of colonial-era religious immigrants, who insisted on practicing their faith undiluted and unperturbed by government. Unfortunately, in those days this tended to result in the undiluted and unperturbed practice of intolerance, often violently barbaric. Ultimately, America’s Founding Fathers elected to deal with the church/state issue by declaring their separation, a solution quite distinct from the control of the former by the latter. As a result, as has often been remarked, American religion has been left free to express an assertive evangelism, often exploited and promoted by charismatic preachers.

Less often noted, but just as remarkable, is that this evangelical streak expresses itself in virtually every aspect of American life – even those that purport to be decidedly secular. Whatever Americans do, they do with religious zeal, convinced that it represents the truth – a truth that everyone must be given the opportunity to acknowledge and accept. This instinct leads naturally to expression via passionate, charismatic individual leadership, igniting the spirit in others, setting off a firestorm of evangelical enthusiasm to sweep across the country, like the Great Awakenings that do just that every couple of generations in America.

So, The Economist’s reference to the distinct religious experiences separating the speakers at this conference and their audience was perceptive. As far as it goes.

The truth is, Americans are quite serious about their approach to the separation of church and state, even if they haven’t quite sorted it out fully, especially in the cultural realm. However, when they’re told during a religious service to rise up, clasp hands, and declare that they’ll cross the road together, they’re likely to instinctively understand the call and to join in with enthusiasm. When they’re told to do that in other settings that summon up high purpose and passion, they may do so as well. But, generally, they become uncomfortable when such elicitations are made in environments that appear to not call for such pitched passion, such as most business settings. This discomfort arises from the other side of this cultural coin, the instinct to avoid a dangerous, or at least potentially ludicrous, collision of religious passion and measured calculation. American CEOs of companies making products high in demand, but low in emotional content, such as cardboard containers or frisbees, would be just as likely as their British counterparts to blanch at participating in that demonstration during the London leadership conference, but for their own distinct reasons.

But that just brings us to the question: Is charismatic leadership distinctly American? Obviously not. Numerous examples of such individual leadership regularly appear among us, both around the world and across time. The globe has been swept with charismatic figures who have inspired the best and the worst in all of us, from the beginnings of history up to – well, right up to today.

Charismatic leadership is not distinctly American. But its blanket – and, perhaps, just slightly ludicrous – application in inappropriate settings may be. The thing to do, then, is to stand, clasp hands, and pray we can put a stop to it at last.

What do you think?

Coming up for discussion:

In the last post, we promised that we would discuss, in this one, some ideas suggested by “the prophet of management,” as Peter Drucker called her, Mary Parker Follett. Hopefully, we will be able to start this in the next post, beginning with a look at what she sees as the principal role of the leader at the top.