Managing Leadership^®

The subject of individual leadership overflows with putative experts from various quarters: business, the military, politics, sports - even mythology and fiction. Unfortunately, they typically have little new to add on this overworked, overwrought topic.

When this happens in a field, the dialogue generally tends to become mystically abstract. There’s an attraction to this for all concerned: the members of the target audience can read into it whatever they like, and the writers can shovel out remarkable quantities of verbiage without being pinned down about what any of it actually means.

But then when the gig is finally up on that phase, the discourse can turn to a sort of brazenly effusive nonsense. I’ve recently had the bemused misfortune to read one of these examples from a prominent leadership author. It was filled - just packed - with perhaps the most egregiously obnoxious, self-aggrandizing name-dropping in the genre.

It also recycled gag-inducing quotes from notables whose stars were made to shine even more luminously for their patronizingly “humble” protestations that their eminence as “leaders” isn’t about them, but about the “great people” they work with. But, of course, the author didn’t elaborate on the identity, nature, or influence of this nameless class of people trotted out as background contrast for the true centers of focus; he merely proffered this false humility as more evidence of the superlative individual qualities of his subjects.

And the theme of this essay, tying together all the functionless dross, purporting to give it form? It was that leaders should “love” leading. Indeed, candidates for senior leadership positions should be asked, specifically, how much they “love leading.”

This in-your-face fluff rises well-above the commonplaces that an effective manager will likely genuinely enjoy productive work and collaboration with colleagues. It is, rather, yet another category of singularity ascribed to the special class of individual leaders promoted by this modern leadership movement - but this time it is not just being special, but the capacity for loving being more special than other people for their sake. When will that class make it formally into our MBA programs?

I can only hope from such desperate attempts to breathe life into a dying subject that its end is near. Perhaps we’ll be able, then, to take a clearer look at what leadership in organizations really is, and how to manage it.

In the meanwhile, please consider visiting the following authors (and adding them to your regular reading) where you will learn real lessons, told effectively and meaningfully, about how organizations really work, and how individuals learn to work within them:

• Steve Roesler, at All things workplace
• Lee Thayer, at The Leader’s Journey
• Wally Bock, at Three Star Leadership
• David Zinger, at Zinger on Strength-Based Leadership

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Technorati Tags: individual leadership, business, military, politics, leadership, Steve Roesler, Lee Thayer, Wally Bock, David Zinger