Managing Leadership^®

Today we will be addressing the problem with the idea that leaders bring unique talents to positions of authority in organizations. It offers a number of avenues of attack, but we’re going to go right up the middle, and assault the very idea that organizations should place themselves in thrall to a special class of “leaders.”

It’s no use arguing that no one really says that, because the truth is that the modern leadership movement says or implies little else. Leaders, according to them, are possessed of such extraordinary leadership characteristics that the term “leader” hardly does justice to them, tainted as it is with more proletariat usages. It is this exclusive instinct that generates categories of leaders - or even stages of consciousness beyond leadership - such as “edgewalkers” and “change agents.”

This notion of the great leader possessed of superlative, almost unearthly, qualities is still out there and widely promoted. Indeed, it is underlined by a recent review of a new leadership book which promises that you will find the guidance you’ve been seeking regarding the “spiritual” side of business leadership.

When the world was run by a select few and the rest of us just mindlessly hewed wood and hauled water, its leaders may have been able to delude themselves with that sort of thing. But the modern world of organizations and professional management cannot tolerate this essentially medieval approach to leadership.

As Peter Drucker insisted, we need to build organizations that can be run by ordinary men and women of mortal mien. This is done by designing organizational structures and procedures that can be managed by men and women who have mastered a common set of practices and skills.

In such organizations, leaders don’t provide vision and issue orders to awe-struck morons. Rather, ordinary, and perfectly competent, workers and managers shoulder the work, figure it out, and get it done. Moreover, they professionalize the process so that the next person in line can pick up where they leave off and keep going, improving, and contributing to the whole.

The implication inherent in the modern leadership movement’s teachings about what a leader is and how to be one is that leaders bring special abilities and skills to organizations which otherwise lack - and which desperately need - them. This is an indictment of the managers and members of those organizations which won’t hold up.

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Here are all the posts in this series:

1. The argument for individual leadership
2. Humility? Check. Sincerity? Check . . .
3. Passionate? Check. Inspirational? Check . . .
4. All hat, no cattle
5. We’re here to help you
6. The lengthened shadow of the leader
7. Sticks and stones

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Today’s tip: Wally Bock, who authors Three Star Leadership, published a really excellent piece related to today’s topic in which he described the true “secret” of the legendary success of the Roman Legions - as well as that of a relentlessly successful modern business. Wally approaches this issue from the system side - but you will see the implications for management - and individual leadership, as well. Please be sure to read it, and stop back to let us know what you think.

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