Your right! The post is about frustration with individual leadership advocates who continue to line up, lemming-like, to drink the kool-aid even after seeing continuing evidence of its destructiveness – even its self-destructiveness.

I am absolutely with you on the “do” not “be” message. I often find myself forced, though, to emphasize that the doing is best focused forward on the thing done, not backward on the doer. As soon as the latter happens, people tend to confuse themselves with the work and begin to get their perspectives and priorities mixed up. It just doesn’t seem to be helpful in most cases.

Your description of a leader makes the role almost incidental – which is what it should be. You do what the work requires – wherever you are in the organization. That may be providing leadership (or attempting to) or accepting and supporting that provided by another – or, as is often the case, doing both simultaneously in various contexts. Then you move on. But it is always about the work and your efforts to advance it. It’s just part of the job.

Great perspective, Wally – thanks – for your comments and the memorable “no bee” image!

In my classes for new supervisors, there is a slide with a bumble bee covered by the international “no” symbols. The words beneath the graphic read: “There is no be. There is only do.”

If you use your behavior to influence the behavior and performance of others, you are a leader. That’s the dictionary definition: “Leader, one who leads.” There’s nothing there about whether you’re any good, but leadership is not a state of being or an exalted state of humanness. It’s something you do.