Managing Leadership^®

We have been discussing what must be the assumptions upon which are based the concept of individual leadership as promoted by so many observers. Our emphasis has been on the form initially posited by the leadership gurus, which is that of a larger than life personage with superlative abilities to perceive the future, understand the means of adapting to and surviving in it, and lead our organizations into it.

The problem in attempting this, though, is that the term – “leadership” – is extraordinarily plastic. So much so, in fact, that discussions about one sort of leader can be viewed by advocates of another sort as misguided, if not insulting, without anyone being the wiser that the concepts they have in mind are distinctly different, if not even mutually incompatible.

But even more perplexing, descriptions of one type of leader – particularly the characterizations of certain broad skills like communication, or of general personality types like charisma – are often irresistible to promoters of wide ranges of other leadership notions. Like magpies, they gather the most exciting or attractive such accessories, and affix them enthusiastically to their own cherished models, blissfully blind to the sometimes startling effects thus created.

The result is that the menagerie of clearly unrelated leadership specimens gathered from across the landscape of felt need and personal inclination can leave all those who thought they were talking the same language appalled at the pure adventure evident in the wildly rampaging taxonomy of their “science.” These samples from the field cover the gamut from the originally spotted forward-leaning, future-peering leader to the more static sub-species, which are identified as members of the family more due to their improbable plumage than to their rather more mundane behavior and traits.

And this, really, is part of the problem with the general way the idea of leadership is promoted today, as an ineffable individual characteristic. Whether it refers specifically to the original concept of the inscrutably prescient action-figure hero, or the essentially more static connecting, soothing, empowering team-builder, by concentrating so much attention to the singularity of the person, it distracts everyone’s attention – including the leaders’ – from the tasks at hand.

Moreover, it presents a peculiar conundrum. On the one hand, we cannot possibly run our world of organizations with so rare an entity as the superlative individual leader – whether the active or static type – however widely conceived these may be. We ought to confront the facts that have obtained since the beginning, and that will likely continue for some time yet: it’s just us regular types available to run the show, as we have demanded and are now bound to do in the modern age. We can and ought to get to it.

On the other hand, there is precious little evidence whatever to show that “leaders” as depicted by their wide-eyed admirers have done anything but damage to our purposes, goals, and institutions. So, it’s just as well that there cannot possibly ever be enough of them to do much more.

We will return, then, to discussing the leader as action-figure – recalling that, at bottom, this is what all depictions of leadership, when pressed, are driven back to. But we will do so while remaining mindful of the more general damage this inwardly-referential, self-celebratory concept does, anyway, to the world of work.

See you tomorrow!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of teams and productivity, please see PsyBlog for how the one may actually impede the other.

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