The Business of Leadership
by Miki SaxonA couple of weeks ago I wrote Leadership is All Hype (credit Peter Drucker for the title) and among the commenters was Bruce Lewin of Four Groups; as I told Bruce, his most recent comment deserved a full post response. (I hope you’ll take a moment to read the whole thread.)
This part of the conversation is focused directly on leadership as a business.
“Leadership is arguably a nascent industry.”
Leadership has been around for several thousand years, but it was only after WWII that it attracted practitioners who actually earned their living by teaching ‘leadership’ skills, in spite of “little consensus from suppliers, customers and even academics about what works. But that doesn’t stop either the selling or the buying.”
“I believe that there is a subconscious or unknown quantity to ‘leadership’ or self development, otherwise there would be more ‘if you do X you get Y’”
First, it seems to me that much of leadership marketing involves telling people that by learning X they will be able to do Y and the training involves teaching X.
If there is an unknown quantity it’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), which is know, but often ignored. I’ve never known or heard about anyone who was able to implement actions or ideas that weren’t at least synergistic with their MAP. So do X get Y works if, and only if, you can authentically do X.
“Self acceptance (and its derivative forms in language) are a lowest common denominator for human nature. People’s success/wellbeing/good stuff/bad stuff is a function of their self acceptance.”
I vehemently disagree with this and the proof of its invalidity is incarcerated across the country, found on welfare roles and in gangs and dropouts, as well as the C suite and Harvard.
Much of self-acceptance starts in infancy and stems from what we hear others say and their actions towards us.
Consider the thousands of kids every year who accept themselves as ‘slow’, when, in fact, they aren’t slow, but are bored or have a learning disability.
If enough people tell you something and eventually you believe it.
That’s as applicable to being told good things as being told bad—the input is internalized and you accept it as a truth about yourself.
Extending leadership throughout an organization makes perfect financial sense for the organization; obviously it makes sense for those in the leadership industry.
But I’m not at all sure that economies of scale will increase opportunities for all or a willingness to fund training for those who don’t jump forward—often because they’ve been told that they aren’t ‘leadership material’, which takes us back to that self-acceptance thing.
Sadly, I think the industry bears much of the responsibility for all the people who’ve missed their chance to be all they could be because the industry sold the idea to their management as well as themselves that leadership is only for the few, the special, the chosen.
Your comments—priceless
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Image credit: flickr
November 17th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
[…] Today’s tips: Speaking of leadership in business, please stop over to see Miki Saxon’s take on the business of leadership. […]