In my most recent book, The End of Leadership, I raised some serious questions about the Leadership Industry. In particular I raised some serious questions about teaching leadership, such as how do we know when we get it right.
Becoming a leader has of course become a mantra. The business of teaching people how to lead has exploded in the last thirty, forty years, with lots of people making lots of money on the generally unquestioned assumption that developing leaders is a legitimate, even proven undertaking.
But, as I write in The End of Leadership, “for all the large sums of money invested in the leadership industry, and for all the large amounts of time spent on leaching leadership, learning leadership, and studying leadership, the metrics are mostly missing. There is scant evidence, objective evidence, to confirm that this massive, expensive, thirty-plus-year effort has paid off.”
When I wrote the book I was aware, well aware, that I was biting the hand that feeds me. I was similarly aware that some of my colleagues were likely to look askance at someone who had the temerity to question the legitimacy of what they do. So far I’ve not been tarred and feathered – the book was published in 2012 – and indeed the book has received modest recognition. (For example, Choice, a trade magazine for librarians, named it an “outstanding academic title of 2013.”) But my argument did not catch on – the leadership industry continues to thrive, despite my doubts about what we really know about teaching how to lead.
In some sense then it was heartening to learn a few days ago that I was not alone – I was not the only skeptic. To be sure, in an article in the Wall Street Journal (5/7/14), Carl Schramm, University Professor at Syracuse University, did not raise questions about teaching “leadership.” But he did raise questions – the same sorts of questions – about teaching “entrepreneurship.” I at least would argue, same thing.
“Many colleges and universities across the country offer courses and programs in ‘entrepreneurship,’” Schramm writes. “Are they worthwhile? Entrepreneurship is apparently an occupational category now, yet when it comes to judging the value of what they teach, its practitioners are flying blind.” Schramm goes on to point out some of the problems endemic to teaching entrepreneurship, including the lack of academic consensus on what works for a new business, a teaching approach that is “cobbled together from strategic-planning and venture-finance insights,” and case studies that can easily be cherry-picked to “conform” to the teacher’s belief about how businesses should start.
The parallels between what I call the leadership industry and what might be called the entrepreneurship industry are striking. In both cases it’s time for what Schramm calls “an evidence-based revolution.” And in both cases it’s time for those professing to teach how-to – how to be a leader and how to be an entrepreneur – to be more honest with those expecting the keys to the kingdom.
You are quite right about leadership. Actually, the case can be made that the teaching of leadership has had a negative effect on everything but the earning power of purveyors.
The reason is that leadership is wildly misunderstood. Leadership has been connected to visions, goals, targets, policies, directives, bureaucracy, and even rewards.
In truth, all of these are forms of telling people what to do and since no one likes being told what to do, these convince employees that management disrespects them. This results in employees treating their work, their customers, each other, and their bosses with the same level of disrespect.
This happens because ~95% of all employees are followers who follow the value standards reflected in what management provides to them. The quality of what management provides constitutes management’s leadership of employees because that is what followers follow.
Visions, goals, targets and the like are just forms of the traditional command and control approach to managing people. In truth, that approach is not an attempt to manage people but to manage what they do and how they do it and is rightly interpreted as very disrespectful. That is a huge mistake and creates the Gallup survey results that show over 70% of employees as disengaged or actively disengaged. We were duly warned by Douglas McGregor in his book “The Human Side of Enterprise”.
Switching from command and control (Theory X) to what I call autonomy and support (Theory Y), helping people to be the best they can be, results in hundreds of percent performance gains, joy and little stress for management, and the same for employees. That is what I personally experienced as an executive. But that way is not popular, actually derided by most.
Wishing you well if you are on a crusade, Ben
Author “Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed”