As I define it, the leadership industry is about a half century old. Before about 1980 the interest in leadership was strong – to wit Confucius’s sage, Plato’s philosopher-king, Machiavelli prince, Locke’s legislator, Lenin’s revolutionary, and Arendt’s totalitarian. But it was sporadic. Only since about 1980 has there been an industry built on the supposition that leadership can constitute a pedagogy. Specifically, that leadership can be taught and learned not on a small scale but on a large one. That leadership can be taught to and learned by many different people in many different places in many different ways by many different types of instructors.
Leadership has become, in short, a vast money-making enterprise. “Leadership Industry” is then no more than, though also no less than, my catchall term for the now countless leadership centers, institutes, programs, courses, seminars, workshops, experiences, books, blogs, articles, websites, webinars, videos, conferences, coaches and consultants claiming to teach people how to lead – usually for money and sometimes for a lot of money.*
In recent years the leadership industry has not slowed. To the contrary, it has continued to grow, notably in the private sector where “executive education has evolved from a small cadre of on-campus leadership seminars into a multi-billion-dollar global industry” that ostensibly “equips senior managers, entrepreneurs, and high potential talent with the insight and agility demanded by today’s volatile marketplace.” It is projected that by 2029 the annual investment in global executive education will exceed $74 billion.**
Hard for me here to convey how deep or widespread is the apparent belief – I write “apparent” because I cannot say how deeply held is this belief or even if it is genuine – at least in the private sector that leadership programs pay off. For notwithstanding the level of the investment, are statistics that would seem to question the supposition. For example, “only 10% of people are natural leaders” and only another 20% “show potential with proper training.” And “trust in managers dropped from 46% to 29% in just two years (2033-2024). And despite the humungous sums of money that have been poured into leadership development over the last several decades, some “77% of organizations [still] lack sufficient leadership depth at all levels.”***
For the sake of this discussion, I am not, however, taking issue with the proposition that business investment in leadership development pays off. Here I raise another matter. Specifically, if we’re so good at developing leaders in the private sector – or, at least, sufficiently good to merit enormous investment in their improvement – why does the same not apply in the public sector?
To be clear, trust in leaders in the private sector is low. We do not find them models of rectitude. In fact, the most obvious indicator of their professional success – money – is also an indicator of their personal greed. But at least we can admire how high they can climb.
Not so leaders in the public sector – for them there is scant admiration of any kind. Not only do many leaders in the public sector seem to us to be unethical. Many leaders in the public sector seem to us to be ineffective. They fixate on raising money for their own campaign coffers; they quarrel with each other, endlessly; they cling to their posts for years on end, well past their sell-by date; and they are seen as not especially interested in serving the public good, if not even corrupt. To summarize findings from two years ago by the Pew Research Center: “Elected officials are widely viewed as self-serving and ineffective.” In short, Americans of all stripes despair of a political leadership class that for decades now has proven itself miserably poor at getting things done and equally poor at persuading their constituents that well-intentioned public service is other than largely dead and gone.
None of this is of course to say that the leadership industry is to blame for leadership cohorts that are little admired and less respected. The dislike, disrespect, and distrust of political leaders that we see in the United States is widespread, evident in most other democracies as well as in ours. It is however to ask yet again why the leadership industry continues to be indifferent to its lack of adequate impact. There are of course some successes to which it can point. But let’s get real – they are a drop in the proverbial bucket. If we leadership experts and educators did things right, we could have and would have a far, far greater positive impact than we do now – and have had over the last fifty years. As it stands we make a difference only at the margins, more’s the pity.
I have written about the disappointments of the leadership industry for years. Equally I have written about how to start making what’s wrong right. It’s not rocket science. The template for how to get better at what we do is out there. But we’ve not had the will to lead the way.
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*For more on my take on the leadership industry see two of my books: The End of Leadership (HarperCollins, 2012) and Professionalizing Leadership (Oxford University Press, 2018).
** From “100 Interesting Facts and Figures about Executive Education 2025,”
*** From Sean Linehan, “29 Eye-Opening Leadership Development Statistics 2025” in Exec.