Managing Leadership^®

The current financial crisis has prompted many observers to re-visit the topic of individual leadership. The stunningly poor, or even reprehensible, performance of so many people previously regarded as truly monumental “leaders” is being re-characterized, however, in ways designed to do as little damage as possible to still-cherished definitions of leadership. After all, some of these same observers have an awful lot invested in those definitions.

As a result, these “leaders” are discovered to not have been leaders at all, but just pretenders to this elevated role. Others are said to have been real leaders once, but, neglecting the sage advice of these leadership “experts,” soared too near the sun and lost perspective. Still others are revealed to have never really been leaders at all, but mere managers overwhelmed by events.

So the priests of this peculiar cult dig their heels in, argue that the problem isn’t with their ideal of leadership, but with its practice by poor mortals. And the solution isn’t less of it, but more: more intensely, in more places, at more levels in our organizations. They don’t tell us how the solution as described will alleviate the problem as depicted.

But one way they are trying to firewall themselves off from criticism for the performance of their disciples is by trotting out the tired old lists of leadership characteristics, and of the distinctions between leaders and managers.

As this feeble assault runs its course, however, remember two things. First, there are no leadership characteristics. This issue has been examined pretty thoroughly for decades. The conclusion is clear: there are no leadership characteristics. None.

It doesn’t matter who says there are, or what his or her reputation in the “field” is, or who he or she has advised on “leadership.” There are no leadership characteristics. You cannot develop or identify so-called “leaders” on the basis of them. It is well past time for these patently preposterous claims to be acknowledged for the distracting, and even damaging, waste of time that they are.

Second, the presumptive difference between leadership and management – together with the accompanying pointless and gratuitously obnoxious assertions of distinctions between leaders and managers – is an arbitrary construction manufactured out of thin air. On the one hand, there is no good reason to define the leadership functions separately from those of management. On the other, there is most assuredly no reason – certainly no evidence – to assert that they are inherently exclusive functions which cannot be performed by the same person; that is, that one is a leader or a manager, but cannot be both.

If you believe such things, you do so on faith. You are welcome to do that. Perhaps you see images of leadership in clouds or toast, or even patterns elsewhere you can barely make out, although once you’ve connected these improbable dots in your mind you can’t shake their newfound significance. That’s fine. Just reconcile yourself to the fact that you are consigning yourself and the business functions that depend on your judgement to that faith, rather than to any practice or approach supported by any evidence of its veracity.

Unless, of course, you take global cooling for evidence of global warming, and the meltdown of so many paragons of the singular individual leadership movement as evidence of its effectiveness in producing “leaders” who infallibly guide businesses and their stakeholders through uncertain times to sunnier days ahead.

Do you?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of icons of the modern leadership movement, you might be interested to see how many of them you find on this list of The 10 Dopiest Business and Economy Leaders of 2008, compiled by James Pethokoukis of US News & World Report.

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