Managing Leadership^®

According to the results of our efforts, over the past few days, to reconstruct its premise, the concept of singular individual leadership promoted by contemporary gurus is essentially archaic – even anti-modern. And yet, it remains quite popular; even wildly so. Why is that?

As we know, buying decisions are often made to satisfy emotional needs, and then justified with back-engineered rationalizations. But we have already begun to see that the rationale for current models of individual leadership may rest on pretty shaky ground. So, perhaps the emotional needs they meet are unusually deep, attracting immediate recognition and uncritical appreciation by everyone, and requiring little further examination.

They do seem to offer a terrifically seductive promise, selling incalculable books, seminars, workshops, training programs – even university degrees. Aspiring leaders clamber desperately into the ever-growing leadership market attempting to attain it. Unsurprisingly, aspiring providers of all types elbow their way in as well, just as desperate to meet the need.

This is clearly a demand-driven market.

We need not examine, for the present, why that should be so – only acknowledge it. But we can note that there are three powerful factors working on this need, and acting on each other in a way that reinforces the strength of each.

One is the widely felt, generalized desire for someone to come along and offer certainty and clarity to drive away our anxiety and confusion. Another is the drive to be one of those special people.

And the third, less frequently remarked upon, is that the insidious currents inescapably inherent in these dynamics work to push us all away from acknowledging responsibility for the direction and content of our actions. We followers abrogate this to those who we, with the greatest relief, pin the tail on as leaders. And for their part, these great leaders slip the yoke of the normal bonds of purpose-oriented self-discipline which alone meaningfully unite risk and reward.

So, we all have strong emotional ties to this game. It does them no service to point out that the rules prevent anyone, really, from winning.

Perhaps we are prepared, then, to summarize the premise that seems to underlay the various arguments for the superlative individual leader of modern organizations. We will attempt to do that tomorrow. As always, we look forward to your visits and invite you to join in.

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Today’s tips: Speaking of permanently muddling our efforts to fill emotional needs because we muddle up their rational justifications, please see these pieces from The Economist, on how imposing positive thinking on everyone may hurt the very ones its supporters imagine it will help, and the different ways – and their strikingly different results – of looking at the whats and whys of fraudulent scientific research.

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