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Leadership’s Future: Figuring Out Leadership

by Miki Saxon

Eleven thousand business books are published every year. Amazon currently lists more than 60 thousand books on leadership alone. There are also magazines, web sites, e-books, audiobooks, podcasts, and blogs. They all offer ideas on what to do. (Thanks to Wally Bock for the great stats.)

Much of what is written is anecdotal.

Much of what is written is more for self-aggrandizement as pointed out in this post by Jim Stroup.

And too much is garbage, pure and simple.

What it all has in common is the idea that if you do what the author did, or says to do, then you will become a leader whatever the situation, circumstances or your experience.

Obviously, this is poppycock. Nobody would even think of suggesting this kind of ‘do it my way and succeed’ approach to an athlete or entertainer, so why think that leadership, or managing, for the matter, is any different?

Little of what’s out there involves the rigorous kind of research that forms the basis of most subjects.

HBSThat lack is starting to be addressed by Harvard Business School.

According to professor Rakesh Khurana “If we look at the leading research universities and at the business schools within them, the topic of leadership has been actually given fairly short shrift. … What we tried to incorporate in the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice is how each different perspective illuminates key elements such as similarities and differences in leadership across task, culture, and identity.

Khurana also says that “Leadership just wasn’t tractable by large databases.” No surprise there, much of what involves human MAP isn’t.

But it was this comment that resonated loudest with me.

“There is no single “best” style of leadership nor one set of attributes in all situations.”

In conjunction with the effort to increase serious research, HBR is running a blog for just six weeks called Imagining the Future of Leadership. The articles are, in general, excellent and the comments interesting. Check it out and add your own thoughts.

I don’t believe that Harvard is the last word, but it is encouraging that a serious and respected institution agrees that the subject is complex, doesn’t fit neatly into a specific field and sees the need for much more than is currently available.

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/patriciadrury/3237604522/

2 Responses to “Leadership’s Future: Figuring Out Leadership”
  1. Claudia Cook Says:

    Anytime leadership is delegated to cookie cutter approaches I am suspect.

    For one reason groups and teams of employees are as unique as a human fingerprint – no group of employees or team is the same. However, there are some constants. Trust is a requirement both in companies and by leaders. In Collaborative organizations Interdependence is a requirement. In learning organizations, Genuineness with Empathy are necessary. In organizations that must change to meet market demands and push the innovation envelope, Risk and risk management is necessary. And why do it at all if Success is not a component. But is success all about just making money or does employee enrichment, engagement and satisfaction though flow play an important role? How do leaders engage that? In collaborative organizes all six of these components are necessary and there is a pretty good discussion of it in a new book published by a small IP, TIGERS Among Us – Winning Business Team Cultures and Why They Thrive. Just the same, look in the back of any book for an index, author’s notes and references to see if what you are about to read is an author’s life work or research-based or a novel calling card for a new twist on and old talk.

  2. Miki Saxon Says:

    Hi Claudia, Thanks for taking time to add some good thoughts.

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