"The end of leadership"

By now, you have probably figured out that I really, really enjoy reading.  My interests are diverse, and I often pick a certain subject or genre and stick with it for a while before moving on to something else.  I spend a lot of time (and money) on Amazon.  However, about a year or so ago, I re-discovered the marvel of the public library.  The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County is fantastic - nine times out of ten, I can find the book that I am looking for online, order it, and pick it up at our local branch in just a few days.  I also recently discovered the Mercantile Library, a private membership library in downtown Cincinnati that was established by 45 local merchants in 1835 for the purposes of collectively pooling their resources and improving their literary knowledge.  It's a pretty fabulous place.

For a few years, I have been wanting to check out a book by Barbara Kellerman, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government called "The End of Leadership."  Infianlly checked it out about a week ago, and I just finished reading it.  In the first half of the book, Kellerman documents what has happened to institutional leaders (basically, leaders from all walks of life - political leaders, military leaders, business leaders, etc.) in the last couple of decades.  In our society today, largely as a result of cultural and technological changes, the balance of power between leaders and followers has shifted in such a way that leaders have become weaker and followers have become more powerful.  She provides several different lines of evidence from corporate America to the cultural and political revolutions in Europe, Asia, and the "Arab Spring."  Kellerman further cites several examples of how leaders have lost power and influence through bad, and at times, unethical, decisions (think of the corporate scandals at Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco, the quality control issues at Toyota and General Motors, and the 2008 Financial Crisis as a few important examples).  She goes on to cite studies showing significant and widespread declines in trust and confidence in our leaders (for example, in one study, only 7 percent of employees trusted their employers and managers; according to a 2011 CNN poll, only 15 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to do what is right - note that more recent studies on this particular issue have showed even lower percentages).

What is interesting, and what Kellerman discusses in the second half of the book, is that at the same time that leaders are becoming less powerful (compared to followers) and less trusted, there has been a dramatic growth of what she calls the "leadership industry" (all of the leadership training courses, books, graduate and post-graduate programs, and blogs - hopefully not this one).  This mismatch begs the question, does the leadership industry accomplish what it claims to do - train leaders?  Unfortunately, there is scant data that the "leadership industry" actually does help grow leaders.  Kellerman goes on to argue that perhaps the "leadership industry" should focus on training followers as well!

Interestingly (and perhaps fittingly) enough, Kellerman refrains from providing the "obligatory prescription" for how to address these issues.  Rather, in the final paragraph of the book, she suggests that even if we still need leaders (and we do), leadership itself is in grave danger (hence the title, "The End of Leadership").  In order to save leadership, the growing "leadership industry" must focus on four changes (and I will quote here) - "end the leader-centrism that constricts conversation" (i.e., focus equally on the followers), "transcend the situational specifics that make it so myopic" (I didn't touch on this, but here she refers to the fact that we are training so-called "specialists" rather than "generalists" - for example, courses focused on training health care leaders specifically or leadership development courses open only to employees of, say, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, or IBM), "subject itself to critical analysis" (in other words, measure the success of these programs in actually developing leaders), and "reflect the object of its affection - change with the changing times" (modernize the curriculum and focus of these programs).

Kellerman makes a good argument here.  And, when you realize that she has been at the center of the growth of the "leadership industry" (as a writer of several articles and books on leadership, as a regularly invited speaker on leadership, and as the Founding Director of the Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership), her arguments become even stronger.  I take a more optimistic viewpoint - maybe we are not witnessing the end of leadership - though I do think we have significant opportunities for improvement here. 

It's a good book.  Take a look and see if you agree with Kellerman.  Better yet, go check the book out from your local library.