“The way leadership gurus try to demonstrate their legitimacy is not through their scientific knowledge or accomplishments but rather by achieving public notoriety – be it the requisite TED talks, blog posts, Twitter followers, or books filled with leadership advice that might or might not be valid and useful.” (p. x)

Reference

Pfeffer, J. (2015). Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time. New York: Harper Business.

“Want to be an expert on leadership? You could get training and exposure to the relevant research literature, but it’s not necessary. If you’re persuasive enough, articulate enough, or attractive enough, if you have an interesting enough, uplifting story or some combination of these traits, you are or can be a very successful leadership blogger, speaker, and consultant – whether or not you have ever read let alone contributed to, any of the relevant social science on the topic.” (p. ix)

Reference

Pfeffer, J. (2015). Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time. New York: Harper Business.

“I recommend the buyer beware – of the leadership industry. I do not suggest that there are no great leaders, or that learning to lead is impossible, or that the instruction is an illusion. What I am suggesting is that we look at the industry more critically, improve our assessment of what is being accessed, expand our conception of what constitutes a leadership curriculum, and broaden our understanding of how change is created.

In a perfect world we would develop an overarching leadership theory with an overarching application to leadership practice. But in this imperfect world we have yet completely to understand historical causation, and to entirely explain human motivation. We have yet collaboratively to develop a core leadership curriculum, to objectively, rigorously measure the efficacy of what we do, and to fit leader learning to the twenty-first century.” (pp. 195-196)

Reference

Kellerman, B. (2012).  The end of leadership.  New York: Harper Business.

In her 2012 book, The End of Leadership, Barbara Kellerman focuses most of her attention on taking the leadership industry to task. One of the areas she concentrates her displeasure on is leadership books.  In her estimate, many of the authors base them “… on a few simple assumptions.”  She elaborates on their formulaic nature by stating:

“… that leadership is a skill of some sort, which everyone everywhere should aspire to acquire; that leadership can be learned by all sorts of people, from different backgrounds, and with different experiences and areas of expertise; that notwithstanding the difference between them, leadership can be learned by large numbers of people simultaneously; that leadership can be learned quickly and easily – over a period of months or weeks or even over a weekend; that, in comparison with leaders, followers are less consequential, less valuable a commodity; that context is of secondary or even tertiary consequence; and the leaders control outcomes – which is why, the industry reasons, leaders matter more than does anyone else.” (p. 154)

Reference

Kellerman, B. (2012).  The end of leadership.  New York: Harper Business.

“What I am saying is this: As a whole the leadership industry is self-satisfied, self-perpetuating, and poorly policed; that leadership programs tend to proliferate without objective assessment; that leadership as an area of intellectual inquiry remains thin; and that little original thought has been given to what leader learning in the second decade of the twenty-first century should look like. There have, of course, been curricular revisions, adjustments here and there to the existing model.  But in spike of the widespread disappointment in and distrust of leaders in the society at large, and despite the seismic changes in culture and technology, there has been scant alteration to the prevailing paradigm of learning how to lead.” (p. 169)

Reference

Kellerman, B. (2012).  The end of leadership.  New York: Harper Business.

“Leading in America has never been easy. But now it is more difficult than ever – not only because we have too many bad leaders, but because we have too many bad followers. Many of us don’t vote at all, or vote along strict or even extreme ideological lines, making it hard for political leaders to do what they must – to collaborate to compromise. And many of us are too timid, too alienated, and/or, too disorganized to speak up and speak out, making it easy for corporate leaders to do what they want – to do what’s best for them and their bank accounts. Whatever it is that ails us, in other words, it not only about those at the top falling down on the job, but also about those in the middle and at the bottom falling down on theirs.” (Kellerman, 2012, p. 123)

Reference

Kellerman, B. (2012).  The end of leadership.  New York: Harper Business.