As a speaker and writer, I find more and more I’m being asked to write and talk about “leadership issues.” While I admit to not having an advanced degree from an Ivy League university in the subject, “leadership issues” are really “people issues.” so . . . I figured I would give it a go. It took me some time to work my courage up to the point where I felt I was allowed to contribute to the discussion, but, since I’ve actually done a fair amount of leading, I decided I’ve got as much valid stuff to offer as anyone. Besides, I don’t have anything else to do.
Of course, one should guard against illusions of personal grandeur, so I make a considerable effort to read books and blogs about leadership in order to keep up with what other people are doing.
At the risk of sounding like I’m trashing the competition, I must tell you that there’s an awful lot of leadership coaching out there that I just don’t care for at all. For a long time I thought that this was just my own chip-on-the-shoulder competitive small mindedness that led me to feel this way, but something happened to change my mind.
Someone I met on twitter recommended this book called “Secrets of Consulting” by Gerald Weinberg. I confess, most books of this ilk I find to be either boring or incomprehensible, but I took a chance and started to read it. My response to this one was completely different. I loved it. What a great book. So I got to wondering, why is it that so many of these books on management and leadership put me off, and this book just resonated so well? And I think I have an answer.
There are basically two approaches to what we call “leadership.” The first and most common is "inner directed," and a handful of them are “outer directed.”
The books that I call inner directed basically exploit and reinforce natural narcissism. (Hey, if it sells, go for it.) They are very much about improving yourself, examining yourself, training yourself, thinking about yourself… well, you get the idea. The “conversation,” if you will, is strictly between the author and the reader. There is no consciousness or calm discussion of anyone else. There is also way too much implied incipient grandiosity in them; the words “great” and “excellence” are used a lot. Many of them emphasize an “us versus them” approach. I saw this inner-directed approach used almost universally in the training of conductors, so i am not surprised to see it being used everywhere else.
The few books that I have read about leadership that I liked are not about bringing about some grand alteration of new depth in one’s character. Instead, they are practical discussions about the fundamentals of how other people behave. I think the best one ever written is Machiavelli’s "Discourses." (Just FYI, this is the mother of all leadership and management books, it’s a complete analysis of how the Roman Empire became the Roman Empire. Highly recommended.) "Parkinson’s Law" is another.
Anyway, to sum it up, in my view, leading and managing is not an individual activity, it’s part of a partnership. If I were to use a musical simile, yes, there’s a lot to be said for sitting in a practice room by yourself and working out little technical details, but you’ll never become a first-rate performer unless you also study your audience and come to understand your role in that relationship. There are literally thousands of music books teaching the former and virtually none addressing the latter. It doesn’t surprise me that the same ratio applies in the business leadership realm.
© Justin Locke
