Saying No Thank You to Leadership
A number of years ago I made a critical decision. I said No Thank You to leadership. It took me a while to recognize that I had made that decision, because I’d certainly not been conscious of it at the time. But I did. I walked away from leadership; I didn’t want anything to do with it any more.
I suspect I’m not alone in that.
A few weeks ago I was handed a copy of Seth Godin’s latest book . I’m a big Seth Godin fan. He is always on to something, and brings it forth in tasty bites that leave me puffed and stuffed with inspiration. Tribes is no exception.
In five easy quotes I’ll summarize the message I took away.
- For the first time ever, everyone in the organization–not just the boss– is expected to lead.
- Individuals have far more power than ever before in history.
- Leaders use passion and ideas to lead people. Managers use their authority. Leaders have followers. Managers have employees and direct reports.
- Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
- Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.
Early in my career I saw myself as a leader in the organizations of which I was apart. Over the last number of years I have spent my time supporting leaders in organizations. But if I listen carefully to what Seth is saying, perhaps I wasn’t and perhaps I’m not.
What may be closer to the truth is that I work mostly with managers and administrators, and we’ve come to call those people leaders because we don’t have other models of leadership to look at. Or if we do, they are so outside of our immediate experience that we can’t relate and emulate. So we see manager as leader, leader as manager. From the top to the bottom, each with his or her area of influence and control, manipulating resources to accomplish set goals and targets.
And it leads me to question the veracity of the images we hold around what it means to be a leader in an organization.
As a general rule I avoid writing that diminishes the work of another. However I need an example of the kind of thinking that prevails in leadership development that is playing a role in maintaining commonly held images of leadership, and I want to juxtapose this against the kind of thinking that Seth Godin represents that is liable to shake things up.
The work I’m referring to focuses on thirteen core competencies of remarkable leadership. Here are the first seven:
- Remarkable leaders learn continually.
- Remarkable leaders champion change.
- Remarkable leaders communicate powerfully.
- Remarkable leaders build relationships.
- Remarkable leaders develop others.
- Remarkable leaders focus on customers.
- Remarkable leaders set goals and support goal achievement.
So what do you think? Remarkable stuff?
I’m not feeling it, I have to say. How can a book claim to develop remarkable leaders when its content is so…unremarkable? These core competencies do not make a leader remarkable, they make a leader competent. Remarkable leaders set goals? No kidding.
The question it leads me to is this: Does the perpetuation of these images work to inhibit the emergence of truly remarkable leadership (leadership that inspires a tribe of followers who follow not because they have to, but because they desire to share in the ideas, the change, the journey)?
What “core competencies” would it take to develop those kinds of leaders throughout an organization? And what effect would it have on the organization? (Revolutionary, I suspect.)
Let me provide more context. For a while I’ve been hearing comments from organizational heads that sound like this:
- “Our people are not highly motivated to be leaders.”
- “Our people don’t see themselves as leaders.”
- “When they have a choice to lead, they don’t want it.”
- “We’d like our leaders to become much more proactive.”
Something is going on here. People seem to be saying No Thank You to leadership. Why on earth? Leadership is one of the most human of human activities, and is an intrinsic part of all organizational life? Why would people turn away from it?
Perhaps for the same reason I did.
I am beginning to believe that leadership is scarce not only for the reason Seth states (at top), but also because people no longer desire to participate in the current paradigm.
Is it possible that people are consciously and unconsciously taking themselves out of the leadership game, waiting for a new paradigm to arise? A paradigm they can get excited about, that they want to participate in!
If Seth is right, if a desirable goal is to have everyone in an organization see themselves as leaders, what would that take?
What will not work is to go at it the way it’s so often done: rehashing the ideals and images of conventional leadership, which organizations are awash in. I’m hearing people increasingly saying No Thank You to being that kind of leader.
I’m going to suggest it begins with a whole new set of forward thinking images and core competencies. These will flow from emerging and not yet broadly understood arenas such as self organization, participation, community building, dialoguing, appreciative inquiry, emergence, coaching, to name a few.
Tribes is a call to re-imagine leadership; leadership founded on ideas and passion, while inspiring and enabling willing followers to take self-directed action to change the status quo. It is only a small part of the emerging picture, but it just may well get a ground-swelling of people to say Yes Thank You! to leadership.
—-
Personal note: What you may have noticed as you read this article is that the ideas I present are rough. My thought process is still very much at work on this, still polishing the proverbial lump of coal, but there is a diamond in here somewhere.
Please leave your comments. I’d love for this conversation to continue.
5 Responses 
Leave a Reply
Your article says so much about “leadership” in international schools. The truth is that there are very very very few leaders who actually encourage middle management and teachers to innovate. Educations leadership training is cutting edge…educational leadership in practise is little more than the comfortable maintenance of the status quo. People are actively discouraged from getting their heads above the proverbial parapet..looking for a new gig next year
Michael
Thanks for the insights Mike.
I’d be interested in hearing more about that gulf between the cutting edge training educational leaders receive and the maintenance of the status quo they practice. What is going on here? How are people being actively discouraged–what does that look like?
Leon
Great job here. I really enjoyed what you had to say. Keep going because you definitely bring a new voice to this subject. Not many people would say what youve said and still make it interesting. Well, at least Im interested. Cant wait to see more of this from you.
I usually don’t commonly post on many another Blogs, nevertheless I just has to say thank you… keep up the amazing work. Ok unfortunately its time to get to school.
Cool site you have, the posts here are very useful. Thanks!