A couple of weeks ago I wrote Leadership is All Hype (credit Peter Drucker for the title) and among the commenters was Bruce Lewin of Four Groups; as I told Bruce, his most recent comment deserved a full post response. (I hope you’ll take a moment to read the whole thread.)
This part of the conversation is focused directly on leadership as a business.
“Leadership is arguably a nascent industry.”
Leadership has been around for several thousand years, but it was only after WWII that it attracted practitioners who actually earned their living by teaching ‘leadership’ skills, in spite of “little consensus from suppliers, customers and even academics about what works. But that doesn’t stop either the selling or the buying.”
“I believe that there is a subconscious or unknown quantity to ‘leadership’ or self development, otherwise there would be more ‘if you do X you get Y’”
First, it seems to me that much of leadership marketing involves telling people that by learning X they will be able to do Y and the training involves teaching X.
If there is an unknown quantity it’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), which is know, but often ignored. I’ve never known or heard about anyone who was able to implement actions or ideas that weren’t at least synergistic with their MAP. So do X get Y works if, and only if, you can authentically do X.
“Self acceptance (and its derivative forms in language) are a lowest common denominator for human nature. People’s success/wellbeing/good stuff/bad stuff is a function of their self acceptance.”
I vehemently disagree with this and the proof of its invalidity is incarcerated across the country, found on welfare roles and in gangs and dropouts, as well as the C suite and Harvard.
Much of self-acceptance starts in infancy and stems from what we hear others say and their actions towards us.
Consider the thousands of kids every year who accept themselves as ’slow’, when, in fact, they aren’t slow, but are bored or have a learning disability.
If enough people tell you something and eventually you believe it.
That’s as applicable to being told good things as being told bad—the input is internalized and you accept it as a truth about yourself.
Extending leadership throughout an organization makes perfect financial sense for the organization; obviously it makes sense for those in the leadership industry.
But I’m not at all sure that economies of scale will increase opportunities for all or a willingness to fund training for those who don’t jump forward—often because they’ve been told that they aren’t ‘leadership material’, which takes us back to that self-acceptance thing.
Sadly, I think the industry bears much of the responsibility for all the people who’ve missed their chance to be all they could be because the industry sold the idea to their management as well as themselves that leadership is only for the few, the special, the chosen.
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Image credit: flickr
译文:
商业领导才能
两周前，我写了《领导才能就是促销讨论》一文（感谢Peter Drucker为本文题名）。布鲁斯·李玟是 四人组中的评论者之一; 像我告诉布鲁斯那样，他最近的评论值得我全面的回复。（我希望你能花片刻的时间，读读这篇文章。）
这次谈话直接集中在商业领导才能上。
“按理说，领导领域是一个新的产业”。
领导产业已有几千年的历史。但仅在二战后才得到专业人士的青睐。这些专业人士真正地凭“领导才能”谋生。尽管供应者和顾客有众多的不满，甚至缺乏有效的学术理论。但那并不能阻止领导才能的买卖。
“我认为‘领导才能’或自我发展具有潜在的或未知的特质，否则就不单单是‘诺你做X，则你就可实现Y’那么简单了。
首先，在我看来，好像大多数领导市场会告诉人们：学习X，他们就可以做Y。自然而然地，这培训就包括教授X了。
如果领导才能拥有未知的特质，那它就是 MAP（ 观念模式、人生态度和生活哲学）, 这些特质都为人所知，但常常被忽略。我从不知道或听说过有这么一类人，有能力实施行动或想法，但这行动和想法很少受到这些特质的影响。因而，做X能实现Y，如果，仅仅是如果，你可以真正做到X。
“自我接受（语言中的派生词形式）是最罕见的人类本质。人类的成功、健康、好事和坏事都是人类的自我接受在起作用。”
我十分反对这种看法。它站不住脚的证据，使人无法相信它。这可以从福利作用、帮派和辍学群体以及C组套房和哈佛大学上看出来。
多数自我接受在婴儿时期就开始形成了。其来自于别人对自己的评论以及别人对我们做了什么。
每年成千上万的孩子认为他们做事缓慢迟钝。事实并非如此。他们却被认为是令人厌烦的或缺乏学习能力的人。
如果有足够的人告诉你某事，，你最终会相信它的（真实性）。
被告知好事与坏事是同样奏效的——输入的东西被吸收后，你会把它当作是自己真实的一面而接受它。
通过组织，提高自己的领导才能，为组织做完美的财政计划；很明显，这只对身处领导领域的人才有意义。
但我不能完全肯定规模经济会为所有人增加机遇或增加许多好人集资培训那些无法大步前进的人——通常，这些人被告知他们不是“领导的料”。而这又使我们重新回到自我接受这一议题上了。
无奈的是，我认为这领域的所有人应为——那些失去机会本应成为他们能成的人付相当的责任，因为这领域的人出售主意给他们的部门或他们自己。而这主意就是领导才能只属于少数人、只属于特殊人群、只属于那些被选中的人。