Leadership competence
Lead but remember that the world doesn’t revolve around you
Beware of of the “great man / great woman” image of leadership. Leaders don’t lead because they are better / stronger / wiser / more spiritual than others in the organization. Leaders lead because they accept a certain role and exhibit certain skills.
I just read an interesting article by Jurgen Apolo about what he calls “Egocentric Leadership.” I’m going to quote it at length here, because it’s really helpful. (Note that he uses “leading” and “managing” interchangeably.)
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I just finished reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and I didn’t like it. Yes, the message about team formation was quite good, and the model was interesting. But I hated the story. It describes a management team of immature managers, who all seem to be behaving like children. But behold… there is a new and wise CEO who is able to herd them all in the right direction, with a gentle but firm hand. Install a smart and experienced CEO, et voilá… Problem solved…
It’s the same with Good to Great, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, The One Minute Manager, and many others. They all assume that the organization is a ship full of lemmings, who are all in desperate need to be led. And that leadership is to be executed by the top lemming, of course.
It’s no wonder such books sell like cupcakes among everyone who enjoys feeling superior to other workers. It satisfies their needs for status and power. Another name would be egocentric leadership.
Now, don’t get me wrong! There are plenty of good ideas and good intentions among the authors of these books. That’s why I call it management 2.0: Nice ideas, bad implementation…
Most “superiors” have no idea how to do the jobs of their “subordinates”. Peter Drucker already wrote this ages ago:
[Great management] is the understanding that an organization is a social complex system of knowledge workers. Taking care of the system is just another specialization, just like development, testing, and marketing. Someone has to do it. But nobody is anyone else’s superior. We’re all in it together.Knowledge workers are not subordinates; they are “associates.” For, once beyond the apprentice stage, knowledge workers must know more about their job than their boss does—or else they are no good at all. In fact, that they know more about their job than anybody else in the organization is part of the definition of knowledge workers.
– Peter F. Drucker, Management
