Responding to the thread in general but to no particular message --
Let me first answer the question directly and then expound a bit.
I think "leadership" is a label we use to identify something we can't
quite explain and don't quite understand. For the most part, that
"something" seems to be the qualities that define a leader. The hope
seems to be that we can capture, bottle and sell this essence of
leadership. I don't think so. Here's why...
Many, many years ago, FORTUNE magazine published a piece on leadership and
in it mentioned that a researcher was headed off to the Naval Academy to
study what was being taught there. The writer wondered what the
researcher would find.
I wrote a letter to the editor (to Walter Kiechel, to be precise,) in
which I asserted that the researcher wasn't likely to find much. The
reason I gave is that, so far as I've been able to ascertain from my own
modest studies of leadership, there ain't no such thing. My exact words
as best I can recall, were these:
Leaders don't set out to lead;
they set out to do something else
and other people do or don't choose to go along.
And so when we see people following, we assume leadership is being
displayed or practiced. I think not. I think what we are seeing is
people who see someone else in the thrall of a vision or, less
dramatically, someone who is determined to achieve a particular objective
and they choose to join the hunt. As I suggested in my letter, which Mr.
Kiechel was kind enough to publish, the researcher would be better served
by studying followership.
Consequently, for me, Hitler was, as "Doc" Holloway called him, a "thug"
and so was Stalin and any number of others. I see no value in studying
them as leaders. I do not consider them as such. To my way of thinking,
they fit the category of "rulers" not leaders. There is a difference.
But there is value in studying those who followed Hitler; indeed, speaking
as someone of decidedly Germanic origins, it is far, far too easy to
attribute the horrors of the holocaust to that madman Adolf Hitler and his
magnetic, charismatic leadership than it is to face up to the fact that
those horrors were perpetrated in large part by people who in other
circumstances would be considered ordinary human beings. That, to me, is
the terrible aspect of the holocaust: those crimes against humanity were
not committed by monsters, they were committed by average human beings
who, in their own eyes, were probably behaving appropriately. If you
think I'm stretching the point, consider the middle manager who, in the
midst of a downsizing, sadly and with deep and great regret, fires 20
percent of his or her staff (in some cases, so that he or she or his or
her boss or others can hit their performance targets and pocket a bonus).
That's "ruling" not "leading."
What's the point? I think we need to distinguish between "ruling" and
"leading." Hitler was a ruler; of that there can be little doubt. Was he
a leader? To some people. Was he an "exemplary" leader? It might even
be the case that something useful could be learned from studying his
methods and techniques but I'm not interested in doing that. Would I hold
him up as an exemplar for any reason? Not on your life! He was a thug.
--Regards,
Fred Nickols Distance Consulting "Assistance at A Distance" http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm nickols@worldnet.att.net (609) 490-0095
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