Drucker on leadership - All about Drucker

Information Outlook, Jan, 2002 by Bruce Rosenstein

The value Peter Drucker places on leadership is evident by the name of his foundation's journal: Leader to Leader.

Drucker's views on leadership permeate the writing in his own books and in chapters of the various books that have grown out of the journal, such as The Leader of the Future and Leading Beyond the Walls.

These books bring together writings by Drucker and some of the top names in the field of management and leadership study, such as Charles Handy, Warren Bennis, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

We don't know what, if anything, Drucker will say about leadership when he is the keynote speaker at the 2002 Special Libraries Association annual conference in Los Angeles in June. But we can learn a lot about Drucker's thoughts on leadership, and how SLA members can take more active leadership roles.

We, after all, are knowledge workers, the class of workers Drucker's world revolves around. Our institutions, both for-profit and nonprofit, are crying out to be led. Carefully reading Drucker can help show us the way.

His views on the subject may be somewhat contrarian, but they are blunt, direct, and succinct.

In the foreward to The Leader of the Future, he tackles the topic of whether leaders are born or made: "...there may be 'born leaders,' but there surely are far too few to depend on them.

Leadership must be learned and can be learned--and this, of course, is what this book was written for and should be used for."

He goes on to describe various aspects of a leader, including his oft-stated premise that leaders need not have charisma, and that there is no one personality type of leadership. He further states, among other ideas, that leaders set examples, seek responsibility more than rank, constantly ask what are the mission and goals of their organization, and start out asking what needs to be done, not what they should.

He asserts that the greatest opportunity to become a leader is in the nonprofit social sector (the focus of his foundation, The Peter F. Drucker Foundation For Nonprofit Management). He says there are nearly one million of these organizations in the United States, "and they provide excellent opportunities for learning about leadership."

In a fascinating chapter from the Drucker Foundation compilation Leader to Leader, "My Mentors' Leadership Lessons," he discusses the three people he learned the most from, all from his working life as a young man in Europe early last century. (Drucker turned 92 last November.) One was the founder of the economics department of a bank, another a newspaper editor, and the third a London banker. The overall lessons, which he describes in more detail, are, in his own words:

* "Treat people differently, based on their strengths.

* Set high standards, but give people the freedom and responsibility to do their jobs.

* Performance reviews must be honest, exacting, and an integral part of the job.

* People learn the most when teaching others.

* Effective leaders earn respect--but they don't need to be liked."

In the recent compilation of some of his most important writings, The Essential Drucker: Selections From the Management Works of Peter F. Drucker, there is also a considerable amount of information on leadership, including the declaration that leadership is the means, but what the leader is taking his followers is important. He cites "misleaders" of last century, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao as examples of charismatic leaders whose means led to disastrous ends.

Through all of this, Drucker's definition of leadership can be summed up with one quote, from the foreward of The Leader of the Future: "The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers."

RELAED ARTICLE: Selected Bibliography:

The Essential Drucker (HarperCollins, 2001)

The Leader of the Future: Drucker Foundation Future Series, edited by Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith and Richard Beckhard (Jossey-Bass, 1996)

Leader to Leader: Drucker Foundation Leaderbooks, edited by Frances Hesselbein and Paul M. Cohen (Jossey-Bass, 1999)

Leading Beyond the Walls: Drucker Foundation Wisdom to Action Series, edited by Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith and Lain Somerville (Jossey-Bass, 1999)

Managing For the Future (Truman Talley Books/Plume, 1993 paperback edition)