What is it about Leadership?

Training & Development, March, 2001

We burden our leaders with crippling expectations. We demand that they be wise, swift, fearless, and visionary. And, by the way, they should turn a handy profit and help us grow. Who'd want such a role, and moreover, who'd ever fit the bill? Think of the size of the rock that must be lifted by anyone seeking to develop leaders.

No business topic has been explored more obsessively than leadership. No behavior in the workplace has been more analyzed, parsed, or dissected. No role has had more expectations heaped upon it. And no failure earns more heated opprobrium than a leadership flameout. Sometimes, it seems as if leadership is an organization's drug of choice. Firms pay huge sums to get it; employees crave it. And when it's withdrawn, they crash.

If leadership had a gene, we would have decoded it by now, for we return to the topic with the tenacity of scientists seeking to unravel the human leadership genome. That is why each year we devote an issue to leadership even when it seems there couldn't possibly be a new thought to explore or a new technique to apply. But, happily, we are always proven wrong.

This year's review looks at leadership from three angles: the leadership DNA that must infuse an organization, Robert K. Greenleaf's notion of servant leadership applied to trainers, and how to turn leaders into visionaries.

Read on.

Lead on.