How We Developed a Muddled Concept of Leadership

In my early 20s, when I began conducting trainings on leadership, few books on the subject existed. The business world was somewhat exclusive enthralled with management, and that was reflected in the inventory choices at the typical bookstore.

It would be another 20 years before Warren Bemis and others began publishing works which drew a sharp distinction between management and leadership. The popularity of their books touched off an steady outpouring of leadership books ever since.

The explosion of interest in leadership toward the end of the 20th century resulted from a striking change in the American labor force. At the outset of the century, workers were largely uneducated and somewhat limited in their skill sets.

By the end of the century, the workforce was highly educated and thoroughly advanced as skilled specialists. To bring out the highest performance of a worker community like this, companies had to adopt a more people-centric approach from those which had prevailed just two generations before. Leadership filled that bill.

But the way that corporations initially attempted to create a leadership culture had an unintended consequence. The concept of what it means to be a leader became somewhat muddled.

It In this episode I trace how that happened and elaborate on three questions which I developed to determine whether someone is indeed a leader or merely wears the title. This episode not only expands on those questions. It also explains the historical influences which made them important.

A PDF transcript of the episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2404-muddled-concepts-of-leadership.pdf.

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