Confronting Myths About Leadership

Myth No. 1: "Leadership is character."
This is a popular mantra both in the media and along the campaign trail.  Yet, as it is usually raised in political discourse, the character issue is more an excuse to muckrake than a meaningful distinction about leadership.  If leadership were really all about character, after all, there's justification to seek and report all manner of small and petty "failings," innuendo, distortions, and outright lies in the name of pseudo-morality.

There would be a justification (of sorts) to nit-pick a candidate to death, as the media seems to be doing to John Edwards.  Yet, how revelatory is such nitpicking of Edwards true character?  I'd argue he may be one of the two most decent, highly ethical,  candidates running.  Let's not mis-characterize leaders or "leadership!"

The leadership=character approach enables those who would inject specific religious agendas to impose their world view on the rest of America.  Hypocrites of various stripes then play one-upsmanship.  Perhaps a new low was reached at the 2004 GOP national convention where the podium had what appeared to be inlaid crosses.  GOP demagogues, one after another, tried to give the impression that they spoke as Gods' representatives on earth.  And of course, Ole GWB was there to talk the "talk."
There was Bush in all his Messianiac grandeur.  Even as Bush proposed a decidedly anti-spiritual agenda of death and destruction, of destroying the US safety net, and cutting back on programs that help people, his speech was replete with phony "compassion," code language, and hints of "rapture."  God speaks to him, he told us on another occasion.  And he is acting as a result of everyone's prayers.
  Ironically, at the same time, Bush campaign groups , populated by Bush fund raisers, reached new lows in marketing fraudulent charges against John Kerry's Viet Nam service.  Such diversions were predictable, both because Kerry had limited himself to his heroism (a "character" platform)and because the GOP knows how to play on that field, however dirty they play.

Despite Bush's attempts to wrap himself in pseudo-morality, he continues to link Iraq to 9-11 in his public utterances.  We know that the majority of outside "Al Qa'ida" fighters in Iraq are Sunni's from Saudi Arabia.  Yet Bush persists in conflating Iraq with 9-11.  Besides being truth-challenged, Bush's plundering of our nation's resources to the benefit of his donors and his racking up insurmountable deficits and debt are also immoral.
We saw the same manipulation of the character issue in 2009, as Gore was hammered for an "exaggeration." which wasn't really one, while Bush proclaimed his major inspiration was "Jesus"  and he had created the "Texas Miracle."  And the media let him get away with it.

The relationship between leadership and morality is complex, but derives primarily from how leadership is used and for what purpose.  Leadership that is personalized and self-aggrandizing is susceptible to abuse.  Used for good, leadership should be both means and ends-justified.  Thus, justifying a war based on lies, but retro-fitting it with a "bringing democracy" justification, is a no-go.

Myth No 2. "Leadership ability is set at birth and depends on traits we are born with."
Most scholars agree that leadership is learned.  Moreover, traits thought to correlate with leadership are no guarantee of success.  For example, a person can be flexible, decisive, extroverted, all thought to relate to leadership, and still be an ineffective leader. Furthermore, there are optimal levels of many leadership correlates.  Think about these traits, and their relationship with leadership effectiveness, as being distributed along an inverted U-curve.  Too much flexibility may mean there's no constancy of purpose.  By many accounts, the Bush administration is, if anything, certain.  To paraphrase John Kerry, Bush is certain and wrong a good deal of the time. 

Too much decisiveness can mean haste at the expense of thoughtful strategizing and little-to-no long-term planning. Not possessing a given trait to a significant degree is no guarantee of failure either.  For example, introverts and shy individuals can compensate for their introversion and shyness. 

What is clear is that individuals come to associate implicitly certain qualities with effective leadership.  To an extent, leadership is in the eye of the beholder.  As Karen Kwiatowski (USAF-Ret) at militaryweek.com has said, those in the military know it (leadership) when they see it (and when they don't).  This gives rise to the third myth.

Myth No. 3: "People all perceive leadership the same way.
If they did, there would be no need for a multiparty system.  In the view of linguist George Lakoff, the GOP frame derives from a strict father model.  The Democratic frame derives from a more nurturing model.  This may be an oversimplication.  However, psychologists have found evidence for mental models as well.  People have mental models or prototypes of the ideal leader and the ideal platform.  These can be as different as are George W. Bush and John Kerry.  Those who admired the belligerent, arrogant and stubborn style of George W. Bush's presidency weren't impressed with more articulate, less swaggering John Kerry, and vice-versa.

Research conducted by myself and others reveals that these prototypes may vary from person to person and affect each's perception of, judgment about, and behavior toward leaders.  In reality, one person may prefer a consensus builder, while another an agenda-setter; one may prefer a task-oriented leader, while another might prefer a more human-relations-oriented one.  Yet another might prefer a leader who scores high on both human relations and task orientation.  It's clear, and a challenge for our time, that too many in this country want an aggressive,, strutting bully president.  Or, at least they did.  The rest of us can't relate. Part of the trouble for those selecting Bush, however, seemed to be they bought Bush's self description as a "uniter, not a divider."  That "dog won't hunt" any more.

Myth No. 4:"Leadership is the doing of individuals, not organizations."
This is the "You're on-your-owndership" model of leadership.  Folks who buy this myth think people either demonstrate leadership or they don't.  There's nothing anyone can do to help them, so its every person for himself. 

This myth is perpetuated in the mistaken belief that whether or not an individual becomes a leader is entirely up to individual "initiative," while organizational contexts contribe little to the development of leaders.  The world is his or her oyster.  As Oprah would say, if you intend it, it will happen.  Oprah is wrong. Indeed, although individual initiative is required for leadership emergence, situations are powerful contributors to leadership development and drive the appropriateness of particular leadership styles or leadership substitutes.  And organization contexts can either help or hurt leadership emergence.  For example, during the past fifteen years the DLC has swooped in to destroy candidates straying from its orthodoxy.  Attributing the fading of such candidates solely to the candidates own doing would involve significant attribution error.  But more to the point, we should question whether or not we encourage our candidates to think outside the box.  Or do we over-react to every morsel of what they say, obsessing on "small data."

Myth No. 5: "A prescription for leadership exists." 
Scholars, including Gary Yukl and others (e.g., Stodgill) before him, have contributed decades of research refining categories of potential leadership behavior.  Still, there's no universal prescription.  That's because leadership is not a one-size-fits-all list.  This is sometimes referred to as situational leadership.  for example, military-style, top-down leadership, once thought to be the only leadership style, is now known to be incompatible with many civilian contexts, and even some military contexts, in a democracy.  Interestingly, in my consulting, I found that, often, military leaders had a better understanding of this fact, than did some in the private sector.  This leads to Myth No. 6.

Myth No. 6: "Leadership is top-down, or one-directional."
Consultants and political analysts often mimic authors, such as Bennis and Nannus who once exhorted leaders to "align people to their vision."  But leadership is not something leaders do to followers.  Leadership isn't "deciders" pushing decisions down followers' throats.  Instead,leadership is an interactive process between leaders and followers, whereby both get something in the exchange.  Leaders get achievement of shared goals, respect, influence, support, and the effort of followers.  Followers get the achievement of shared goals, inspiration, services, resources, pay, and other tangible and intangible outcomes.  Accordingly, it's not enough to question the efficacy of leadership.  It's also necessary to question the efficacy of our followership.

However, this transactional method of viewing or describing leadership falls short because it doesn't account for what researches call "tranformational leadership."  Transformational leaders provide more than just  exchange.  They build consensus toward some common goal, creating synergy, of sorts, in the process.

Leaders don't provide everything in the equation here either.  Part of the buck stops with us.  We are a nation which, more and more, prides itself in claiming to be apolitical.  Witness the rising number of voters who claim they are "independents>"  How many brag about being disengaged until the final weeks before the election?  How many don't pay attention to pending legislation until it is too late?  Also, note those millions who are turned off and don't even show up to vote.  Just as surely as leadership depends on the engagement of leaders, so too it depends on the engagement of all of us.  Wanting good government means we all should stay involved in the process of achieving it.  This leads to a related myth.

Myth No. 7: "Leadership is controlling others."
One would hope, at this stage in our history, that everyone understands that leadership isn't coercion.  While in some contexts coercion may be necessary (e.g., military in combat, regulatory agencies, criminal justice), generally this isn't leadership per se, but rather administering rules and regulations.  Administering rules and regulations has its place, but shouldn't be confused with leadership.  A related myth is that people should fear their leaders.  For example, Elizabeth Drew once suggested that instilling fear is a leadership requirement.  An individual wasn't a "leader" she implied because people weren't afraid of a particular candidate.  But the cultivation of fear has little to do with leadership and more to do with intimidation and coercion.  Moreover,the hostile/aggressive environment resulting from such approaches may actually derail would-be leaders.

The character assassins and zero-sum gamers are already again exploiting leadership mythology.  Citizens first need to see through this disinformation.  We can demand better from our politicians.  We can also demand that the media focus on experience, track record (voting history), positions, proposals, objectives, and straight answers to our sincere questions.

It's possible that had such an informative approach been in place in 2000, the election, far from being close, would have been a landslide for Al Gore.  2004 gave us equally dismal reporting and equally dismal portrayals of the major candidates.  But now, as George W. Bush continues dissembling about who was behind 9-11, we have a somewhat more informed and skeptical America.  Perhaps this time, we can examine our candidates' leadership skills and abilities in a more adaptive way.  Indeed our democracy depends on it.

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