The State Of Leadership In The World
Leadership in business is becoming something of a commercial grey zone.
Are leadership consulting services as good as they make out to be? Can a business ever benefit from a consultant entering the company and forcing it to conform to several strict textbook leadership styles? I’m unconvinced.
I believe that there is much to be gained from learning about recent success stories, I don’t think it’s quite as useful to simply ‘recreate’ the exact method used in the success story to any organisation. Every single business is a separate beast, and should be approached completely differently. Leadership in business talks about how create ‘carbon copy’ leadership styles in organisations can actually hamper creativity, organic growth and employee confidence in a leadership structure. The reasons why seem immediately obvious.
To see your leader following a ‘somewhat fashionable’ course of action mustn’t fill you with confidence in their own management skills. The more and more a leader speaks positively about certain courses and certain outside influences, the more and more they make themselves seem like a ‘fan’ or ‘student’ to some outside body that has no responsibility to actually run the business well. This can create a certain amount of unease.
Would the benefit to a business of a supposedly ‘better trained’ leader be able to outweigh the negative signalling caused by the leader taking up the course so publically in the first place? I don’t think so, which is why the solution is probably to take up such courses in private. Discrete training may be a little difficult when the whole company is looking up at you. Ironically, the better your leadership skills, and the more admired you are as a leader, the more difficult it would be to get away with taking a course in private.
Large leadership development courses such as leadership degrees would be perhaps better done as a ‘block’ i.e. taking time off between jobs to dedicate a solid block of a few months to completion, but this may be unreasonable to ask of someone who is paying off a mortgage. Maybe a part time leadership course would be more appropriate.