Showing posts with label charisma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label charisma. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

The Master: Charismatic Leadership

In The Master (2012), Lancaster Dodd tells Freddie Quell, the man whom Lancaster wants to cure of alcoholism and mental illness, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher, but above all I am a man.” Given Lancaster’s presumption of infallibility concerning knowing that every human soul has been reincarnated even for trillions of years, the end of the line would more fittingly be, “I am a man above all (others).” With regard to being a physician, Lancaster comes up short because he underestimates the medical severity of Freddie’s alcoholism and his likely psychotic mental illness. Upon being released from jail, Lancaster should realize that Freddie’s rage and temper-tantrum in his jail cell evince mental illness of such severity that it is lunacy to suppose that the patient can be cured by walking back and forth in a room between a wall and a window and being sure to touch both, and by saying “Doris” over and over again in a dyad with Lancaster’s new son-in-law. In fact, Lancaster actually encourages Freddie’s alcoholism by asking that Freddie continue to make his “potion,” which contains paint-thinner filtered through bread. It is not Lancaster, but his wife, Peggy, who puts a stop to the “booze.” From her sanity, both that of Freddie and Lancaster can be questioned. That Lancaster is the Master of a religious cult, or “movement,” renders his mental state particularly problematic.


The full essay is at "The Master."

Thursday, August 17, 2023

Leadership “Coaches” on Social Media: Utopian Ideologues

Leadership as a topic in business became popular in the 1980s. It was not enough, however. James Burns distinguishes transformational leadership from the mere transactional leadership in his book, Leadership. Servant leadership raised the ethical bar by applying the ethical model of Jesus in the Gospels to leadership in business. Leadership vision quickly became a buzz word, as was charismatic leadership. All of these renderings can be interpreted as business trying to escape its mundane terms for a loftier enterprise in which ideals are more salient or applicable. As valuable as efficiency is, it is difficult to get excited about it. The problem is that many (or some) leadership consultants on social media have gotten too caught up on their utopian platitudes that leadership becomes a mere subterfuge. Certainly the utopian ideologies do not define leadership or are attributes of it, and yet the "coaches" claim that platitudes are necessary to leadership. In other words, I contend that leadership gurus, or "coaches" (a mis-applied analogy that wrongly dismisses the word "consultant" as too boring), had by 2023 taken to social media to project whatever utopian ideology they value onto leadership. The term has become too vague as a consequence. In fact, the concept of leadership became a near synonym for goodness in human relations and excellence in terms of virtue ethics. As a result, the concept approaches being a tautology whose actual meaning has been rendered vacuous from the a projection of so many subjective, utopian ideologies. Relative to such lofty remakes of leadership, management has become almost a dirty word—certainly not as flashy as visionary leadership. In actuality, the "coaches" are evangelical ideologues. 

I contend that what a CEO says in representing one’s organization to the wider society and characterizing what the business stands for to the employees as a whole is distinct functionally from what a department manager does in coordinating worker schedules, ordering new product and supplies, and “doing the numbers” for accounting purposes. Vision does not apply to both levels; neither does charisma. 

In his book, Charismatic Leadership: The Skills You Can Learn to Motivate High Performance in Others, Kevin Murray dismisses the definition of charisma with disdain. In the book's description paragraphs on Amazon, he writes that charisma is not "widely-applauded magnetism or shallow charm." Apparently, leaders such as Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, Gandhi and admittedly even Hitler did not have charisma. Murray presumes furthermore to redefine charisma, which literally means gifts of the spirit, as a skill applicable to mundane supervision. Never mind that Ronald Reagan, who had loads of charisma, was terrible in supervising subordinates in the White House; he trusted too much in delegation. From sacred origins, charisma has in Murray's book fallen to a banal skill in business. Spirit and skill represent the sacred and the profane; they are antipodal, as in the spirit of the law versus skill in observing the law. 

Transformational and visionary leadership go with charismatic leadership; charisma has no place in the transactional language of management. One need only consult Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy to understand that charisma and administration are like oil and water. 

Indeed, leadership as a phenomenon is distinct from management. To sketch the latter as the former is intellectually dishonest, even if done to motivate managers. In 1893, the University of Chicago’s law school renamed the undergraduate, for first, law degree, which at the time was the LLB (Bachelors in the Letters of Law), as the Juris Doctor even though a first degree (3 or 4 years) in a field of knowledge does not a doctorate make. Similarly, preaching that a department head in a Target retail store is a visionary leader does nothing to change the manager’s job description and actual tasks. Vision does not apply to coordinating worker schedules and keeping inventory. Nor does charisma. Rather, politeness should apply, as the mundane daily tasks of managing and working in a business characterized by specialization of labor can get boring. Hence the appeal of a leadership guru on the sidelines, who preaches—and it is preaching—that leadership is never giving up, being all one can be, overcoming adversity, looking at solutions rather than problems (yeah, right), being positive (as if negatives are not a part of human existence), and, of course, “success!”

Well, Hitler never gave up. He nearly wiped out European Jewry in being all that he could be. He overcame the adversity of the Communists by exterminating them. He turned his attention to the final solution rather than stayed fixated on problems. He was positive about the future of the Aryan “race,” and thus of a Jew-free and Communist-free Germany. He was successful in getting Germany out of the Great Depression by rearming the country, and freeing it of the shackles of the humiliating treaty that ended World War I. He had charisma; even his enemies admitted that. He had a vision of a blood-pure and economically prosperous Germany.  The self-labeled “leadership coaches” that began springing up on the sidelines of the American business world since the 1980s are too ideologically-bent to admit that their utopian notions of leadership can include Hitler if his value-set of ideals is assumed.

Furthermore, efforts to define leadership ideologically as a virtue or utopian world that goes beyond leadership cannot define the term. For example, to say that leadership is success ignores or leaves out instances of success that do not involve leading an organization (or other people). Leadership is therefore not success per se. Similarly, a person can be tenacious in overcoming adversity without being a leader. A person can be a leader without necessarily overcoming every obstacle, or always being positive rather than negative.

In fact, President Reagan campaigned in 1980 against the stagflation (i.e., inflation and low economic growth) and the federal government, which he labeled as part of the problem rather than the solution. He led with that vision, and enough of the American people followed that he won in a landslide. Hitler, too, included negatives in his vision as he campaigned for his party in 1933. Germany was in an economic quagmire, and so too was its democracy. Hitler did not minimize scapegoats: the Jews and Communists. It is not uncommon for a leader to go negative on the problems that justify the positives in a vision, whether for an organization or a country. To claim that leadership is always being positive is simply incorrect, as is the conflation of leadership with management.

Leadership has been practiced by good and bad people. Of course, just who are the good ones and the bad is to some extent debatable among reasonable people. This is another problem with insisting that a given ideological value is necessary for leadership to be leadership. For example, to claim that leaders appreciate diversity ignores Japan and China, whose populations are more homogenous than those in the U.S., where diversity itself has become an ideological weapon as well as an ideal. Subjecting leadership to a particular definition of the good is overly constraining, and dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. To define leadership in terms of the content of an organizational or societal vision conveniently excludes many instances of leadership. Leadership involves convincing people to accept a vision, which we can treat as a black box.

The self-proclaimed leadership “coaches” go even beyond human utopias on social media in telling us about leadership qualities. This is often done by showing videos of other species. In one instance, a large herd animal is racing across a river as an alligator is in pursuit. Just as the predator pounces, the prey reaches the banks and leaps out of the water just in time. Leaders don’t give up. Well, actually, human leaders are not at all like prey running for their lives so not to be killed and eaten. The anthropomorphism here is out of control. Even CEOs in competitive industries, in the proverbial “jungle,” are hardly in anything even remotely like a real jungle. The CEO of a company that buys another company at a great price does not make a killing in any sense like an allegator does in a river. The military language often used in the business world is also far-fetched.

In actuality, leadership “coaches”—and business is not a (blood) sport either—preach their personal ideologies in the hope that even managers who do not actually practice leadership will accept and value the respective ideological utopian ideals. These gurus that preach under the veneer of business leadership are like the business ethicists who use thou shalt not to get managers to behave as the ethicists want. It is a power-grab of a Nietzschean sort wherein those on the sidelines are driven by an instinctual urge to have power over the “players on the field,” whose uses of strength are not necessarily appreciated and may even be resented.[1] The “coaches’” will to power is evinced in using the concept of leadership as a subterfuge by which to tacitly impose an ideological value or ideal concerning human nature and relations on society by beguiling powerful opinion-leaders in the business world. It does not concern these new birds of prey that the concept of leadership is warped, distended, obfuscated, or rendered vacuous as a utopian tautology in the process.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” the Wizard says as Toto pulls the it back to reveal an old man manipulating Dorothy and her friends by fire and brimstone in the film classic, The Wizard of Oz (1939). People are not always what they lead on.


See also: The Essence of Leadership

[1] Skip Worden, “A Genealogy of Business Ethics: A Nietzschean Perspective,” Journal of Business Ethics 84 (2008): 427-56.


Friday, November 9, 2018

Non-Positional Leadership: A Matter of Charisma?

The concept of non-positional leadership is typically associated with charismatic leadership.[1] The Hebrew prophets are a case in point, as none had any formal civic position.  To be sure, a non-positioned leader need not be charismatic; such a leader can be effective in utilizing persuasion to get his or her position (i.e., "vision") sufficiently adopted by followers to become the default.  Obviously, a positioned official, whether in the upper echelons of a large corporation, government, or religious institution, need not “stoop” to persuasion; power from authority can be sufficient for an official's will to be done. However, does that evince leadership or simply raw power?

Gandhi epitomized non-positional leadership. He never held a formal office in religion or government. Is the strength of non-positional leadership necessarily moral?  Image Source: Idleindia.com

Authorized power is typically also reckoned as leadership, especially if the official’s decision is unpopular at first, yet quickly implemented and effective in the end. In fact, merely the stature of “high” position can give a decision itself the semblance of leadership. Modern society lavishes an extraordinary amount of credence on organizational position itself, regardless of the particular occupant. Such positional power, as distinct from positional leadership, is excessive, even reckless. For example, Richard Fuld was able to inflict Lehman Brothers with an overwhelming amount of risk, and for so long, in line with a warped “vision” and without having to lead in the sense of persuading others of his vision. To assume almost blindly that CEOs are not only “natural” leaders, but also persons of high caliber in terms of skill and character, simply because of their position is foolhardy and yet this is typically done in modern society.



1. On “non-positional” leadership, see David Burkus, http://theleaderlab.org/

Sunday, October 14, 2018

Steve Jobs: A Unique Societal and Organizational Visionary

Typically as a company transitions from an enterprising, creative new venture to a large organization to be managed, a staid CEO replaces a visionary founder. In the case of Steve Jobs at Apple, the very nature of the man’s vision was not only inherently at odds with the status-quo underpinning of a large organization with a budget, but also essential to the company’s business model. Hence, the company, including its shareholders, paid a price for years for jettisoning Jobs. The film, Jobs (2013), is centered on the distinctiveness of Jobs’ vision. Although the film also hints at why this distinctiveness is such that the company would (and did) lose as a large organization after making the typical founder-to-CEO transition.




The full essay is at "Jobs."

Monday, March 19, 2018

The Founder of Theranos: A Flawed Charismatic Vision and Leader

“Theranos rose quickly from being a college dropout’s idea to revolutionize the blood analysis industry to a hot tech bet that accrued $700 million in funding and many famous names for its board.”[1] Elizabeth Holmes, the company’s founder, was stripped of her position at the company in 2018 after the SEC discovered her deep involvement with the fraud at the company. Her “smarts, fierce determination and Steve Jobs-inspired look . . . were critical” to her being able to perpetuate the lie that the company had a device that could do blood tests with just a scant amount of blood, obviating the unpleasant experience of having blood drawn by needle.[2] Although Jack Welsh, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs accomplished enough to warrant their fame, I submit that companies are too prone to create “champions”—even strangely calling them “rock stars.” In other words, even though charismatic vision is of value to a business, neither such a leader nor his or her vision itself should be overplayed. Business, I submit, has a marked tendency to do just that, and often with impunity.
At 19, Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford University because she had an idea of how blood tests could be done without the need of so much blood that a needle is required. She was “determined to create a company that would help anyone who, like herself, was afraid of needles and dreaded taking blood tests.”[3] Where the school Northern Illinois University or the University of Arizona, her decision to drop out for such a reason could be reasonable, but to give up a Stanford education so people wouldn’t have to feel a needle for “blood work” indicates a flawed judgment. Where were her parents? She was 19! Finish college then start your company. That it took her a decade of work before she debuted her company—and even then without the requisite technology—suggests that there was no rush. Simply out, it is very odd that she dropped out of Stanford. Yet this point was somehow missed by investors such as Rupert Murdock, Cox Enterprises, and Walgreens, and board members including George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretaries of State,  former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and the current Defense Secretary James Mattis. Did they all show up drunk at board meetings? Was there even an audit committee that reported directly to the board?
Clearly, we can be dazzled by celebrity, and the famous can cash in on their reputations. That no flags were raised concerning the founder raises larger questions in business related to the troublesome transfer of power and position from charismatic founders to managers. Investors should not rely on the charisma of founders; even the promises of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs warranted being independently checked out. CPA firms should not have to rely on founders, or even managers, for renewals. Business, in other words, can easily get too cozy, leaving investors out in the dark.
In terms of leadership, charismatic vision should be distinguished from the implementation of strategy. I’m not even sure “avoiding needles” is big enough to warrant being reckoned as a vision. Founders and managers alike may distend what are actually good ideas into charismatic vision.[4]
In conclusion, the background of Theranos, including that of its founder, should have raised red flags. Likening her to Steve Jobs because she wore black turtle-neck shirts borders on the ridiculous, and yet a self-aggrandizing company can easily get on that band-wagon, ignoring the hypertrophy. Leadership vision is valuable, but in a business context the vision thing must be related to concrete strategies, with realizable benchmarks. This is not to say that leadership vision should collapse into strategic interests, for such reductionism rids the vision of its own integrity and coherence.[5] The point is not to get carried away with charismatic vision in business even as such vision should not reduce to strategy.




[1] Marco della Cava, “Behind the Scenes of Theranos’ Dramatic Rise, Fall,” USA Today, March 16, 2018.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] On leadership vision, see Skip Worden, The Essence of Leadership: A Cross-Cultural Foundation
[5] Skip Worden, “The Role of Integrity as a Mediator in Strategic Leadership: A Recipe for Reputational Capital,” Journal of Business Ethics, 48 (August, 2003) No. 1, 31-44.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

The Essence of Leadership

In The Essence of Leadership, leadership itself is reformulated in such a way that what emerges—the essence of leadership—is distinct from related phenomena, including management, presiding, and mentoring. This is not to say, however, that leadership bears no relation to strategy—hence the complex concept of strategic leadership, which is not without risks. Leadership itself contains risks, which a focus on the essence of leadership, rather than, for instance, taking leadership as simply about having influence, can arguably minimize. Such risks include the cult of the leader, to which charisma and attributions of heroism are especially susceptible, and the distorting impact of ideology, such as in Burns’ version of transformational leadership. Shaking out the risks and distinguishing leadership as a unique phenomenon are ways of pointing back to the essence of leadership, which applies in virtually any culture. That is, the essence is cross-cultural. Taking comparative religion as a stand-in for cultures, I demonstrate that the essence of leadership can be informed by Taoist, Buddhist, and Judeo-Christian principles.


 The Essence of Leadership  is available at Amazon in print and as an ebook.



Sunday, August 10, 2014

Sun Tzu's Art of War: A Recipe for Leadership in Business

According to Master Sun in The Art of War, “Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and sternness.”[1] Although Sun Tzu is referring mainly to military (and related political) leadership, lessons can be learned on exercising business leadership by means of a careful adaptation.




 





1. Sun Tzu, The Art of War: Complete Texts and Commentaries (Boston: Shambhala, 2003), p. 44.
vable variable. 


Material from this essay has been incorporated into The Essence of Leadership: A Cross-Cultural Foundation, which is available in print and as an ebook at Amazon. 

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Charismatic Leadership: A Reply

I am particularly taken by the following passage from Edith Luc’s essay on charismatic leadership: “(I)t is risky, almost utopist to wait on manifestations of a charismatic leader believed to be of unique and exceptional nature, and able to mobilize everybody at the same time.” I am reminded of the emphasis that American corporations place on the CEO position and the U.S. Government places on the U.S. President. The focus on one person, rather than a council, presumes that certain individuals are so unique and exceptional that perhaps even human nature itself is surmounted. In other words, the theory behind charismatic leadership may imply such extraordinary differences within human nature that some people are essentially super-human, and thus subject to hero-worship.

Charisma, which comes from charismata, literally means “gifts of the spirit”—implying that a person with charisma has something special bestowed by God. Hero-worship may thus be part and parcel of charismatic leadership. While such worship may be viewed as innocuous when Barak Obama is the beneficiary, Edith Luc reminds us that Hitler, too, was regarded as a charismatic leader. The film Triumph of the Will shows that he was worshiped by many Germans and even Hitler himself presumed his survival of assassination attempts was a sign that God approved of his mission.  

In short, it can be dangerous to get carried away with one-person leadership manifested with charisma. The one-person approach itself may encourage or invite this danger wherein a suspension of critical belief accompanies an exaggerated focus on a particular leader’s person such that a charismatic leader can even get away with mass murder. Hence, it might be useful to re-evaluate the assumptions behind charismatic leadership and consider the viability of alternative types of leadership.

If human nature is not as wide-ranging from ordinary to exceptional as charismatic leadership theory requires or supposes, then even the emphasis on a single individual in an organization or government may be artificial and excessive. Implications from a more egalitarian approach to leadership include substituting councils for individual top leaders. In the U.S. Constitutional Convention, for example, delegates debated a presidential council as an alternative to a one-person office. With the revolutionary war not long in the past, the delegates decided for the latter because of the energy required of the commander in chief. In a world wherein the default for leadership is “one-person,” the shift to the council alternative can seem radical. This over-reaction to such a change may attest to the addictive properties involved in the recognition of charismatic leadership, rather than to any “radicalness.” Therefore, it might be useful to consider alternatives to charismatic leadership within the one-person approach.

Within the one-person leadership tradition, implications from begging off of charismatic leadership include re-evaluating the pay differential between the workers and the CEO of a given company and reducing the duration of the presidential election campaign (which is now almost two years—half of a term). In other words, if charismatic leadership tends to exaggerate the unique and exceptional characteristics of leaders of organizations and governments, then the rest of us should pay less attention (and money) to the individuals who rule our organizations and governments.

Even though the one-person leadership arrangement that supports charismatic leadership may be over-extended in modern society, the notion of a collective intelligence strikes me as anthropomorphic, as intelligence is a quality of a mind rather than an organization. Relatedly, treating a society or organization as an alternative to a charismatic leader may be faulty—meaning going too far in the other direction. Treating everyone as “participating” in leadership risks making leadership itself a tautology; everybody does it. Also, if everyone is simultaneously a leader and follower, the terms may lose their respective meanings on the way to a muddle. The recognition that is required for charismatic leadership does not in my view render the followers leaders; the leader’s leadership is not usurped and thus democratized to the whole. I am not suggesting that Edith Luc goes so far as to assert these claims, but someone could reach them from the notion of collective intelligence, which she does assert and I deny.

Perhaps the notion of collective intelligence comes from small group dynamics wherein a discussion gains momentum and results in a conclusion. I would argue that such a process is a function of exchanges of information between discrete intelligences (i.e., minds). With regard to charismatic leadership, I believe the recognition depends on the leader being of a sufficiently large organization (or government). At close range, such as in a group, a leader cannot seem “larger than life” and thus is not apt to seem unique and extraordinary. In other words, some distance is necessary for the illusion of a charismatic leader’s “superhuman” quality to be apparent. “No one is a prophet in his or her hometown” may be getting at this point. So I submit that charismatic leadership does not apply to the group or department level, but, rather, to upper echelon leadership in an organization or government (and even then, to a sufficiently large one).


See: Edith Luc, “Charismatic Leadership: Between Fact and Fiction”

Related:  See The Essence of Leadership, which is available at Amazon in print and as an ebook.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Charismatic Leadership: Between Fact and Fiction

A Guest Post by Edith Luc, Ph.D.

A remark I often hear about leadership is that true leaders are inevitably charismatic. I am often bewildered such remarks, because they insinuate two misconceptions: first of all, that leadership is limited to extraordinary people, and that the group leader is entirely responsible for mobilizing his/her group around a common vision.

In an era where organizations depend more on collective intelligence than solely on the chief’s charisma, it is risky, almost utopist to wait on manifestations of a charismatic leader believed to be of unique and exceptional nature, and able to mobilize everybody at the same time. What we really need is the combination of every worker’s leadership. Can it be then, that the definition of charismatic leadership is not the same for everyone? This brings us to ask the question: What is charismatic leadership?

Charisma: A gift, an exceptional influence that a person exercises on others.

According to fundamental writings on the subject (those of Max Weber, of Holl, 1985; Sohm, 1982; see Ouedraogo, 1993), there are five fundamental characteristics that define charisma:

1.       It is a relational phenomenon;

2.      where a person exercises a strong influence on others;

3.      by means of exceptional strength or natural charm;

4.      This charisma is recognized by followers, or disciples;

5.   Finally, the charismatic leader and his/her followers share an experience that is both emotional and enthusiastic.

Charisma: A phenomenon that depends on recognition, which is what creates followers, or “disciples”.

The charismatic individual is gifted with an extraordinary power stimulated by the support of his/her immediate followers. A so-called “emotional community” is created   between the leader and his/her followers, that is , a sharing of emotions; a communal, emotionally-charged experience highlighted by admiration and enthusiasm; a quasi-invisible trust and a feeling of power.

The recognition of others:

In other words, charisma is an attribute that requires recognition in order to be manifested. This recognition is what creates a group of individuals who will obey to the call and vision of the charismatic leader. A recognition that depends on the individuals, on their emotional connection in the presence of this leader, and on the faith they have in this person. It is also important to note that the leader’s influence is not universal. That is, not everybody feels the same enthusiasm towards the individual in question.

Hitler then, was charismatic for some but not for others. In the same way, Obama is charismatic for some, but not for all. Let us take the case of Dominique Strauss Khann. Before May 14th 2011, many (but not all) described him as a charismatic leader, ready to follow him in his presidential aspirations. However, since this fatal date, Khann’s charismatic leadership has significantly evaporated due to a lack of social recognition, a lack of faith in his person and in the exemplarity of his presumed actions. This is so even though the individual’s “exceptional” talent remains the same. What has changed is the admiration manifested by his initial admirers. Therefore, there is no charisma without the eyes of admirers, of followers. Charismatic leadership then, is a volatile and impermanent attribute.

Does one need a quality similar to charisma to practice leadership? Must one have a certain influence on others?

First of all, let us remember that leadership is an influential process between individuals mobilized by a common objective. It is not at all necessary to have an exceptional gift such as charisma to exercise influence at the heart of a group. What is more, the exercise of leadership belongs to all those who want to and are able to influence the development of a situation or the resolution of a problem.

However, some specific elements are needed in order to encourage the desired impact on the group, among others:

1.       The conviction that the objective is worth the time and efforts to reach it. This conviction can bring timid people to get out of their usual path.

2.      Credibility. It comes from experience, expertise and reputation. This credibility needs to be constantly developed in relation to one’s domain of activity. It encourages the attention and interest of collaborators, while at the same time reinforces one’s personal sense of worth.

3.      Trust. Not only in yourself, but also in your decision and actions. It is the opposite of doubt and incertitude, which are sometimes necessary for self-improvement, but are harmful to leadership when chronic or unjustified.

4.      Verbal and non-verbal transmissions. These are necessary for successful communication of convictions, credibility, self-confidence, enthusiasm, as well as the belief in the chances for the objective to be achieved. Whether verbal, non-verbal, written or oral, all facets of communication are useful in the practice of leadership.

5.      The ability to valorize competencies (interests, motivations, aspirations, supports and abilities) of your collaborators, clients, suppliers and collectivities. The practice of leadership is not undergone in a closed atmosphere; rather it needs to be done in a social environment. A true leader is someone who achieves the expected results, while at the same time adapts a collaborative environment around him/herself. To achieve profit goals by alienating oneself is a characteristic of greed, not of leadership.

To conclude, one of the misconceptions of leadership is that only a few people, gifted with unique charismatic abilities, can influence and mobilize others. In reality, leadership needs to be shared and practiced everywhere and by everyone in organizations and societies. These days, enterprise executives look to be surrounded by partners that will help them solve problems and that will be able to put forward innovative solutions that go out of the beaten path.

© 2011, Edith Luc. All Rights Reserved.