An Honest Conversation About Leadership

Can we have an honest and candid conversation about the state of leadership - especially on LinkedIn?

It feels very....plastic (to borrow the word in context from a colleague of mine). It feels superficial, inauthentic, and misaligned. Very little out there seems to embody just how real and difficult the action of leadership really is.

Are we really doing ourselves as a society any favors when we simplify leadership to 3-5 steps, or broaden so much to that it loses a connection to reality? It feels like you have to be a superhero leader at the front, or trying to be a servant leader that reads from a book of platitudes while craving an instruction manual.

I personally think we are doing ourselves a disservice in that regard. Here's why:

1) Leadership is not well defined. The definition, scope, and action of leadership is not very clear. The spectrum on those teaching and delivering leadership content, education, and consulting is very broad. With no clear definition, it is up to the free market of ideas to determine how to define it. For better or worse - that is the name of the game.

2) Leadership is complex by nature. Even without a clear definition, more and more people are agreeing this intangible action or activity we call "leadership" is incredibly tricky to teach, explain, and practice. Given the free market of ideas dictating the popularity and exposure of leadership ideas, it would behoove us to present any theory of leadership with a clear caveat that... well, leadership really is not that clear.

3) Human beings crave simplicity. We like ideas to clear, linear, and easy to understand. It makes perfect sense to want a linear, 3 step process to understand something complex like leadership. But that just is not going to cut it in today's ever evolving world of more complex & interconnected challenges.

4) The world demands more than what we are currently capable of offering.  This is of course subjective, but I offer this hypothesis based on the evidence in front of us. Geo-political conflicts turning more and more complex as the decades (even centuries) have passed. Draining of resources, where our two centuries of industrial and technological ingenuity has yet to solve (in fact ,they contribute to this problem!). Less visible is the increasing tensions of society at large, which has yet to truly be understood or acted on with meaningful depth.

You might be asking, What is the point of this conversation?

To reference the the very "plastic" feeling of leadership discussions these days ... I fear that these superficial conversations will lead to more unintended consequences down the road.

We are a society that is craving more authenticity and connection to the world and each other. The systems we created 100+ years ago have eroded these capacities over time. Now, especially after covid, we are seeking what we may have lost over time.

My 2 cents: what was once perhaps a "nice to have" is becoming more and more of a glaring necessity to solve our societies challenges. These "plastic" platitudes and offerings of leadership are not going to cut it. They may feel good in the moment, and they may very well be something we currently have created a dependency on.

But, to quote english singer Thom Yorke, "... gravity always wins."