Leaders Without Followers

YOU CAN TELL LEADERSHIP IS IN TROUBLE when the leadership industry itself is worth some $50 billion dollars in the America alone. It’s not so much that more and more people are seeking out leadership positions, but that it is growing increasingly difficult to guide others, especially when our greatest problems never get solved.According to Harvard University professor, Barbara Kellerman, in her new book, The End of Leadership, following years of research, she has become convinced leaders are no longer up to the greater tasks and that today’s present leadership training, while suitable four decades ago, no longer functions well today.The reason? Average people themselves have changed. They no longer trust authority in the way they used to, and they definitely harbour great reserve about moves by the financial and political industries to woo them one way or another. Dominance, and the productive use of it, is no longer working in our institutions and even voluntary associations. Just because someone holds a leadership position doesn’t mean they are respected.We have a federal election looming in the near future, and it’s a little disconcerting watching the party leaders move across the country bashing one another at the same time they maintain that we must work together if we are to provide a productive future. Such actions might indeed produced angry or skeptical voters, but it doesn’t stand a chance of inspiring them – no doubt a part of the reason our voter turnout remains low.In world obsessed with producing leaders, why can’t we collectively get to our next stage of development as a society? It’s because followers have changed and are now demanding more share of power and decision-making. That was ideally what democracy was supposed to be about anyway. Now is the time to prove if it works. As Nancy Solomon put it: “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” We must begin asking better of our leaders, and the time has surely come to show more leadership and focus ourselves. Leadership used to be about the few; now it’s about the many. But for that to occur there must be a revolution in citizenship itself.