The leadership supermarket shelves

Let me share a few paragraphs from the book:

“This business of ‘leadership’ seems and feels both old and new, easy and difficult, ‘big thing’ and trivialized at the airport bookstore. We are trying to capture a fascinating phenomenon, and, frankly, any help, ‘map’, study and framework is welcome. But if you are looking for the definitive method and the final unquestionable ten-laws-of, you have a problem. Just think for a second. We are trying to understand something that has been attributed to Mother Theresa, Sir Richard Branson, Hitler, Bill Gates, Churchill, Gandhi, Jack Welch, Khmer Rouge’s Pol Pot, Tony Blair and Jonny Garcia. Yes, all of them.”

“We are told that leaders have integrity, enthusiasm, resilience, fairness, humility, warmth and confidence, to quote a well-respected ‘study’. So, if you are an integral, warm, resilient, humble, fair and confident chap, does that make you a leader? Or do leaders share those attributes with non-leaders? And if so, what’s all the fuss about the (‘research’) list?”

Leadership categorisation will continue for a long time, whether from the value side or the behavioural side. The conversation matters.