Where Are The Leaders?

After nearly a century of leadership studies, we continue to lament the dearth of leadership in our organizations. The secret to developing leadership continues to elude us in spite of the flood of advice given by academicians, speakers, consultants, and even recognized leaders. With all the books, videos, and seminars devoted to leadership development, we should be blessed with an abundance of outstanding leaders. Yet the cry goes out throughout all sectors of society asking, “Where have all the heroes gone? Where are the leaders we deserve?” Without realizing it, those leaders we have been searching for have always been with us. They have even been us. Our problem has not been an absence of leadership but an inability to recognize leadership as it has occurred.

The root of the problem is in how we define leadership. There tends to be a common assumption in most definitions of leadership; a focus on the leader. Attempts to define leadership typically speak of what leaders do. What is actually being defined is leader not leadership. If leadership is considered to reside in an individual, then we will look for individual leaders. Our efforts to develop leadership will concentrate on training designated leaders. This limited view of leadership is at the root of failed leadership development initiatives.

The key to solving the failure of leadership development efforts is to view leadership systemically. The result is a new definition of leadership:

Leadership is a dynamic, systemic relationship between leader, followers, and context.

Any successful leadership development intervention will need to take into account the relationships among the three components of leader, followers, and the larger environment. To focus solely on the leader is like trying to train someone to play tennis in a classroom without ever letting the trainee get on a tennis court to play a partner.

Leadership resides in the group. Leadership development must therefore involve the entire group. If we want better leadership, we must look to ourselves and each other rather than to a hero to rescue us.