| August 2004 Missouri Regional Newsletter p7 |
| Leadership: Moral or Neutral Concept?
Would anyone confer the title "Chef" to someone who cooks and serves food which looks good, even tastes good, but is poisonous? When a Chef begins to use gifts and talents in harmful ways he or she ceases to be a respected Chef, and just as cooking should produce nourishment for our bodies, I would contend that leadership should produce Progress for Humanity. Leadership, thus, is a values-based, moral concept. In my work, I passionately argue against including the likes of Hitler, or Stalin, or Saddam Hussein, or even Andy Fastow or Dennis Kozlowski among the ranks of those called "Leaders." So I was piqued to read in the January 2004 issue of The Harvard Business Review Barbara Kellerman's article "Leadership: Warts and All," derived from her forthcoming book Bad Leadership (Harvard Business School Publishing, available August 19, 2004). Kellerman admonishes writers and scholars of leadership for "feeding into their readers' (and perhaps their own) yearnings for feel-good stories." She argues that the words leader and leadership should never have acquired the inherent, positive bias they have today, and scolds scholars for failing to remind us that leadership is not a moral concept. Kellerman deepens the line in the sand when she further declares "Some leaders achieve great things by capitalizing on the dark sides of their souls." Kellerman is research director of the Center for Public Leadership and a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She contends that we need to face the dark side to become better leaders and followers ourselves and further argues that leadership is a neutral concept. What seems to be happening among students and theorists of leadership is the Hegelian dialectic process of thesis versus antithesis to shape and form our definition and understanding of leadership and leaders. During the twentieth century, just about anyone interested in leadership from any discipline advanced a hypothesis about leadership, none with the same definition of the concept. Since Robert Greenleaf wrote Servant Leadership in 1977, however, increasing numbers of leadership theorists seem to agree that the essence of leadership is Progress for Humanity, and now Barbara Kellerman is giving voice to the antithesis. Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (German philosopher, 1770 - 1831) understood reality as a dynamic process -- not a static, absolute state -- in which every understanding of reality, or thesis, implies its own contradiction, or antithesis. The conflict generated between thesis and antithesis eventually produces a synthesis -- a new thesis in essence, which again brings with it a new antithesis. For decades, scholars from varied disciplines have been offering their own definitions or hypotheses of leadership, and we have not had a universal, agreed-upon definition develop. In Bernard Bass' 1981 revision of Stodgill's Handbook of Leadership, there are analyses of 4,725 studies of leadership -- most with unique definitions, and Bass keeps Stodgill's 1974 conclusion that the endless accumulation of empirical data has not produced an integrated understanding of leadership. In 1978, James MacGregor Burns wrote: Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth. If Hegel is right -- that the reality of a concept like leadership depends upon a clear thesis and antithesis for intellectuals to rally around, debate, and work toward synthesis -- then it is no wonder we understand little about the concept of leadership. We are turning the corner, however. Kellerman criticizes theorists advancing the thesis that the essence of leadership is Progress. Kellerman presents the antithesis of that thesis in her work: that we should not consider Progress, or benevolence as necessary, let alone essential to leadership. Thus begins a dialectic process. She writes that for recent leadership theorists, to be a leader is by definition to be benevolent and that they have created confusion between leadership and goodness. She accuses these theorists of ignoring human deficiencies and blindly believing that leadership is in inherently good, and that, by definition, bad people cannot be good leaders. I am most assuredly GUILTY. I agree with the theorists Kellerman says are deluded -- with a theory of leaders and leadership that mirrors Hegel's very idealistic concept of history. In Hegel's philosophy of the dialectic, history is not a collection of facts or absolutes; it is a process created by conflicting interests among humans, and with each synthesis of these competing impulses there is progress toward the self-realization of human reason and freedom. Like Hegel's thinking on historical processes, my thinking on leadership is that it is a process involving service to the common good that results in Progress for Humanity. Kellerman is taking on leadership gurus like James MacGregor Burns, Warren Bennis, Tom Peters, and Jay Conger. These people are not silly optimists understanding leadership through very rosy glasses. Kellerman seems to view their work as a Greeting Card approach to leadership: pretty words on a page that are offensive to no one and generally forgettable or irrelevant. But nothing could be further from the truth. These writers define leadership with and by the idea of Progress for Humanity. If any so-called leadership is not aimed in even a small way at Progress for Humanity -- if it is self-serving or discriminatory or deceptive or harmful -- it is something other than leadership. It is the exercise of power or talent or skill, or it is manipulation. Those of us who believe that leadership involves service to the common good do not contend that to be a leader one must be perfect or that leadership is about perfection. Leaders and leadership are all about Progress, and they take the notion of progress seriously and personally. They strive for progress in personal growth as well as progress for their communities, their society, or the world. continued on page 8 |