Aesoph Group

By Rob Cahill

       The prevailing conception of leadership conforms to the laws of supply and demand, in that leaders have adopted the idea that leadership follows from what ‘followers’ are asking for. People expect leaders to provide solutions, security, and meaning, and many variations on these themes: answers, vision, inspiration, hope, consistency, order, direction, and ‘just tell me what to do.’  Many leaders in turn believe that these expectations are the norm and that their task is to fulfill them.* 

The above definition of leadership is a trap of enormous dimensions. The trap has two unintended victims: the followers—and the leader.

In this concept, any success in leadership will invariably prompt the group to “up the ante.” Although the response may flatter a leader’s ego and vanity, it is full of peril. The group’s rising expectations will eventually surpass the leader’s magical powers to deliver, causing his or her eventual failure.

The trap is equally dangerous for the group too—for these reasons. Such success will likely decrease the groups’ own adaptive capacity, spawning a greater dependency on the leader—in essence giving a “pass card” to the followers to disengage. Perhaps more telling, this mindset has several additional unintended—and debilitating—related side effects, such as fostering entitlement and victim mentality, freezing people in their own growth and development, and seducing people to avoid taking personal responsibility for the conduct of their own lives.

How do truly great leaders, some who are in high public or corporate positions, avoid these traps?

*Quoted from Dr. Ronald Heifetz, author of Leadership Without Easy Answers and Leadership on the Line (with Marty Linsky). Heifetz is the founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a co-founder of Cambridge Leadership Associates (CLA).