Researchers at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, have spent years identifying the core competencies of leadership. The top two they recently reported are hardly surprising:
- Honesty (telling the truth)
- Vision (forecasting the future)
What is surprising is the absence of these competencies among the most successful business leaders of our era (measured by net worth). Many have been profoundly dishonest and deeply mistaken about what the future has in store for their shareholders, employees and customers.
This may help to explain why executive turnover is at a historic high. But with rare exceptions, it hasn't diminished executive power or celebrity. Senior executives continue to be seen as the smartest guys in the room, even though many act as dumb as the rest of us.
As learning pros, should we be having second thoughts about the ROI of leadership development? After all, we're the ones who trained those parasites in the C suite. What have we done?
Over the past decade or so (while research at Santa Clara University was in progress), leadership development grew from a small component of management science into a kind of religion based on the Great Man Theory of history. This religion holds that aggressive middle aged men, with gross appetites and an admirable golf handicap, are mainly responsible for the success of American enterprise.
Oddly though, it wasn't enough to recruit great men and bid up their compensation to well over $50,000 per day (yes, that's what many executives have been paid for their leadership, 365 days a year). Realizing they were not great men in reality, it was also necessary to shore them up with executive education, executive coaching and executive leadership development. We tried to transform the sow's ear into a silk purse. But it hasn't happened.
If the research from Santa Clara University is correct, then the minimum we can expect from true leaders is honesty and vision. After all, we (not they) paid for it! It doesn’t take Dilbert to see that we got just the opposite over the past decade or so.
As great men are urged to fly first class instead of using a corporate jet and delay cashing in stock options, learning pros can also get to work on reforming our leadership development practices. In line with the professors' research, demonstrated honesty and vision should be required for a passing grade.
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