Will the True Leader Please Stand Up?

Mirror mirror…

Source: Using Dall-E/OpenAI

I spend a fair bit of time trying to learn about organizational leadership. One way I try to do this is by seeing what is being written and posted about it.

And so, I keep on reading about what some call “true leadership”.

I think I know what is meant by this, but what I don’t know is how it is helpful in the pursuit of leadership development. As a leadership educator, this matters to me. What is the point of social media experts proclaiming the power of true leadership without describing it?

Of course, advocating for ‘true leadership’ for personal development is done with positive intent.

But I’m still struggling.

The struggle is real (true?)

Using “true” sounds like a description of privileged access to a secret holy grail of knowing stuff. A magical ‘thing’ that is held by only a select few. And one which, when observed by others, will be easily revealed as correct. It kind of sounds self-aggrandizing too: “I know the truth of leadership!”

As an organizational studies professor, my search for experts’ ideas about leadership has revealed some fascinatingly unhelpful conclusions:¹ It seems there is an assumption that there is one kind of leadership that is real (i.e., true) and the others are fake, disingenuous, imagined, or inaccurate.

But how would one know which leader is a ‘true’ leader and which is not? Could the true one be identified and then, in turn, the untrue ones ruled out? Is this ‘true’ leadership notion helpful?

The search for the truth

A search on LinkedIn reveals hundreds of instances of the use of this term in articles, blog posts and the like. But there is no substance. No antidote to the confusion.

For example, a newsletter I discovered promises learning that will teach “…how to captivate your audience like a true leader!” So, is captivation what makes leadership true?

One post proclaims that “True leadership teaches…” some specific thing while another one points out that “The true leaders among us constantly work…” in some unique way. However, this way is never described other than the insinuation that it is sincere compared to some different kind of work.

Another expert explains that true leadership is not present if there is a pursuit of “…power and profit at the expense of genuine leadership.” Putting the head-spinning jargon aside for a moment, how is power (the ability to influence others toward a goal) and profit (the road to jobs and earning a living), somehow disingenuous?

Is the true leader one who wants to avoid profit? Who shuns any influence over others? Is it one who works towards a specific thing constantly? Sounds lofty and exhausting.

It is as if applying the word ‘true’ to the word ‘leadership’ somehow illustrates something that we miss without the word being there.

We have pronouncements about the nature of true leadership but somehow, those who seek to develop leadership skills are left with shapelessness. This kind of advice and posturing does little to help developing leaders. They are left wondering how they can learn to lead effectively. From what I hear, they want a better explanation than “true or false”.

This much is true

Frankly, I bristle when hear it suggested that there is one, singular, true kind of leader. There cannot be. Not any more than there is one correct kind of relationship, friend, partner, or even love. These things come in many forms, all of which are indeed true.

To decrease my bewilderment, I turned to some of the most widely cited research on the nature of organizational leadership.

Max Weber was one of the first organizational theorists to recognize that leadership itself was situational and that successful leaders were those who could respond to the needs around them². He noted that to be a successful leader, one needed to move from one type of leadership style to another.

From the 1960s and well into the 2000s, some of the most notable leadership researchers continued the move away from seeing leadership as a set of traits or qualities. Like Weber, the likes of renowned psychologists Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard³ to Daniel Goleman⁴ saw that leadership was not a question of truth, but of effectiveness. The things that make a leader effective are dynamic and varying.

“…the personal styles of superb leaders vary: some leaders are subdued and analytical; others shout their manifestos from the mountaintops. And just as important, different situations call for different types of leadership.” — Daniel Goleman⁵

This helps lessen the confusion: Leadership is more about an outcome than something that is ‘true’ or ‘false’.

The truth is out there

The ‘leadership expert’ space is crowded with self-appointed experts making claims about ‘true’ leadership. This is unhelpful at the least and dangerous at the worst.

This cadre of experts also includes proclamations from sources that should know better. For example, a leading job search site highlights “Eight Characteristics” of a “True Leader”. Only eight? And always the same ones? Unlikely.

This list includes “Values Relationships” which (in all fairness) is certainly a key component of the kind of flexibility discussed by scholars. However, those characteristics are described as “… enduring qualities or traits that define an individual’s nature or personality…”¹⁰ However, valuing relationships is not a personal characteristic. Success in doing so is not in someone’s nature.

More importantly, some characteristics on this list would be harmful if taken at face value. Take the word “integrity”. This seems like a lovely word that illustrates a beautiful virtue. But given that this means “…firm adherence to a code…”¹¹, it would seem to advocate inflexibility.

Unfortunately, this expanding pool of experts is missing both the meaning of “leadership” and the history of its rigorous study.

Some internet experts are spreading false information and myths about leadership⁶⁷⁸. This can and has led to scams driven by plagiarism and fraud⁹.

Fake expertise pays lip service to legitimate leadership researchers and experts by minimizing and obscuring their work.

Most importantly, charlatanism prevents individuals from the greatest gifts that leadership development can offer. That is, hard-earned, self-directed learning. The kind that makes leading an exercise in learning versus a static quality that some have, and some don’t. This can help us in ways a guru never can. Anyone can learn leadership.

I certainly know that there is often great good that can come from getting leadership coaching from legitimate experts and helpers. However, in many cases, the real guru is us. You. Me.

Committing to our learning and growth reveals that there is no true leadership. Leadership is not a privileged truth. At its core leadership requires learning how to meet people where they are to help them get where they need to go. It either works or doesn’t. Period.