The lie of most leadership books

COMMENTARY Leadership books sell. That might explain why most books with "leadership" in the title have nothing to do with leadership. The writers of them delude others, and sometimes themselves, by developing "Leadership Tourette Syndrome" -- dropping the word "leader" or "leadership" in a riff about something completely unrelated to actual leading.

Here's where Leadership Tourette Syndrome, or LTS, goes from being annoying to dangerous. Most companies, as John Kotter observed, are over-managed and under-led. Organizations need real leadership interventions or their problems will get worse fast. See Corporate Culture and Performance by John Kotter and James Heskett for more on the problems of too much management and not enough leadership.

Leadership Tourette Syndrome should not be confused with Tourette Syndrome (TS). TS sufferers have uncontrollable tics, and in extreme cases, verbalize words including phrases that would be offensive in any other setting. TS is a disease and those who suffer from it deserve compassion and understanding. LTS, on the other hand, turns readers and audiences into victims of fraud by selling leadership and delivering something else.

I've come across dozens of companies that have the same symptoms: Lack of a unifying and inspiring direction, a vision that's unclear and/or out of sync with the market, employees who feel they don't know where the company is going, and a general feeling of malaise. This is a malady that can only be solved with leadership. In most cases, they hire a consulting firm that has LTS. The consultants add more systems, processes, tasks, and checklists to the ailing company, while saying it's "leadership." Then employees complain the same problems exist, except now they have more bureaucracy to deal with. The company's death spiral accelerates, even as the consultants promise, "This leadership program will turn things around." The example highlights "management LTS": Offering more management solutions -- probably communicated in lots of binders, PowerPoint files in little, tiny type with lots of bullets, and milestones and implementation plans.

The easiest to spot form of LTS comes from the New Age movement. While enlightened people are talking about interconnection and beauty of all life, and joys of meditation, they pepper in "leaders" and "leadership" as though they were saying "umm" in a conversation. Deepak Chopra, a thoughtful writer in most cases, suffered from LTS when he wrote The Soul of Leadership, which is a wonderful book about meditation and inner wisdom that has almost nothing to do with leadership. A choice line from the book is: "...great leaders are those who can respond to their own needs and the needs of others from the higher levels of spirit with vision, creativity, and a sense of unity with the people they lead." Imagine counseling a CEO with revenue shortfall that the solution could be made better by responding with a higher level of spirit.

Besides New Age Leadership Tourette Syndrome, there are two other common types of LTS:

1. Religious Leadership Tourette Syndrome. John Maxwell's 21 Most Important Minutes in a Leader's Day says: "The same should be true of the people you select. A potential leader who obeys God is in a much better position to succeed than one who ignores God's will for his life." Or hear the LTS in this passage from Stephen Covey's Principle-Centered Leadership: "The ethic of the principle-centered leader is expressed well in the following plea: '...from the arrogance that thinks it has all truth, O God of Truth deliver us.'" Marshall Goldsmith often mixes Buddhism with leadership, just as some mix leadership with Judaism. Religious messages are wonderful. And so is leadership. As long they're not confused -- doing so lessens both.

2. Self-Help Leadership Tourette Syndrome. Brian Tracy's How the Best Leaders Lead proclaims: "The more of a leader you become on the inside, the more effective you will become in all your leadership activities on the outside. You become more of a leader by thinking the same way that top leaders think." This borderline nonsensical phrase is a derivation of the great American success formula: Change your thinking, change your life. Aside from the problem of having the intellectual rigor of a comic book, self-help books do real damage when they are called "leadership."

The problem with each of these is that they often (not always) present their model of leadership as new, all encompassing, and the best possible path. Oh, and they have nothing -- or next to nothing -- to do with real leadership.

Actual leadership doesn't have formulas, checklists, or a step-by-step solution. It does, however, have actions that leaders take after careful consideration.

Leadership readers are prone to LTS because leadership itself is a young field, and doesn't yet have a centuries-tested body of knowledge in the way that medicine or logic does. For that reason, there's the tendency to call all sorts of things leadership that aren't.

Leadership, like most fields, is made richer by people bringing their life lessons from religion, self-help, personal transformation, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience, to the discussion. But when these from-the-fringes insights become the main event, we all have a big problem.

What can you to stop the spread of LTS? First, read great books that lay the groundwork. Good to Great has an exceptional chapter on leadership. The Essential Bennis is my personal favorite, followed closely by John Kotter's Leading Change and Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Challenge.

Second, be a smart consumer and read the biography of the writer. If he or she spent early life in a monastery, read his or her books on religion instead. If they mostly author books on sales, or relationships, you're probably not looking at a leadership book. If their background highlights how many people have come to their courses and doesn't reveal any serious study into leadership, you're probably holding a book whose author suffers from LTS.

Third, look to see if the writer, or the speaker, builds on the past thinking and application of leadership. Would you trust a doctor who ignored centuries of theory, research, and data? We have a name for people who do: "Snake oil salesmen." Use the same care in choosing people to build your leadership capability. I offer a list of specific actions leaders take that is drawn from both scholarship and experience, none of which involve systems or processes, meditating, praying, or changing how you think.

Fourth, post a comment about when you have been exposed to someone with LTS, in the comments section below.

[davelogan1]

To those of you took offense to "LTS," I've read your comments very carefully. I apologize to anyone who took offense. That wasn't intended.

Since several of you took the time and effort to get your views out, please consider that our team thought long and hard about this post before doing it. We knew we ran the risk of offending someone, and while we hoped that wouldn't happen, we clearly crossed the line with you. I apologize for that, as it wasn't intended. Please also know that I have two learning disabilities, one of which is severe, and have spent years in healthcare, including mental health. I know many people with TS, and I agree that's easy to for "TS" to get thrown around with callousness.

With the sensitivity that comes with my background, I/we believe we a serious problem in the world—and several of you have made this point, as well. The economy is flat and may be contracting, innovation is down, collaboration in some fields is next to nonexistent. Wages in the U.S. have been stagnant for a decade. People and families are suffering, and there is a field that can help—leadership. But first, leadership needs to be treated as a valid field and not mushed together with management, spirituality, or anything else.

A bunch of us have been politely saying, "you're confusing management and leadership" for more than a decade, and the message hasn't gotten through, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of managers aren't leading effectively and don't know what to do except manage more, only better. It's now reaching a crisis point. So with all that in mind, we decided to say the message more boldly in a way that would hopefully sink in, and to take specific people to task. If "LTS" offends you, then please accept my apology, but please also consider how important we view the message. It was my call to put "LTS" in there, mostly because I couldn't think of any other way to say it that would get attention. So I'm sorry for offending you, and also for my lack of creativity. But the message is one I'm so passionate about that I'd rather offend a few people than watch our corporations, country and world sink further into mediocrity because no one warned them.

[jamie9848]

Hello Dave, I appreciate your reply to the concerns shared regarding your use of "LTS". And while I believe it was not your intent to offend anyone, and that you recognized the risk in using "LTS", I am still failing to see the direct connection between the problem(s) you describe (summarized by your statement "you're confusing management and leadership") and Tourette Syndrome. It seems it's simply that you wanted to use some wording or phrase which would get people's attention. Is that it? If that's the only connection then I will have a hard time convincing myself that I should use this sort of wording/phrasing in any of my conversations regarding leadership (while I definetely agree that we do confuse management and leadership).

Thank you for your passion in trying to get a constructive message out to people. It is appreciated, and I know it's a very difficult task to do.

[DR1776]

Dave,

As several other people who have commented on this article have asked, could you please explain the connection your are drawing between the symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome and the symptoms of poor leadership? How does this phrase "say the message more boldly in a way that would hopefully sink in," when you don't explain how these two ideas relate? As someone with a PhD in Organizational Communication that has written several books I'm sure you choose your words carefully and with purpose. As you said, you and your team thought long and hard about this before you decided to post it. You did not pick this phrase simply for shock value, but chose it carefully to drive home a point about the difference between leadership and management. I think it would be appropriate for you to elaborate on these ideas, as it is not immediately clear how you're drawing this connection.

[DR1776]

Dave,

As a person who suffers from Tourette's Syndrome, and has a pretty good sense of humor, I found your article highly offensive. Please explain how you draw a relationship between Tourette's Syndrome and ineffectual leadership? Is it because you find people who suffer from TS to be "annoying to dangerous?" I fail to see the link you are trying to draw here. You say in your article that people with TS deserve compassion and understanding. How is hijacking this disease so you can write an article about leadership demonstrating compassion or understanding towards people with TS? Further, what does it say about your own character as a self professed leadership expert? Tourette's Syndrome is probably much more common than you realize, and I'm sure you encounter people suffering from this condition on a regular basis without ever knowing it. I am fortunate in that my symptoms are mild enough that I do a pretty good job of controlling them when I'm in public, and most people that know me generally don't suspect that I have this condition. If "Leadership Tourette's Syndrome" is a phrase you banter about in a public setting I can almost guarantee that you have said it in the presence of someone with TS. Would you have considered using the term "Leadership Down's Syndrome?" My guess is that you know how inappropriate that would be. Well, Leadership Tourette's Syndrome is just as inappropriate. I sincerely hope you stop using this offensive term in future articles and books.

[LisaCulturePro]

I think there is a valid point here; seems leadership advice is much like parenting advice: All over the map, no commonly agreed on definition of what's "good," and subject to the personal views of the advice-giver.

While organizational leadership the way we are discussing it in this context is a relatively new field, leadership has been in play as long as human beings have walked the planet.

In my humble opinion, by studying the rise and fall of many empires and leaders over thousands of years, we can discover the true pathway to good leadership comes from self-discovery and being a responsible steward of the purpose you have chosen. By this definition, leaders exist in all walks of life and do not necessarily carry title or authority over others. They may mentor others to lead, inspire action, teach new ways of thinking, or catalyze a great act of creativity ... or sometimes simply help us see and know ourselves more clearly.

The reason I think this distinction is important is because the task of leading (as one of the above commentaries stated) - especially in a business today - IS a relationship process that requires one to take a stand. You can't have a leader without followers, and as Twitter has shown us "following" is a personal choice not a mandate. In our new book Transforming Corporate Culture, we explore the essential importance of enabling and spreading leadership DNA (ie, a leadership culture) across an organization, using trust and relationship as a foundation that builds shared understanding across the organization's followers: Together people will decide what constitutes a good workplace, how we treat each other, and how we align ourselves to the customer and market needs.

The leader's job in this view, is to continuously and boldly facilitate meaningful conversations about change. (as opposed to the manager's job which is to control projects, resources, money, etc.).

I think that the conundrum in today's organizations - and why there are so many people seeking pundits and experts who talk about developing leaders - is that our society has grown addicted to speed and technology. We perceive we have very little time for such conversations. We have limited models of this type of leadership working in visible roles of government and corporations. We have forgotten the simple power of leadership through face-to-face conversations and relationship-building.

The best leaders I know are servants: They accept responsibility to influence a vision of a better way - they don't mandate it, force it, or politicize it.

Perhaps this is an overly simplistic view on an important topic ... but if taken to heart it eliminates the need for a tall stack of books on one's nightstand.

[TheRepairer]

Abridged Version
"The truth is, most leadership books aren't about leadership at all, which leads to major confusion about what leaders actually do." - Dave Logan

Thank you for saying it, Dave. It needed to be said from a more astute platform than ours.

You've also exposed a deeper problem:

"When the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch." - Jesus

My experience with the "leadership" misnomer came not from business, but after 17 years since I first stepped into an inner city park to see if the money I was donating to "help" the homeless was working, AND after a dozen years since first being invited to help the struggling students of impotent teachers and schools both learn and graduate. It's one thing for the "professionals" to ask for help in the area they're being paid to lead. Its something else when, after the sum total of all the research, brilliant books and gifted authors, these particular "leaders" seem to still have no idea how to solve the problems they created:

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when WE created them." - Albert Einstein

Ironically, the only fault of the "leaders" in many arenas is that they continue to try to solve problems that they simply cannot, like an accountant trying to do the job of a master plumber, or visa versa. Solutions are the domain of TRUE leaders. We actually discovered (through philosophy, not scientific research, since everything in social services and public education started accelerating toward Hell precisely when those within their system began relying on research instead of human educators: leaders and teachers) "why" there "can't" be TRUE leadership in public (and often higher) education, government or social services (while we got over 35,000 people free from homelessness - and discovered an antidote - and another 200,000 teens started learning from their teachers (instead of each other) and graduated). Too long of a sentence? Who said? The APA guide? Which year?

"Truth is what WORKS." - William James

Here'a a clue: if you're waiting for researchers to tell you how to teach, discipline or "help", you're NOT leading. Even the majority of studies generated today are "led" by students seeking their own Doctorates - the goal is not to SOLVE A PROBLEM OR SAVE LIVES, but to observe suffering. Now you can see why none of the grant money WORKED. Those receiving it couldn't lead.

The first rule of TRUE leadership is LEAD. Don't think, just do. No committees. No teams. Teams are supposed to work together as ONE. If they can't get themselves off their minds and the mission on their minds, they need a leader. The History books forced upon all of us in public school were replete with stories of LEADERS, heroes and individuals like Isaac Newton who LED, and rained on the parades of 2,000 years of Aristotelian Groupthink by saying the natural state of an object is in motion, not at rest. (There's a lesson in there). Unfortunately, the research and grant-led "educators" (oxymoron) in charge show them something else. Dang.

The people who founded our colleges and universities didn't graduate from them.

So, Dave, well said, but more importantly, well DONE. Hopefully this new (albeit ancient) strain of leadership will inspire, motivate and empower more TRUE leadership and subsequently, more problems solved than discussed. Maybe even more people will start reading - even blogs - with the intent to LEARN, instead of reading only to judge or compare to what they've already learned from those they follow.

I look forward to meeting you sometime in the near future. Many of my friends are big fans of your insightful work, which is both making their businesses exceedingly prosperous in the midst challenging external circumstances, and simultaneously helping us more quickly solve the problems so many non-profit non-leaders haven't. Or can't. Or won't.

Best,

Tiger

Tiger Todd, Principal
Hero School

[amybetts]

Dear Dave,

I am a special needs advocate and am/was a fan of yours. However, I question your sensibilities after reading the article on Leadership in CBS MoneyWatch. In that article you refer to the authors of leadership who really don't speak about true leadership as having LTS or Leadership Tourettes Syndrome. I don't know how or why you came up with that name!

While I agree with the concept - there are many leadership books out there with little relationship to teaching what leadership is - using the term LTS was an insult to the people who live with Tourettes Syndrome.

As I am sure you know, Tourette's Syndrome is a neurological disorder which manifests in part by vocalizations or motoric movements that are difficult, if not impossible, for the patient to control. It is a serious disorder that impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

One thing I know for sure is that true leaders don't promote negative stereotyping and are humane in their treatment of people with disabilities! Up to this point I have valued the insights that you have in the leadership field, but given this article, I question your ability.

An apology, as an authentic leader would do, seems warranted in this case.

Sincerely,
Amy Betts

[nemitzc]

I totally agree with Amy. I am so tired of the media and the entertainment industry using the terminology or references to Tourette Syndrome for purposes other than Tourette Syndrome. The disorder is not funny. My son has TS and every day is a challenge. The TS Association struggles to get funds for research, and these references do not hell. It is not right. Also, in my opinion, an apology is not enough. Get yourself educated about Tourette Syndrome, and how about making a donation to help us.

[angand12]

I actually think you have it backward, Dave.

Leadership is about relationships, as your book "Tribal Leadership" so clearly and rightfully pointed out. And, it is about looking at ones self and coming to certain epiphanies that are required in order to become a stage four leader.

What is missing from most Leadership today is the ability to "respond to their own needs and the needs of others from the higher levels of spirit with vision, creativity, and a sense of unity with the people they lead." And, yes it is ridiculous to" imagine counseling a CEO with revenue shortfall that the solution could be made better by responding with a higher level of spirit."

However, if part of the reason that this leader has a revenue shortfall is because he's always reacting rather than thoughtfully responding to situations around him, a little meditation could go a long way toward helping him be a better and more thoughtful leader.

Your article suggests that these things should be mutually exclusive. I think where most "new age", as you call it, leadership books seem to differ from your philosophy is that you have to bring your "whole self" to work and working on the inside is going to maek you a better leader on the outside. To which I say, AMEN! Perhaps the country wouldn't be in such a financial crisis if more leaders thought this way.

And, I'll listen to Deepak's advice. The "Profit - P-R-O-F-I-T" as he calls himself has quite a successful enterprise with passionate and creative people working for him. Sounds good to me!!