Myth #3: Leadership Is About Traits The leadership industry is obsessed with defining the traits of leaders. What are the elements of personality, character, or style that mark the successful leader? Some hold up the vague example of celebrity CEO’s, like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, and simply suggest aspiring leaders emulate them. That’s not particularly helpful for the average leader who isn’t the idiosyncratic founder and CEO of a giant tech company. Others attempt to offer more specific breakdowns. AMA has this list of “traits”. CCL calls some of theirs “characteristics”. Here’s an HBR article that refers … [Read more...]
Best Practices
Leadership Development Myths – Part 2
3 Myths of Leadership Development (Part Deux) Some myths are harmless, like Santa Claus. Sure, he’s not real, but he brings joy to children and encourages generosity – at least enough to balance out the tacit endorsement of consumerism. As I mentioned in my last post, a lot of common ideas about learning and development are kind of like that. Others are downright dangerous. Today I want to talk about a common misconception that has crept into a lot of leadership development practices: Content = Learning Now most people would probably say they don’t believe that statement to be true. But, if you … [Read more...]
Leadership Development Myths – Part 1
3 Myths of Leadership Development (Part 1) An interesting thing about the corporate learning and development field is that it’s not based on a foundational set of principles or research. Its most effective practices typically come from hard-won experience, tradition and craft learned on the job. However, many of its common beliefs are really just myths, rumors, or clever marketing that have been repeated enough times. Some of these misconceptions are baseless but innocuous, like 70/20/10 or 90% of what you read starting with the prefix “neuro”. Even though the research is garbage, getting people to think … [Read more...]
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