Leadership: Animal, Mineral or Vegetable?

Leadership continues to be an elusive term, and the term leader is ascribed to people according to whether some initiative was a success or failure.  For example, People say “he is a good leader, or her leadership skills are lacking”. Leadership is not a be-all, end-all term for organizational improvement, so no single description or phrase can be used to capture its entire essence. (Yes, I am repeating myself from a previous blog, but did you get it then? Maybe now). In fact, there is a distinct difference between leader and leadership, such as distinguished below by two of my favorite descriptions:

• Stephen Covey (1990) stated that a leader is the person who climbs the tallest tree in the jungle, surveys the land, and hollers, “Wrong jungle!”

• Kellogg National Leadership Program (1995) defines leadership as: Getting good things done with the help of others!

Robert Kelley contends in his book, The Power of Followership (1992) that leaders contribute only about 20 percent to the success of most organizations, and that followers are critical to the remaining 80 percent. If this is so, then why do we focus so much time and energy on leadership? Shouldn’t we place a higher value on followers within our midst? Do we truly understand the power of ‘followership’? If we did, perhaps we would know that shifting between leadership and followership roles is easy, and depends on the need for a person’s particular talents and skills in a given situation. For example, if the fire alarm went off in your office, would you run down the hall and ask your supervisor’s permission to leave the building? Not likely, because you might end up as a crispy critter.  Instead, you would assume a leadership role, and get yourself out of harm’s way.  Do leaders need to wait for a crisis to act? No, but they do need a strategy that helps them get to the outcomes they seek.

 To learn more about Kelley’s thoughts on followership, read his book.  Afterall, he is practically the sole source on the topic.  However, if you want to know more about leadership, listed below are Howze's Classic and Classy top 25 reading recommendations!

1)    Blanchard, K. & Johnson, Spencer. (1981) The one minute manager. New York:  HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

2)    Clifton, D. & Nelson, P.  (1992). Soar with your strengths. New York:  Delacorte press.

 3)    Collins, J. (2001). Good to great. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

 4)    Collins, J.  & Porras, J. (1994). Built to last. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.

 5)    Covey, S. R., Merrill, A.R., Merrill, R. R. (1994).  First things first. New York: Simon & Schuster.

 6)    Dauten, D. (1999).  The gifted boss. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.

 7)    DePree, M. (1997).  Leading without power. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

 8)    Drucker, P. (1990).  Managing the not-for-profit. New York: Harper Collins.

 9)    Frieberg, K., & Frieberg, J. (1996). Nuts! New York:  Bard Press.

 10) Gardner, H. (1995). Leading minds: An anatomy of leadership.  New York: Basic Books.

 11) Gladwell, M. (2000). The tipping point. New York: Little, Brown and  Company.

 12) Gladwell, M.  (2008). Outliers. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

 13) Johnson, S. (2009). Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation.  New York: Penguin Group.

 14) Kotter, J.  (2012). Leading Change. Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press.

 15) Kim, W. C. & Mauborgne, R. (2012). Blue ocean strategy. Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press.

 16) Marriott, J. W., Jr., & Brown, K. A.  (1997). The spirit to serve.  New York:  HarperCollins Publishing, Inc.

 17) McNally, D. (1990). Even eagles need a push. New York: Dell Publishing.

 18) Nelson, B. (1994). 1001 ways to reward employees. New York: Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

 19) Owens, D. A. (2012).  Creative people must be stopped.  California: Josey-Bass.

 20) Schwartz, P. (1991). The art of the long view.  New York: Dell Publishing.

 21) Senge, P. (1990) The fifth discipline.  The art and practice of the learning organization.  New York:  Doubleday Currency.

 22) Sun Tzu.  (Any translation).  The art of war.

 23) Toffler, A., & Toffler, H. (1993). War and anti-war. New York:  Warner Books.

 24) Warren, Rick. (2002). The purpose driven life. Michigan: Zondervan.

 25) Wheatley, Margaret. (1992). Leadership and the new science. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

 Understanding leadership begins with self-awareness.  In fact, your success as a leader is directly correlated to your degree of understanding of how your style is created from a lifetime of complex social and emotional interactions.  Today’s challenges ask difficult new things of us that can easily overwhelm us.  Yet, they also hold powerful new potentials.  Knowing yourself is the first step to becoming an effective leader.   Reading a few of the above-cited books may help you understand your own unique and special style, and help you through the Great Resignation and Great Regret movements that are currently taking place.