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We’re Confused About What “Leadership” Is
I’ve been banging the “flawed leadership in organizations” drum for close to 4 years now, so I’m going to let someone else do the lifting here in the form of two quotes, then I’ll add some pithy commentary like only I can. Sound good?
Quote 1 on leadership
Both these quotes are going to come from this interview about “re-casting leadership for the open source era.” As with most interviews, the guy is promoting a book.
Here’s the quote:
When it comes to leadership in the 21st century in the open-source era, just showing up to work and telling people what to do is not enough. Just creating shareholder return is not enough.
Yep. First off, “telling people what to do” isn’t and has never been leadership. That’s management at best, and dictatorship at worst. We get that shit twisted a lot too — management isn’t remotely the same thing as leadership. Management is being organizationally vetted to have a higher salary and direct reports. Leadership is having people actually want to follow you.
