I speak out against the word 'leadership' at my own peril, for not only does SLU have its own center for leadership, the "St. Lawrence University Leadership Academy," but its center for leadership is an important partner in the CBL program, which I believe strongly in. (In fact, according to the document I just read, the CBL has a dynamic partnership with the St. Lawrence University Leadership Academy.) The Leadership Academy offers a half credit course on "the role of leaders and leadership from both historical and theoretical perspectives" and sponsors a conference on leadership.
I am hardly in a position to complain about studying historical and theoretical perspectives on leadership. Many philosophers I teach--Aristotle, Confucius--develop theories of the rights and duties of those on the top side of various hierarchical relationships. Many of the things they say are still important in a democratic context. Certainly Plato felt that the education of leaders was the most important element of politics.
Still, I distrust these sorts of studies when they use the word 'leadership'. I distrust them almost as much as I distrust leaders. 'Leadership' is such a vague word. When Confucius talks about the duties of nobility, he had in mind five relationships that had concrete meanings in his society: father/son, ruler/subject, husband/wife, older brother/younger brother, friend/friend. When people talk about leadership in America, there is no particular relationship they refer to. They really mean any situation where one person can take credit for being the guy who gets things done, the go-to guy, the rainmaker. Yes I know someone else did the work, but I made all the phone calls. I sent out a lot of emails on my blackberry. I appropriated the surplus value of your labor. With the word 'leadership' you get pure managerialism, tradition efficiently stripped away, leaving pure exploitation.
Of course, at the Leadership Academy they teach people to be better leaders than that. Their course on leadership promises
A focus on relational models of leadership which emphasizes leadership as “a relational process of people together attempting to accomplish change or make a difference to benefit the common good” (Komives and McMahon, p.68).But if people are working together for the common good why privilege one of them as "the leader"? The best sort of leadership studies would be suicidal to the concept of leadership. (I bet you could assign the Tao Te Ching in such a course.)
'Leadership' is a different sort of bad word than 'extraordinary rendition'. The phrase 'extraordinary rendition' is evil because it obscures the concept it names (outsourcing torture). 'Leadership' is bad because it accurately names precisely the part of the concept that does the most damage to human society. It identifies the part of a social relationship where one person gets to be more important than all the others.
I don't think the academy should teach leadership. I know Plato said that the education of leaders was the most important part of politics, but my utopian vision doesn't involve perfectly education leaders. Back when I actively developed utopian schemes, I was a communitarian anarchist (one of those anarchists who thinks everyone should share stuff, not the Ayn Rand type anarchists.)
So, with all due respect for my coworkers who teach leadership, I ask you to stop. There are much better kinds of civilization we can teach.
1 comment:
Bravo!! Well said, now lets talk about project managers and consultants :-)
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