The Problems With the Cult of Leadership
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Summary
Elias Aboujade is a Stanford professor of psychiatry and the author of A Leader s Destiny, Why Psychology, Personality, and Character Make All the Difference. He questions the assumptions underlying this phenomenon, which he calls the "Leadership Industrial Complex," and says that the cult of leadership and its idea that everyone can and should become a leader can create burnout and unhappiness.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Are leaders born or made? Judging by the $50 billion leadership development industry,
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the answer is definitely the latter. From schools to workplaces, everyone is seen as a potential
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leader and expected to become one by undergoing leadership training. My guest questions the
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assumptions underlying this phenomenon, which he calls the leadership industrial complex,
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and says that the cult of leadership and its idea that everyone can and should become a leader
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can create burnout and unhappiness. Elias Aboujade is a Stanford professor of psychiatry and the author
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of A Leader's Destiny, Why Psychology, Personality, and Character Make All the Difference. Today on
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the show, Elias describes the state of the leadership industrial complex, the mathematical
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impossibility it forwards that everyone can be a leader and no one is a follower, and the primary
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presumption it makes that leadership can be taught. Elias argues that, in fact, a lot of what makes
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for good leadership is innate and potentially unchangeable. We discuss the implications of
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this fact and why it's actually okay not to want to be a leader. After the show's over, check out
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our show notes at awem.is slash leadership. All right. Elias Aboujade, welcome to the show.
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Thank you very much. So you are a psychiatrist, and you've taken a deep dive into what could be called
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the cult of leadership in America. And what kickstarted this exploration of leadership
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development in the United States is you got a request to write a letter of recommendation for
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a medical student. So how did that request for a letter of recommendation lead you to exploring
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our country's obsession with leadership and developing leaders? Indeed. So one of the best
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medical students I ever supervised, I'll call him Tim, approached me for a letter of recommendation
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and support for his application to get into a skin cancer program. Tim had really shown exemplary
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performance on the wards where I supervised him. So I wrote the most, probably the most, the strongest
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letter of recommendation I had ever written. And in it, I praised his bedside manner, his clinical
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productivity, his conscientiousness, his research contributions, really the kinds of things that
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every program wants to see in an application and in a prospective applicant. To sort of make him feel
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better and hopefully less stressed out about this process, I shared the letter with him and I watched
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as he read it in my office. And I was surprised to see his facial expression sink into a deep depression
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and deep sadness. So for a second, I thought I had mistakenly given Tim another student's evaluation,
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the evaluation of a student who had been failing the rotation. But it turned out I hadn't. What was
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missing apparently from my letter is any mention of leadership qualities and leadership potential.
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And Tim was convinced that as strong and outstanding as the letter was, he wouldn't get into any competitive
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program without a supervisor predicting a brilliant future for him as a leader. So that got me thinking
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about how we've come to really prioritize leadership over any other quality in our medical field. But
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also, as I started looking and exploring way beyond medicine, I started paying attention, for example,
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and noticing daycare centers with names like Future Leaders of America or Leadership Academy,
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you know, the kinds of things that suggest that we're planting this leadership seed and inculcating
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people into this cult of leadership, leadership literally with breast milk. And they started
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noticing also that college applicants now have an entire section where high school students are
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expected to talk about their leadership experience. You know, who wants a shy violinist or an introvert
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when you can get the president of five clubs kind of thing. So all this speaks to a real leadership
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obsession in our society. And it speaks to very high demand for all things leadership. Now this demand
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is being met, met and then some by what I'm calling in my book, a leadership industrial complex. There's a
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$50 billion leadership industry that's now available to really convince us that leadership is something
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that's within reach for practically anyone. All you have to do is take the right course or sign on the
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right executive coach. So it's a very sort of unhealthy combination between this kind of demand and this
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kind of supply. And as I see it, it may explain the failures of leadership that we see every direction
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we look and on every front, whether political, corporate, academic, really everywhere and
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anywhere. We've created a system where we have so much product out there that the only way for leaders
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to stand out and actually make it to leadership positions is to be unscrupulous, to have traits that
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are closer to sort of the narcissistic or even the antisocial end of the spectrum. And we don't want
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that in our leaders. But this is the system that we have created. And this is what this unhealthy
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balance between exuberant demand and exuberant supply has created. Yeah, that's one of the big
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points you make in the book is that there's this paradox that we're seeing in the past, maybe 50,
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60 years, this emphasis on developing leaders. We're going to develop leaders and very be systematic
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about it, take courses. But it seems like there's a dearth of leadership, despite all the leadership
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development we're doing. Absolutely. This is the biggest, one of the biggest paradoxes of the
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leadership industry, that there has never been more opportunities to develop and train leaders. And yet
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leaders have never performed worse than they are today. So, you know, one way to look at this is to
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think, well, we need more training, we need the industry to be even bigger. But another way,
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to look at it and the position that I take in my book is that the leadership industry and this
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approach to leadership is actually contributing to leadership failure.
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And another point you make, too, is that this emphasis, overemphasis on leadership in college
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students, in your career, it could be leading to burnout and just feeling inadequate. You know,
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Tim, like he was disappointed that you didn't talk about his leadership skills.
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But like, did Tim want to be a leader, like personally?
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That's the thing. Tim had no interest in being a leader. All he wanted to be is the best skin
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cancer doctor he could become. And that's what he eventually became. But Tim was also convinced that
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without coming across as having leadership qualities, he had no chance of actually making it.
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When I touched base subsequently with Tim a few years down the road,
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I found out that some leadership opportunities had actually come his way, but he was all too happy
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to ignore them and turn them down. And yet in his application process, he felt forced to, if you
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will, pretend to be interested in leading. Otherwise, he wouldn't have made it into the program that he
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was eventually accepted into. Yeah, I've encountered that, too, with letters of recommendation. So I mentor
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teenage boys at church, and they'll ask me sometimes to fill out letters of recommendations. And there's
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always a thing on there about leadership, like what leadership skills does this person display?
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And some of these boys, you know, they're smart, they're bright, but they're not really leaders,
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and they're not really interested in leadership. But I feel like I got to come up with something,
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because if I don't, it's not going to look good for them.
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It's not going to look good. It's going to count against them. And, you know, it speaks to a bigger
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problem in academia and in college and university life, you know, less than one in 10 students now
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major with a degree in the humanities, you know, we're shutting down English and history departments
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left and right. And yet there's this curious rise of the leadership major and the leadership minor
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and leadership studies everywhere you look. So it's a curious development and feeds into this
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cultural obsession and academic obsession with leadership that I was talking about.
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I want to talk about these courses. But before we do, when you've looked at
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the leadership industrial complex as a whole, what do they mean by leadership exactly? Because leadership
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can mean lots of different things, like there's lots of different definitions. So how is it
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described in the leadership industrial complex culture?
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You know, what goes along with this leadership industrial complex, of course, is intense marketing.
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And to understand what leadership means to these programs, it's interesting to look at the messaging
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and the marketing. So you'll find words, you know, really buzzwords like transformative, catalyst,
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a change driver, unleasher. You know, you'll be empowering people across many verticals and across
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many tipping points. You'll almost certainly disrupt. If I had the nickel for every time I came across the
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word disrupt in my leadership research, I'd be a very rich man. So these buzzwords add to add up to the
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leadership industrial complex's definition of what a leader means today. And through these courses and
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through this coaching and through all this quote unquote development, they sell the message that
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all these qualities and traits are perfectly teachable.
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So, I mean, what skills or traits do they purport to teach would-be leaders?
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You know, I don't have a problem really with purporting to teach a skill. Where it becomes
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very problematic for me as a psychiatrist is where they start pretending or communicating that they
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can teach things like EQ, you know, emotional intelligence, or even charisma, you know, qualities
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and traits that are linked to personality. And if we know anything as mental health providers,
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as psychiatrists, as psychologists, is the difficulty changing people's personalities. You know,
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people's personality tends to be stubborn, not super malleable. If you want to make long-lasting
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personality changes, it's a long-term commitment that involves potentially years of psychotherapy.
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It's not the kind of thing that you can pick up over a boot camp or a weekend workshop. And yet,
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this is the message that a lot of these trainings are selling. And this is the really misleading,
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no pun intended, notion that accompanies so much of the leadership industry's offerings.
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Okay. So, leadership in the leadership industrial complex, a lot of buzzwords,
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you're a changemaker, catalyst, disruptor. So, it's kind of an amorphous thing. It can kind of mean
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whatever you want. And because it can mean anything you want, like you can create your content that
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you're teaching however you want. Let's dig into the actual content, these courses. I thought this
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is really interesting. You talk about what colleges and other businesses are doing to make money on
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leadership courses. You mentioned, I think you said, a $50 billion industry overall?
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Yeah, it's a $50 billion industry. And it's an industry that's been fully embraced by our top
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business schools, you know, entities and institutions that know a thing or two about making money. And this
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has helped really transform this leadership development field into a full-blown industrial
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complex. And, you know, when you check out something like Harvard's program for leadership
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development, for example, you'll be surprised to see that there's an 800 number available for
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applicants to call. There's an entire program advising team that's waiting to take your call.
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You'll also be, you might be surprised to see that really there's no formal educational requirements
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to join. There's this amorphous sort of leadership potential. That's pretty much the only requirement.
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The program is advertised to people at whatever role or career stage. Again, not really just meant for
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senior executives or folks already in the C-suite, but marketed as something that's much more
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open and accessible than that. So the acceptance rate into it seems much higher than the 4.5% or so
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that undergraduates applying for Harvard usually face. What's unquestionably exclusive though about
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the program is the price tag, $52,000 for the basic four modules of blended teaching. But if you want a
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lifelong Harvard email address and if you want alumni status, then you can get that for an additional
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module and an additional $27,000. So, you know, strategies that to me feel very sort of marketing and
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business oriented in a way that to me fits uncomfortably within the educational model. You know, another
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example that I talk about in the book is Wharton. You know, Wharton is the premier, the oldest business
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school in the country. And I was checking out a program they have, a nine month, mostly self-paced or
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largely self-paced program called Global C-suite. And I read about it and then I, you know, wanted to close
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the window. And I had this very interesting pop-up show up offering me $1,000 off the $20,000 tuition if
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I hurry up and apply in the next nine days. Again, marketing gimmicks and marketing strategies that
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have no place in education as I see it, yet this is what so much of the leadership industry and the
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leadership educational opportunities, this is the direction they take.
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Okay. So for $60,000, I could become a Harvard alum. I could put that on my CV. Yeah, that's crazy.
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And then it's not just colleges that are doing this. You know, there's also many businesses that offer
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Oh, absolutely. If Harvard and Wharton are offering these kinds of opportunities, then you can imagine the
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Wild West out there and the programs with names like Leadership Express Series or a workshop for $18.99.
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that, you know, promises to teach you how to become a charismatic leader. I mean, any number of such
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What's the content of these courses? Like what are exact, when you sit down to go through these modules,
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Well, a lot of the content is not research-based, certainly. There's very little by way of long-term
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research results in terms of success that these programs can point to. There's also a ton of
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mnemonics that I came across as I was researching. And this heavy reliance on mnemonics suggests that
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leadership is easy, literally as easy as ABC. You know, one popular mnemonic is the so-called
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three R's, three R's. But depending on which program or which professor of leadership or which coach
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you consult, the three R's stand for different things. It could be reflections, resiliency, and relationships,
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but it could also be respect, recognize, and reward, and so on and so forth. So all this suggests a very
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sort of unscientific, make-it-up-as-you-go process that unfortunately takes up a lot of these offerings.
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Is there any research that's been done on these leadership development programs that they actually
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work, like that people who go through them come out as better leaders? And how would you even measure
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that if you did research on that? Well, it's not easy to measure, which highlights the need for
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good quality, large-scale, long-term research. And when you look for good quality, large-scale,
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long-term research that has assessed their success, there's very, very little indeed that you can point
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to. Okay. And which is, that's interesting because like, you know, businesses are probably paying for
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their employees to go to these things. They don't even know if it works or not. Oh, to the tune of $50
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billion. Yeah. And then what's interesting too, you talk about how this is also creeping into
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middle schools and in high schools. I mean, I grew up in the nineties, late nineties, I was in high
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school then. And I saw that stuff. I was involved in student council and we did this leadership
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development stuff. And typically what it was like, the school district was paying some organization to
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do the teaching. Yes. The leadership bug has fully infected our high school and college systems.
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And this is manifested in the place that leadership now takes up in college applications,
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but also it's manifested in how so many schools seem to be changing their mission statements
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to emphasize leadership. Everybody wants to teach the future leaders of America. Nobody seems interested
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in teaching, you know, and informing the educated citizenry of the country. And the downside of course,
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of all this is the inferiority complex that it gives those who are not interested in leading,
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those who have the self-awareness to acknowledge that. So they're not interested in pursuing leadership
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who don't succeed at leading. There are real psychological consequences to that and a real
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inferiority complex that doesn't get talked about as we send the message that all can be leaders.
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And as we ignore the reality that the world also needs followers and mathematically speaking,
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We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. So the idea that everyone can and should be a leader and that
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everyone can develop into a leader with the right training is everywhere these days. And I think the
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big thing we need to talk about, and you mentioned this before, is that the whole idea and what the
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leadership development industry relies on is the assumption that leadership can be taught. And there
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are certain skills that can be taught and people can improve on a little bit, you know, body language,
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getting a little bit better with public speaking, getting better at strategy. But you talk about if you
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actually look at the scientific research that's been done on leadership,
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it suggests that a lot of leadership ability just comes down to inborn temperament. So what does the
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research say there about leadership ability and temperament?
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Yeah. So I talked earlier about how there's very little long-term, long-term high-quality research
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in terms of the success of leadership training. But there's quite a bit long-term high-quality
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research when it comes to people's personalities and how people's personalities evolve over time.
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And what this long-term high-quality research tells us is that personality is pretty sticky. I'll just
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quickly mention a couple of studies, one involving a cohort of Harvard graduates who were assessed at age 22
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and again at age 67. And you can imagine, you know, all the ups and downs and all the upheaval that can
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happen in a person's life over the course of four decades or so. And yet when this cohort was reassessed,
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the fundamental traits in their personalities were essentially unchanged. The fingerprint,
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their personality fingerprint was essentially the same. Another study looked at an even younger cohort,
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students aged 6 to 12, and assessed them on 39 personality traits and re-interviewed them again 40 years
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down the road. And what the researchers found was their personalities were essentially largely stable.
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So this is what high-quality, long-term research from mental health and from psychology teaches us.
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And yet, when you look at a lot of leadership offerings, there is this idea that we can teach you EQ
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and we can do it pretty easily. Now, nobody would dispute the importance of EQ and how leaders emerge
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and how leaders succeed. Up to 90% of leaders' success has been attributed to EQ when other skills and when IQ
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is otherwise the same. So the importance of EQ is pretty fundamental and pretty established. But the notion
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that you can teach EQ and transform EQ is highly problematic because EQ is pretty tightly linked
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to personality. And what the studies I mentioned about personality show is that it's largely fixed over time.
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Okay. So yeah, when we typically think of like a leader, we have this idea that he's charismatic,
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they take risks, they're bold, they know how to manage people, they're detail-oriented.
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And that kind of lines up with those big five personality traits, conscientiousness,
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extroversion, low on neuroticism. And let's say you're a person, you're like, okay, I'm kind of
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neurotic. I'm not very conscientious. I'm not a big risk taker. Can a course, a weekend course actually
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move the needle on that? And the answer looks like it's probably, probably not.
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The answer is probably not because personality again is largely fixed. And when psychoanalysis
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tried to affect meaningful long-term personality changes, it was a years-long endeavor, not for the
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commitment phobic. So to the extent that EQ is linked to personality, and we know it is,
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it is not something that you can easily impart or teach.
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Yeah. And this idea of can leadership be taught, this reminds me, this goes back, this is like a
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couple thousand-year-old question. Plato was asking the same question. He was asking,
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Yeah. And he actually tried to figure it out. He actually had this theory that yes,
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virtue can be taught. If you teach people about the good, and they know the good,
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they'll start conforming themselves to the good, and they'll be good leaders. That was the idea.
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And then he had the chance to test it out. You got to go to Syracuse and be a teacher to this
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king guy who was having lots of problems. And he was teaching him philosophy and teaching about
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the forms and everything. And it ended in complete disaster. The guy did not change at all. And Plato
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was like, okay, maybe this idea that I had that if you teach these philosopher kings to be
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good leaders, it'll teach them the forms, they'll become good leaders, it'll work. And he actually had
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to take a step back and say, ah, that's actually not going to work. We have to try something else.
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Well, this is a vignette that clearly belongs in the book, Brad. Thank you for sharing that.
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You know, what the Greeks were also interested in is charisma. In fact, the word charisma comes from
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a Greek root that means a freely given gift, like something that God endows you with, or the gods endow
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you with. And again, it's interesting how many people to this day, when they try to define
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charisma, will resort to religious sort of metaphors and religious terms. And yet this hasn't
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stopped us from pretending we can easily teach it in a way that makes us look like we're playing God.
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Okay. So a lot of these leadership attributes that we, we think of when it comes to a good leader,
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charisma, high EQ, a lot of it's based in personality. And a lot of that you, you can't
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change. If you do change it, it's going to take a long time to do, and you're probably not going to
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change it too much. Yes, indeed. So when companies or organizations are thinking about leadership,
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should it be less about leadership development and, you know, this idea that you can develop anyone and
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everyone into a leader and more about leadership finding? Like, is it better to focus on filtering
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for and selecting good leaders? Should that be the strategy? You know, the subtitle of my book is
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why psychology, personality and character make all the difference. And I think one shift that needs to
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happen for the health of our leadership culture is for us to start paying more attention to these things
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and ease up on the development, ease up on the steps and hacks and tips that that supposedly guarantee
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good leadership. Basically go back to the basics and put psychology front and center where it belongs
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in leadership culture. And remember that there's only so much planning and prepping and strategizing
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that one can do. And some of the most meaningful and significant
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leaderships that the world has seen, leadership found the leader, not the other way around.
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So there's a humbling message in this for leadership culture, and it should be humbling
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for the leadership industry as well. Yeah, I think that's something I've taken away as I've studied.
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I've read a lot of biographies of great leaders. And one thing I've discovered is what made them great
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leaders is like, yeah, they rose up to the occasion, like the leadership found them.
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And they leaned into their unique personality. They weren't trying to conform themselves to this
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ideal leader, right? That's charismatic and bold and visionary. And even guys who weren't that,
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like they were still good leaders. Like, I mean, here's an example, Patton and Eisenhower.
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They had kind of different personalities. Patton's very bombastic, led from the front,
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was very flamboyant. And that worked for him. He leaned into that. And Eisenhower was more of a,
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like a people person. Like he did a lot of the, I'm going to be in the background, you know,
00:27:43.880
working on alliances. When you look at football coaches, I love watching how different football,
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American football coaches coach. You have some coaches who are very, you know, just high energy,
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just on the sidelines, rah, rah, rah. And then you have those coaches who just, you know,
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arms folded, never say a word and they're winning football coaches.
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Yes. Yes. I think you're talking about people basically aligning with their psychology and
00:28:07.720
leaning with their psychology and not pretending to be someone, someone they're not. Winston Churchill
00:28:14.200
is another great example of a transformative, truly transformative and truly disruptive maybe
00:28:19.720
figure who was found by leadership and rose to the occasion as opposed to self-consciously
00:28:29.560
and deliberately in a step-by-step fashion strategized to reach the heights that he reached.
00:28:36.360
Yeah. Another one, Abraham Lincoln, like he was not your stereotypical leader. Like he,
00:28:39.960
he was, you know, he had depression. Like he was severely depressed that he would just lay on the couch and,
00:28:44.280
you know, read the book of Job and just be like, I'm the saddest guy in the whole world.
00:28:48.760
But Lincoln was still one of the most eminent and effective leaders in history.
00:28:52.440
Absolutely. Absolutely. So all this is to say that we lose by limiting the profile of who we
00:29:02.840
support in rising to leadership positions, the way we are doing right now.
00:29:08.760
Well, then I want to go back to this point you made that this everyone is a leader culture that we have
00:29:13.000
can contribute to maybe burnout, depression, inferiority complex amongst particularly young
00:29:18.920
workers, young students. Flesh that out a bit more. How have you seen that manifest itself?
00:29:23.400
When we live in a culture that only values leaders and when we are subjected to endless
00:29:32.920
marketing that all that counts is leadership and that leadership is yours to have for just a little
00:29:42.200
bit of training and a little bit of development, then those of us who don't become leaders,
00:29:49.480
either because they're not interested or they're not successful, can be left with an inferiority complex
00:29:56.600
and be left thinking, well, what is wrong with me when, you know, it should be so, so easy? Like,
00:30:02.920
where did I go wrong? And that's an unhealthy state, psychologically speaking, and it's totally
00:30:10.200
unnecessary because the marketing itself that's driving it and the leadership obsession that's driving it
00:30:18.280
are what's faulty with society, not the individual who doesn't become a leader or isn't interested in
00:30:24.680
pursuing leadership. Yeah. And it also sets people up if they do pursue leadership because they feel
00:30:29.800
like they have to, to feel like I actually hate this. Like I am not suited for this. I am miserable,
00:30:36.520
but I got to do this because I have to advance my career. Right. Like I got the position that supposedly
00:30:42.600
is what matters in life, but I'm absolutely miserable leading.
00:30:47.960
So I think the takeaways from what we've talked about are leadership development, probably not a
00:30:53.160
thing. I mean, there are certain skills you can develop a little, but as far as those ineffable
00:30:57.640
qualities that we think of when it comes to leadership, that comes down to personality. And
00:31:03.080
that's either, it's kind of either you're born with it or you're not. So maybe organizations of all
00:31:07.720
kinds should focus more on leader finding, filtering and selecting instead of a leader development.
00:31:15.080
At the same time though, I think we can expand on our idea of what makes a good leader. It doesn't
00:31:20.200
have to be the stereotype. So maybe you don't have those qualities of a stereotypical leader,
00:31:25.640
but you can still be a good leader in your own way. But let's say whether or not you do have
00:31:31.000
potential for leadership, you're just not interested in it. Like it's not something you want to do.
00:31:35.320
What advice would you give someone who, you know, they've got the self-awareness to know that they're
00:31:40.360
not a good fit for leadership positions, but they still feel this pressure to get on that track to
00:31:48.280
Yeah. What I would tell them is to do what aligns with their psychology. Don't tie your self-worth to
00:31:54.600
leadership positions. It's okay to be a leader, but it's also okay not to be one. And certainly don't
00:32:00.840
look down on followers, including yourself, if you happen to be one.
00:32:05.480
Okay. And that can be tough because like you're just told from a young age, you got to be a leader.
00:32:10.280
It is tough. And that's why the change has to happen on many fronts. It has to happen at the
00:32:17.720
level of parenting. It has to happen at the level of schools and universities, and it has to happen at
00:32:24.280
the corporate level. I mean, this is not an easy change to make, but it's a necessary change to make
00:32:32.360
to the extent that we need good leaders. And our approach to leadership today is almost guaranteed
00:32:45.160
Yeah. Well, I feel like it just comes down to being okay with being a follower and that maybe
00:32:51.560
will require reframing what it means to be a follower some, right? Because it has,
00:32:55.800
the word has a lot of negative connotations and baggage, you know, like being a follower doesn't
00:33:00.840
mean there's something wrong with you or you're deficient. You just have a different disposition or
00:33:05.480
maybe just like different kinds of work. And actually this reminds me something we talked about on the
00:33:09.160
site. This goes back to Patton and Eisenhower is that some people are strategists and some people are
00:33:14.680
operators, right? So like some people like to be the manager where they're setting the agenda
00:33:18.520
and other people, they just like to be on the ground in the field doing the work. It's like
00:33:22.840
some people like to plan the action and some people just want to take the action. So it's okay not to
00:33:29.480
want to be a leader and just want to be an operator. That's okay. Maybe you won't get as much
00:33:34.120
clout and money, but you'll be happier. Absolutely. Leadership is not the only path to happiness and self-worth.
00:33:42.040
I love it. Well, Elias, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more
00:33:45.080
about the book and your work? Thank you very much. They can go to my personal website,
00:33:48.760
EliasAbujaude.com or find the book on Amazon or any of their favorite venues.
00:33:54.520
Fantastic. Well, Elias Abujaude, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:33:58.360
My guest today was Dr. Elias Abujaude. He's the author of the book, A Leader's Destiny. It's
00:34:03.480
available on amazon.com. You can learn more information about his work at his website, EliasAbujaude.com.
00:34:08.600
Also check out our show notes at AOM.is slash leadership where you find links to resources.
00:34:21.160
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:34:25.080
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00:34:43.260
Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind your time to listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard