The Art of Manliness - The Problems With the Cult of Leadership

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.420 Are leaders born or made? Judging by the $50 billion leadership development industry,

00:00:16.900 the answer is definitely the latter. From schools to workplaces, everyone is seen as a potential

00:00:21.720 leader and expected to become one by undergoing leadership training. My guest questions the

00:00:26.540 assumptions underlying this phenomenon, which he calls the leadership industrial complex,

00:00:31.180 and says that the cult of leadership and its idea that everyone can and should become a leader

00:00:35.360 can create burnout and unhappiness. Elias Aboujade is a Stanford professor of psychiatry and the author

00:00:41.140 of A Leader's Destiny, Why Psychology, Personality, and Character Make All the Difference. Today on

00:00:46.680 the show, Elias describes the state of the leadership industrial complex, the mathematical

00:00:50.740 impossibility it forwards that everyone can be a leader and no one is a follower, and the primary

00:00:54.940 presumption it makes that leadership can be taught. Elias argues that, in fact, a lot of what makes

00:00:59.640 for good leadership is innate and potentially unchangeable. We discuss the implications of

00:01:03.640 this fact and why it's actually okay not to want to be a leader. After the show's over, check out

00:01:07.960 our show notes at awem.is slash leadership. All right. Elias Aboujade, welcome to the show.

00:01:26.520 Thank you very much. So you are a psychiatrist, and you've taken a deep dive into what could be called

00:01:33.000 the cult of leadership in America. And what kickstarted this exploration of leadership

00:01:39.240 development in the United States is you got a request to write a letter of recommendation for

00:01:44.520 a medical student. So how did that request for a letter of recommendation lead you to exploring

00:01:49.860 our country's obsession with leadership and developing leaders? Indeed. So one of the best

00:01:56.100 medical students I ever supervised, I'll call him Tim, approached me for a letter of recommendation

00:02:01.900 and support for his application to get into a skin cancer program. Tim had really shown exemplary

00:02:09.180 performance on the wards where I supervised him. So I wrote the most, probably the most, the strongest

00:02:15.480 letter of recommendation I had ever written. And in it, I praised his bedside manner, his clinical

00:02:22.160 productivity, his conscientiousness, his research contributions, really the kinds of things that

00:02:27.900 every program wants to see in an application and in a prospective applicant. To sort of make him feel

00:02:34.560 better and hopefully less stressed out about this process, I shared the letter with him and I watched

00:02:40.680 as he read it in my office. And I was surprised to see his facial expression sink into a deep depression

00:02:47.840 and deep sadness. So for a second, I thought I had mistakenly given Tim another student's evaluation,

00:02:55.880 the evaluation of a student who had been failing the rotation. But it turned out I hadn't. What was

00:03:02.000 missing apparently from my letter is any mention of leadership qualities and leadership potential.

00:03:08.920 And Tim was convinced that as strong and outstanding as the letter was, he wouldn't get into any competitive

00:03:16.480 program without a supervisor predicting a brilliant future for him as a leader. So that got me thinking

00:03:24.580 about how we've come to really prioritize leadership over any other quality in our medical field. But

00:03:33.460 also, as I started looking and exploring way beyond medicine, I started paying attention, for example,

00:03:40.160 and noticing daycare centers with names like Future Leaders of America or Leadership Academy,

00:03:47.240 you know, the kinds of things that suggest that we're planting this leadership seed and inculcating

00:03:53.060 people into this cult of leadership, leadership literally with breast milk. And they started

00:03:58.080 noticing also that college applicants now have an entire section where high school students are

00:04:04.900 expected to talk about their leadership experience. You know, who wants a shy violinist or an introvert

00:04:12.240 when you can get the president of five clubs kind of thing. So all this speaks to a real leadership

00:04:19.100 obsession in our society. And it speaks to very high demand for all things leadership. Now this demand

00:04:27.880 is being met, met and then some by what I'm calling in my book, a leadership industrial complex. There's a

00:04:35.600 $50 billion leadership industry that's now available to really convince us that leadership is something

00:04:44.420 that's within reach for practically anyone. All you have to do is take the right course or sign on the

00:04:51.180 right executive coach. So it's a very sort of unhealthy combination between this kind of demand and this

00:04:59.640 kind of supply. And as I see it, it may explain the failures of leadership that we see every direction

00:05:08.560 we look and on every front, whether political, corporate, academic, really everywhere and

00:05:15.880 anywhere. We've created a system where we have so much product out there that the only way for leaders

00:05:23.140 to stand out and actually make it to leadership positions is to be unscrupulous, to have traits that

00:05:33.720 are closer to sort of the narcissistic or even the antisocial end of the spectrum. And we don't want

00:05:39.620 that in our leaders. But this is the system that we have created. And this is what this unhealthy

00:05:45.980 balance between exuberant demand and exuberant supply has created. Yeah, that's one of the big

00:05:51.900 points you make in the book is that there's this paradox that we're seeing in the past, maybe 50,

00:05:56.860 60 years, this emphasis on developing leaders. We're going to develop leaders and very be systematic

00:06:01.880 about it, take courses. But it seems like there's a dearth of leadership, despite all the leadership

00:06:07.740 development we're doing. Absolutely. This is the biggest, one of the biggest paradoxes of the

00:06:12.860 leadership industry, that there has never been more opportunities to develop and train leaders. And yet

00:06:20.100 leaders have never performed worse than they are today. So, you know, one way to look at this is to

00:06:27.160 think, well, we need more training, we need the industry to be even bigger. But another way,

00:06:31.880 to look at it and the position that I take in my book is that the leadership industry and this

00:06:38.120 approach to leadership is actually contributing to leadership failure.

00:06:44.180 And another point you make, too, is that this emphasis, overemphasis on leadership in college

00:06:49.700 students, in your career, it could be leading to burnout and just feeling inadequate. You know,

00:06:55.880 Tim, like he was disappointed that you didn't talk about his leadership skills.

00:06:59.540 But like, did Tim want to be a leader, like personally?

00:07:03.180 That's the thing. Tim had no interest in being a leader. All he wanted to be is the best skin

00:07:08.560 cancer doctor he could become. And that's what he eventually became. But Tim was also convinced that

00:07:14.120 without coming across as having leadership qualities, he had no chance of actually making it.

00:07:21.920 When I touched base subsequently with Tim a few years down the road,

00:07:25.920 I found out that some leadership opportunities had actually come his way, but he was all too happy

00:07:31.100 to ignore them and turn them down. And yet in his application process, he felt forced to, if you

00:07:38.100 will, pretend to be interested in leading. Otherwise, he wouldn't have made it into the program that he

00:07:44.960 was eventually accepted into. Yeah, I've encountered that, too, with letters of recommendation. So I mentor

00:07:51.280 teenage boys at church, and they'll ask me sometimes to fill out letters of recommendations. And there's

00:07:56.720 always a thing on there about leadership, like what leadership skills does this person display?

00:08:02.260 And some of these boys, you know, they're smart, they're bright, but they're not really leaders,

00:08:06.800 and they're not really interested in leadership. But I feel like I got to come up with something,

00:08:11.140 because if I don't, it's not going to look good for them.

00:08:13.560 It's not going to look good. It's going to count against them. And, you know, it speaks to a bigger

00:08:18.440 problem in academia and in college and university life, you know, less than one in 10 students now

00:08:27.200 major with a degree in the humanities, you know, we're shutting down English and history departments

00:08:33.000 left and right. And yet there's this curious rise of the leadership major and the leadership minor

00:08:38.560 and leadership studies everywhere you look. So it's a curious development and feeds into this

00:08:45.220 cultural obsession and academic obsession with leadership that I was talking about.

00:08:51.260 I want to talk about these courses. But before we do, when you've looked at

00:08:55.260 the leadership industrial complex as a whole, what do they mean by leadership exactly? Because leadership

00:09:02.600 can mean lots of different things, like there's lots of different definitions. So how is it

00:09:08.240 described in the leadership industrial complex culture?

00:09:12.680 You know, what goes along with this leadership industrial complex, of course, is intense marketing.

00:09:20.100 And to understand what leadership means to these programs, it's interesting to look at the messaging

00:09:27.500 and the marketing. So you'll find words, you know, really buzzwords like transformative, catalyst,

00:09:33.700 a change driver, unleasher. You know, you'll be empowering people across many verticals and across

00:09:42.020 many tipping points. You'll almost certainly disrupt. If I had the nickel for every time I came across the

00:09:47.880 word disrupt in my leadership research, I'd be a very rich man. So these buzzwords add to add up to the

00:09:55.920 leadership industrial complex's definition of what a leader means today. And through these courses and

00:10:02.400 through this coaching and through all this quote unquote development, they sell the message that

00:10:09.340 all these qualities and traits are perfectly teachable.

00:10:13.980 So, I mean, what skills or traits do they purport to teach would-be leaders?

00:10:18.880 You know, I don't have a problem really with purporting to teach a skill. Where it becomes

00:10:26.320 very problematic for me as a psychiatrist is where they start pretending or communicating that they

00:10:33.600 can teach things like EQ, you know, emotional intelligence, or even charisma, you know, qualities

00:10:39.840 and traits that are linked to personality. And if we know anything as mental health providers,

00:10:45.260 as psychiatrists, as psychologists, is the difficulty changing people's personalities. You know,

00:10:51.500 people's personality tends to be stubborn, not super malleable. If you want to make long-lasting

00:10:58.820 personality changes, it's a long-term commitment that involves potentially years of psychotherapy.

00:11:05.740 It's not the kind of thing that you can pick up over a boot camp or a weekend workshop. And yet,

00:11:12.440 this is the message that a lot of these trainings are selling. And this is the really misleading,

00:11:19.720 no pun intended, notion that accompanies so much of the leadership industry's offerings.

00:11:27.840 Okay. So, leadership in the leadership industrial complex, a lot of buzzwords,

00:11:32.540 you're a changemaker, catalyst, disruptor. So, it's kind of an amorphous thing. It can kind of mean

00:11:38.360 whatever you want. And because it can mean anything you want, like you can create your content that

00:11:42.820 you're teaching however you want. Let's dig into the actual content, these courses. I thought this

00:11:48.020 is really interesting. You talk about what colleges and other businesses are doing to make money on

00:11:53.720 leadership courses. You mentioned, I think you said, a $50 billion industry overall?

00:11:58.160 Yeah, it's a $50 billion industry. And it's an industry that's been fully embraced by our top

00:12:04.460 business schools, you know, entities and institutions that know a thing or two about making money. And this

00:12:11.080 has helped really transform this leadership development field into a full-blown industrial

00:12:18.100 complex. And, you know, when you check out something like Harvard's program for leadership

00:12:23.800 development, for example, you'll be surprised to see that there's an 800 number available for

00:12:30.740 applicants to call. There's an entire program advising team that's waiting to take your call.

00:12:37.060 You'll also be, you might be surprised to see that really there's no formal educational requirements

00:12:43.200 to join. There's this amorphous sort of leadership potential. That's pretty much the only requirement.

00:12:50.460 The program is advertised to people at whatever role or career stage. Again, not really just meant for

00:12:59.120 senior executives or folks already in the C-suite, but marketed as something that's much more

00:13:05.860 open and accessible than that. So the acceptance rate into it seems much higher than the 4.5% or so

00:13:16.080 that undergraduates applying for Harvard usually face. What's unquestionably exclusive though about

00:13:23.220 the program is the price tag, $52,000 for the basic four modules of blended teaching. But if you want a

00:13:31.960 lifelong Harvard email address and if you want alumni status, then you can get that for an additional

00:13:37.260 module and an additional $27,000. So, you know, strategies that to me feel very sort of marketing and

00:13:47.680 business oriented in a way that to me fits uncomfortably within the educational model. You know, another

00:13:56.540 example that I talk about in the book is Wharton. You know, Wharton is the premier, the oldest business

00:14:03.900 school in the country. And I was checking out a program they have, a nine month, mostly self-paced or

00:14:11.360 largely self-paced program called Global C-suite. And I read about it and then I, you know, wanted to close

00:14:18.420 the window. And I had this very interesting pop-up show up offering me $1,000 off the $20,000 tuition if

00:14:28.660 I hurry up and apply in the next nine days. Again, marketing gimmicks and marketing strategies that

00:14:35.640 have no place in education as I see it, yet this is what so much of the leadership industry and the

00:14:42.760 leadership educational opportunities, this is the direction they take.

00:14:46.440 Okay. So for $60,000, I could become a Harvard alum. I could put that on my CV. Yeah, that's crazy.

00:14:52.060 And then it's not just colleges that are doing this. You know, there's also many businesses that offer

00:14:56.700 leadership development courses as well.

00:14:59.380 Oh, absolutely. If Harvard and Wharton are offering these kinds of opportunities, then you can imagine the

00:15:06.000 Wild West out there and the programs with names like Leadership Express Series or a workshop for $18.99.

00:15:16.440 that, you know, promises to teach you how to become a charismatic leader. I mean, any number of such

00:15:23.320 offerings that I review in my book.

00:15:26.860 What's the content of these courses? Like what are exact, when you sit down to go through these modules,

00:15:31.420 what are you learning?

00:15:32.360 Well, a lot of the content is not research-based, certainly. There's very little by way of long-term

00:15:42.820 research results in terms of success that these programs can point to. There's also a ton of

00:15:52.340 mnemonics that I came across as I was researching. And this heavy reliance on mnemonics suggests that

00:16:00.260 leadership is easy, literally as easy as ABC. You know, one popular mnemonic is the so-called

00:16:06.360 three R's, three R's. But depending on which program or which professor of leadership or which coach

00:16:15.580 you consult, the three R's stand for different things. It could be reflections, resiliency, and relationships,

00:16:22.280 but it could also be respect, recognize, and reward, and so on and so forth. So all this suggests a very

00:16:28.720 sort of unscientific, make-it-up-as-you-go process that unfortunately takes up a lot of these offerings.

00:16:38.200 Is there any research that's been done on these leadership development programs that they actually

00:16:43.980 work, like that people who go through them come out as better leaders? And how would you even measure

00:16:48.800 that if you did research on that? Well, it's not easy to measure, which highlights the need for

00:16:55.000 good quality, large-scale, long-term research. And when you look for good quality, large-scale,

00:17:03.820 long-term research that has assessed their success, there's very, very little indeed that you can point

00:17:11.600 to. Okay. And which is, that's interesting because like, you know, businesses are probably paying for

00:17:17.900 their employees to go to these things. They don't even know if it works or not. Oh, to the tune of $50

00:17:23.720 billion. Yeah. And then what's interesting too, you talk about how this is also creeping into

00:17:28.880 middle schools and in high schools. I mean, I grew up in the nineties, late nineties, I was in high

00:17:34.760 school then. And I saw that stuff. I was involved in student council and we did this leadership

00:17:38.560 development stuff. And typically what it was like, the school district was paying some organization to

00:17:44.600 do the teaching. Yes. The leadership bug has fully infected our high school and college systems.

00:17:54.800 And this is manifested in the place that leadership now takes up in college applications,

00:18:01.640 but also it's manifested in how so many schools seem to be changing their mission statements

00:18:07.860 to emphasize leadership. Everybody wants to teach the future leaders of America. Nobody seems interested

00:18:15.640 in teaching, you know, and informing the educated citizenry of the country. And the downside of course,

00:18:22.700 of all this is the inferiority complex that it gives those who are not interested in leading,

00:18:30.080 those who have the self-awareness to acknowledge that. So they're not interested in pursuing leadership

00:18:35.620 who don't succeed at leading. There are real psychological consequences to that and a real

00:18:42.080 inferiority complex that doesn't get talked about as we send the message that all can be leaders.

00:18:49.180 And as we ignore the reality that the world also needs followers and mathematically speaking,

00:18:55.660 not everyone can be a leader.

00:18:58.920 We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

00:19:03.980 And now back to the show. So the idea that everyone can and should be a leader and that

00:19:09.680 everyone can develop into a leader with the right training is everywhere these days. And I think the

00:19:15.200 big thing we need to talk about, and you mentioned this before, is that the whole idea and what the

00:19:21.420 leadership development industry relies on is the assumption that leadership can be taught. And there

00:19:27.940 are certain skills that can be taught and people can improve on a little bit, you know, body language,

00:19:33.020 getting a little bit better with public speaking, getting better at strategy. But you talk about if you

00:19:38.440 actually look at the scientific research that's been done on leadership,

00:19:41.600 it suggests that a lot of leadership ability just comes down to inborn temperament. So what does the

00:19:49.120 research say there about leadership ability and temperament?

00:19:53.280 Yeah. So I talked earlier about how there's very little long-term, long-term high-quality research

00:20:01.060 in terms of the success of leadership training. But there's quite a bit long-term high-quality

00:20:08.900 research when it comes to people's personalities and how people's personalities evolve over time.

00:20:16.020 And what this long-term high-quality research tells us is that personality is pretty sticky. I'll just

00:20:23.920 quickly mention a couple of studies, one involving a cohort of Harvard graduates who were assessed at age 22

00:20:33.220 and again at age 67. And you can imagine, you know, all the ups and downs and all the upheaval that can

00:20:41.540 happen in a person's life over the course of four decades or so. And yet when this cohort was reassessed,

00:20:50.180 the fundamental traits in their personalities were essentially unchanged. The fingerprint,

00:20:58.100 their personality fingerprint was essentially the same. Another study looked at an even younger cohort,

00:21:06.340 students aged 6 to 12, and assessed them on 39 personality traits and re-interviewed them again 40 years

00:21:17.440 down the road. And what the researchers found was their personalities were essentially largely stable.

00:21:25.600 So this is what high-quality, long-term research from mental health and from psychology teaches us.

00:21:33.520 And yet, when you look at a lot of leadership offerings, there is this idea that we can teach you EQ

00:21:42.560 and we can do it pretty easily. Now, nobody would dispute the importance of EQ and how leaders emerge

00:21:51.200 and how leaders succeed. Up to 90% of leaders' success has been attributed to EQ when other skills and when IQ

00:22:03.520 is otherwise the same. So the importance of EQ is pretty fundamental and pretty established. But the notion

00:22:11.520 that you can teach EQ and transform EQ is highly problematic because EQ is pretty tightly linked

00:22:20.720 to personality. And what the studies I mentioned about personality show is that it's largely fixed over time.

00:22:30.240 Okay. So yeah, when we typically think of like a leader, we have this idea that he's charismatic,

00:22:35.680 they take risks, they're bold, they know how to manage people, they're detail-oriented.

00:22:41.280 And that kind of lines up with those big five personality traits, conscientiousness,

00:22:46.240 extroversion, low on neuroticism. And let's say you're a person, you're like, okay, I'm kind of

00:22:53.120 neurotic. I'm not very conscientious. I'm not a big risk taker. Can a course, a weekend course actually

00:23:01.680 move the needle on that? And the answer looks like it's probably, probably not.

00:23:05.800 The answer is probably not because personality again is largely fixed. And when psychoanalysis

00:23:12.600 tried to affect meaningful long-term personality changes, it was a years-long endeavor, not for the

00:23:22.920 commitment phobic. So to the extent that EQ is linked to personality, and we know it is,

00:23:29.880 it is not something that you can easily impart or teach.

00:23:35.000 Yeah. And this idea of can leadership be taught, this reminds me, this goes back, this is like a

00:23:39.800 couple thousand-year-old question. Plato was asking the same question. He was asking,

00:23:44.040 can virtue be taught?

00:23:45.160 Very interesting. Yes.

00:23:46.680 Yeah. And he actually tried to figure it out. He actually had this theory that yes,

00:23:50.040 virtue can be taught. If you teach people about the good, and they know the good,

00:23:54.360 they'll start conforming themselves to the good, and they'll be good leaders. That was the idea.

00:23:58.840 And then he had the chance to test it out. You got to go to Syracuse and be a teacher to this

00:24:05.480 king guy who was having lots of problems. And he was teaching him philosophy and teaching about

00:24:10.600 the forms and everything. And it ended in complete disaster. The guy did not change at all. And Plato

00:24:17.560 was like, okay, maybe this idea that I had that if you teach these philosopher kings to be

00:24:23.320 good leaders, it'll teach them the forms, they'll become good leaders, it'll work. And he actually had

00:24:27.640 to take a step back and say, ah, that's actually not going to work. We have to try something else.

00:24:33.160 Well, this is a vignette that clearly belongs in the book, Brad. Thank you for sharing that.

00:24:38.200 You know, what the Greeks were also interested in is charisma. In fact, the word charisma comes from

00:24:44.200 a Greek root that means a freely given gift, like something that God endows you with, or the gods endow

00:24:52.200 you with. And again, it's interesting how many people to this day, when they try to define

00:24:58.760 charisma, will resort to religious sort of metaphors and religious terms. And yet this hasn't

00:25:08.440 stopped us from pretending we can easily teach it in a way that makes us look like we're playing God.

00:25:15.880 Okay. So a lot of these leadership attributes that we, we think of when it comes to a good leader,

00:25:21.560 charisma, high EQ, a lot of it's based in personality. And a lot of that you, you can't

00:25:27.720 change. If you do change it, it's going to take a long time to do, and you're probably not going to

00:25:32.680 change it too much. Yes, indeed. So when companies or organizations are thinking about leadership,

00:25:38.200 should it be less about leadership development and, you know, this idea that you can develop anyone and

00:25:44.440 everyone into a leader and more about leadership finding? Like, is it better to focus on filtering

00:25:49.720 for and selecting good leaders? Should that be the strategy? You know, the subtitle of my book is

00:25:55.640 why psychology, personality and character make all the difference. And I think one shift that needs to

00:26:01.640 happen for the health of our leadership culture is for us to start paying more attention to these things

00:26:10.520 and ease up on the development, ease up on the steps and hacks and tips that that supposedly guarantee

00:26:20.520 good leadership. Basically go back to the basics and put psychology front and center where it belongs

00:26:29.240 in leadership culture. And remember that there's only so much planning and prepping and strategizing

00:26:36.760 that one can do. And some of the most meaningful and significant

00:26:42.440 leaderships that the world has seen, leadership found the leader, not the other way around.

00:26:49.480 So there's a humbling message in this for leadership culture, and it should be humbling

00:26:55.400 for the leadership industry as well. Yeah, I think that's something I've taken away as I've studied.

00:27:00.760 I've read a lot of biographies of great leaders. And one thing I've discovered is what made them great

00:27:06.280 leaders is like, yeah, they rose up to the occasion, like the leadership found them.

00:27:10.600 And they leaned into their unique personality. They weren't trying to conform themselves to this

00:27:15.880 ideal leader, right? That's charismatic and bold and visionary. And even guys who weren't that,

00:27:24.360 like they were still good leaders. Like, I mean, here's an example, Patton and Eisenhower.

00:27:29.160 They had kind of different personalities. Patton's very bombastic, led from the front,

00:27:33.880 was very flamboyant. And that worked for him. He leaned into that. And Eisenhower was more of a, 0.55

00:27:39.320 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,

00:27:48.200 American football coaches coach. You have some coaches who are very, you know, just high energy,

00:27:52.760 just on the sidelines, rah, rah, rah. And then you have those coaches who just, you know,

00:27:57.640 arms folded, never say a word and they're winning football coaches.

00:28:02.440 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

00:31:46.520 advance their career?

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

00:32:40.840 to leave us with unimpressive leaders.

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.

00:33:57.320 Thank you very much.

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.

00:34:12.440 We delve deeper into this topic.

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 artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that

00:34:28.900 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't done

00:34:32.160 this already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give you a podcast or Spotify. It helps out

00:34:35.740 a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend

00:34:39.260 or fan member you think we're something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support.

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

00:34:47.500 into action.

The Art of Manliness - October 14, 2024

The Problems With the Cult of Leadership

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript