Two Testy Questions

I’m back doing this blog after a lapse of just over a year. What follows is a departure from the venue I’d established, as you will see. I’m doing a book which threatens to cross a couple of boundaries, and I’m seeking reactions. The book, Reading the Room, redefines what leadership is all about. In it, I raise some issues that are a challenge to the publisher and probably to some readers as well. In the first, I take the position that those I call behavioral consultants (those who deal with the behavioral rather than the strategic side of consulting) should, with proper training, be free to elicit from leaders what I call their Childhood Stories of Imperfect Love. Some would say that I’m crossing the boundary into the territory occupied by therapists. I take this position because (a) these stories are already in the room when the stakes are raised for leaders, and (b) that many behavioral consultants are already entering this territory behind closed doors but not advertising that they are doing so.

The second issue is just as tender, and could arouse objection. I am recommending that leaders be required to develop and articulate their own leadership model. It occurs to me that lawyers must pass the bar, surgeons go to medical school for an MD and more schooling for a specialty—why, then, should leaders not do something similar? Why not, to be a little facetious, require them to get a “PhD in Leading”? In any case, why should they not develop a model which gets tested in action, rather than simply setting them free after they complete a stint in business school, which may offer courses in leadership, but does not prepare leaders for what they do in the real world.

I would be interested in thoughts about these two issues.