The Illusion of Leadership

If you want to understand leadership, you might look to find a leader to observe. And if you want to learn leadership you might find a leader who will mentor you. Both approaches may seem perfectly sensible, but do they actually make sense? They might. You may find what you need —or you might discover what you find to be an illusion. How would you know the difference? We might feel that we know leadership when we see it, but we need to first know what we are looking for.

How do you know whether what you are observing is real, meaning fully competent leadership or simply the illusion of leadership? Leadership is often confused for a position someone holds and there are plenty of leaders that don’t know the first thing about leadership. 

If you consider that competence in anything does not exist in the absence of meaningful accomplishment, leaders ought to be judged on their accomplishments rather than their deeds – much less by their titles. Leadership is a role to be performed and always has consequences, good or bad. Leadership exists in our performance.

There are designated or self-appointed leaders in every walk of life, but no requirement that they understand or exhibit real leadership or that they perform competently in their roles. Ineffectual leaders are simply regarded as “bad” yet we accept that bad leaders are still leaders. In fact we tolerate poor leadership as a consequence for simply not having good leaders. The problem isn’t the leader. It is the absence of competent leadership and there are very real consequences of incompetence.

Disconnecting the competencies that define leadership from leaders themselves is like steering a boat by controlling the tiller when the rudder has broken off. There may be an illusion of control, but if you are heading towards trouble there is no turning away. Leaders may look like they are in charge – but it is their leadership that actually steers the ship.

“Much of the dysfunction and incompetence we endure in the world is the result of rudderless leadership.”

Real leadership has nothing to do with one’s position in an organization or status in life. Leaders may be born, but leadership must be learned (and in most cases earned) – just as we discovered in Machiavelli’s “The Prince” where he describes how those who rise to power by their virtue rather than luck will struggle more to but ultimately also be more secure in their leadership. The late British broadcaster, author and Machiavelli scholar, Antony Jay, explains in Machiavelli and Management, “The only training for leadership is leadership.“ Leadership might be something one can learn, but cannot be taught.

Leadership is learned inside out, it’s who you are that people experience in what you do. And it is developed outside in: no one is a leader unless those who you lead recognize you as one.

There is a Lot of Talk About Leadership. And a Lot Less Understanding of What Leadership Is.

We need to start with a working definition of leadership. Most recognized dictionaries describe leadership simply as the capacity or ability to lead. Like many definitions, it is entirely unhelpful without some greater context. If you are looking to learn about leadership through simple definitions you will likely be disappointed – or worse, disappoint those who might be looking to you for leadership.

There is no shortage of pundits, philosophers, gurus and multitudes of authors (there are tens of thousands of books available today written on the topic of leadership) who have expanded the definition of leadership to suit all sorts of theories and very often their own agendas. This is particularly the case those who make their livings by teaching leadership or selling books, products or programs promising to do so.

These expanded definitions tend to describe the appearances of leadership – but fail to speak to the consequences of leadership. Isn’t leadership all about what it accomplishes? Appearances are apt to be illusions, while consequences are more likely to be real and measurable.

“It is not what leaders do that counts; it is what they accomplish.”

I prefer the definition offered by Dr. Lee Thayer – the author of “Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing” and several dozen other books of relevant insight and concepts regarding all matters of life and leadership. At a leadership thought summit earlier this year, he proffered the following more holistic and entirely pragmatic definition:

“Leadership has to do with altering the destiny (the course, the trajectory) of things – whether a feeling or a habit, a person (you), a conversation, a meeting, a part or the whole of an organization, a society or the species, or a field of endeavor (like art or leadership or sports).”

Thayer describes leadership as a performing art. It is certainly not a matter of science. He suggests that leadership only exists in an individual’s or an organization’s measurable performance, and that “performance is the only measurement of performance.” All performance has consequences (good or bad) and we can both measure and judge performance purely on results.

Some aspects of a leader’s results, or the consequences of their leadership might be assessed quantitatively and qualitatively, yielding to some scientific rigor. Profits rise and fall. Battles are won or lost. But even these results tend to be ambiguous in terms of their root cause. It may seem difficult to separate out the leader’s success from that of the people or organization they lead, but it is harder to imagine a situation where it is not the organization that makes the leader successful as opposed to the other way around. 

So while the results might be quantitatively obvious, the actions that cause them are often unclear. Is it possible to have a great leader of a failed effort? History doesn’t seem to think so. It may seem harsh to then consider that leaders are blamed for the failures of what they lead, but great, fully competent leaders do not require history to make any adjustments there. They take responsibility for failing to make others successful, as they should.

Any time that a leader takes credit for the successful performance of the organization we are likely witnessing an illusion rather than competent leadership. Leaders who understand their role is to make what is possible necessary, and what is necessary possible recognize that leadership is transformational when it is catalytic.

Being something that makes something happen is different than being whatever is happening. A catalyst might be valuable, even necessary, but it is never part of the final product. The catalyst always drops out when its function is complete – just as the leader is no longer needed once those and what they lead are able to accomplish on their own what their role in the process dictates they must.

It can well be argued that science does not exist in the absence of art.

Even when results observed are purely evidence-based, scientists must still trust their instruments and their methods. And it is often when they don’t that their curiosity leads to experimentation that yields real discovery. Science is as much about finding the right questions as it is finding the right answers. Revisiting the words of Antony Jay, once again, “The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.”

When we attempt to apply science to art, however, we find enormous limitations. We can scientifically analyze a great painting, for example, and determine the spectral color balance, use x-ray to measure the depth of the paint, weigh the quantity of the materials used and even carbon-date the work to determine its authenticity. We can separate the “art” from the mass and the medium, but we cannot assess the quality of the art by that mass. In other words, the only measure of performance is performance, as Dr. Thayer suggests.

Performing leadership is actually a lot like performing magic. There may (or may not be) some carefully measured science behind a magic trick, but the result is always an illusion. The world-renowned master illusionists Penn and Teller make a clear distinction between magic and illusion.

Magic is the art of making the audience suspend their disbelief in order to mesmerize them by simply and completely fooling them. Just like the art of magic, the art of leadership is performed in front of an audience of followers and their individual and collective beliefs. The difference is that magic is actually easily explained by viewing behind the scenes, while leadership is not. But both take tremendous dedication and practice to pull off well, but leadership still remains much more mysterious and elusive.

A big part of Penn and Teller's act is to demystify their illusions by demonstrating how their tricks are performed. The result of doing so is often as or even more entertaining than the illusion itself. When they pull away the screen and show us how it is done, what we see is careful preparation, extreme cleverness, enormous talent and flawless execution. This level of competence is truly extraordinary.

Competent leadership also requires preparation, wits, talent and execution. But in the absence of these qualities it is the leadership itself that is an illusion. We expect leadership from those who assume the power and authority of their titles or positions and may be fooled to believe that we see something that is just not there.

Magic works because we often see what we expect or want to see. Science supports this, suggesting that we actually “see” very little in our field of vision and build most of what we experience by filling in our mental canvas with what our past experience informs should be there.

We have seen so many stop signs that our minds can create them from memory. And we fail to see what we do not expect. There is an often cited video, created by university researchers that demonstrates the same phenomena in reverse. Nearly all viewers fail to notice a person in a gorilla suit parading back and forth through a basketball court during what appears to be an ordinary game with typical players – when viewers are simply asked to count how many times the players pass the ball. 

When we carefully study the details of what is happening in front of our eyes – we readily and easily discover things we have missed.

So we do we “miss” about leadership – or imagine is there and is missing?

Where you might run into your first problem is in the assumption that a leader necessarily demonstrates leadership. As I discussed earlier, this is poor assumption to make. The second problem is that, even provided any leader does demonstrate leadership, how do you know whether it is good or bad?

As loathed as the Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini was, people joke that under his tyranny at least the trains ran on time. Many scholars agree that Hitler was a great leader, though the same scholars would also agree that his maniacal and murderous obsessions did nothing to better the world.

Being liked or reviled suggests nothing of competent leadership, nor can we properly assess leadership in either the future or present tense.

Leadership is about results and consequences that can only be fully measured in the aftermath.

History doesn’t write itself, and historians tend to revise their view of the past based on how those events come to impact the present. It is not a matter of making the ends justify the means, it is that our view is always naturally colored by consequences – which evolve over time.

Leadership is qualitative on a scale that ranges from dangerously awful to simply ineffective to transformationally brilliant. Leaders themselves range from those who lack the virtues and competence of even basic leadership and provide none whatsoever, to those who lead brilliantly without even being noticed.

Leadership virtuosity is a rare level of performance. Like any virtuoso performer, the illusion is in how they might make what they do look easy. It is not. And their accomplishments are undeniable.

We may marvel at the ways technology brings benefits to our everyday life that were only recently unimaginable. We feel comfort in the advancements in things like medicine that can restore our failing health or things that protect us from enemies that might seek to destroy our way. 

Yet the modern world we have created is also laden with systemic dysfunction and an increasing degree of general incompetence that we tolerate and choose accept to be today’s status quo. The world begs for the kind of leadership that can raise the competence of people and the performance of organizations. And we suffer at the hands of those whose leadership is just an illusion.

We might be gulled into following such leaders blindly out of a sense of duty to fashion and group think. Or we may want to be fooled just so we can remain captive by the status quo and in our desires to feel safe and coddled in our comfort zones.

But being a fool to fashion and enjoying the sense of safety we imagine when we lock ourselves away in our comfort zones are just products of illusions. It takes competent leadership to shine the light on the real levels of human potential society is capable of realizing.

It requires more than the illusion of leadership to raise-up society to meet the challenges we face today and anticipate the challenges of tomorrow. It will take competent leadership to imagine and create a better future.

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Phil Liebman is the CEO and founder of ALPS Leadership and a Vistage Chair since 2005. He earned his Master of Leadership Arts and Sciences at The Thayer Institute - studying High-Performance Organizations and Competent Leadership under Dr. Lee Thayer. You can learn more about what it takes to become a more effective leader and building and growing sustainable high-performance organizations by visiting ALPS Leadership at www.ALPSLeadership.com