Leadership is overprescribed

In one widely cited interview, Professor Henry Mintzberg prescribed a stern dosage control of leadership for the societal ailments of this century. Leadership is a strong medicine; addictive and devastating in overdose. Nevertheless, it keeps pumping through social networks. Some days, half of my LinkedIn updates are littered with motivational quotes and pictures about leadership. Appreciation of leadership is injected into the veins of society through the education system and countless training and development programs. I can see that for many people seeking to advance their career or make the first step, it appears that a leadership position is the only measure of success. However, I recently witnessed an illustration of where it leads.

Not long ago on the other side of the world, I met a fellow expat – a Canadian engineer of about same age. We spoke about, among other things, the learning of language and cultural exposure.  He explained how he learned some strong lexicon in Khaliji dialect. The expats from Canada had made an amateur hockey team (of course!) and played against the local national hockey team. Indeed, there is a National Ice Hockey Team in the country that looks and feels like the inside of a pizza oven for half a year. Why not? All sports are highly regarded and kindled in the nation. There are plenty of youth to play every kind of sport and they can definitely afford the best artificial ice facility the world can offer. Are the players any good? Yes. Take it from the Canadian: each one is exceptionally fast and strong. How about the finesse, the specific skills of handling the pack, turning, and spinning? Individually each one is talented, motivated and highly skilled in hockey. They even use Canadian methodic and learn every trick in the book to perfection. Yet, the strong lexicon came to play when they started to lose. How can a national team of select players in their 20’s lose to 50-year old amateurs?  Very simple: they were all trained and motivated to be a leader in a highly competitive environment. Each one knows they can either be a leader or a loser. Each one aspires to win and

does everything possible (that is allowed by the rules or overlooked by the referee). Each one wants to score the goal. Missing the goal means losing. No matter who scores, your team or the opponent, it’s still losing if you don’t get the credit. With this mindset, who would ever pass the puck? Even passing to a fellow team member standing in front of the empty goal would feel like loss. As a result, each member of that national team fights ten opponents every second in the game. The five are of the opposite team, plus the goalkeeper, and four competitors of their own team. In the same game, amateur Canadian expats play six against one at any time.  

Unfortunately, the signs of leadership overdose extend far beyond the hockey team of a small country with no naturally occurring ice. As a hiring manager, I used the candidate evaluation forms with “leadership skills and abilities” passed from the HR. My most valuable candidates had nothing in this space – for most of them it was simply irrelevant. Still worse, leadership quality is considered one-dimensional and associated with management. When I go through an interview myself I often see that the recruiters and hiring managers don’t understand the difference. They keep asking how many people I had reporting to me and can’t hide disappointment when they see no steady progress from a few to a few hundred in twenty five years. In fact, leadership and management are two distinctly different roles in a team and may or may not be handled by the same person. Leadership has dimensions. Large tasks require diverse teams and multiple leaders in different dimensions of complexity. In my past assignments, sometimes I felt my colleagues did not get the thought leadership credit they deserved when they had no one reporting to them. The symptoms are multiple and diverse, but they all manifest the same underlying diagnosis: the overdose of leadership appreciation. In a bad hockey team, everyone is fiercely competitive and aspires to be a leader and there is only one goal for all. In other bad teams, leadership is strictly associated with management and individual goals are incented better than collective. In both cases, they have swallowed more leadership than could be metabolized. This potent substance must be prescribed and administered in moderation.