The Moronization of Leadership Education

Years ago, Carl Icahn stated that many of the companies he took over were being run by morons. He maintained that top leaders liked to surround themselves with people less talented to minimize threats of a coup. They were often replaced by one of their less talented direct reports as they retired or moved on, who in turn surrounded themselves with people even less capable. After four or five iterations of successively less capable people moving into top spots, Icahn observed that many senior leaders could say all the right things but did not have a clue on how to make any of it happen.

?

Several things have happened over the past year which causes me to believe that something along the same lines is happening with leadership education in academia. Although there has been an explosion of leadership courses, minors, and majors in higher education over the past 20 years, what is being taught and who is doing the teaching may be missing the mark. This is unfortunate, as college courses are often a person’s first opportunity to systematically learn about leadership. The lessons learned in these courses may stick for life, so it is critically important that academics get it right. But do they? The following examples cause me to worry.

?

Textbook Reviews. I am a co-author of what has been one of the top selling leadership textbooks for the past 30 years, and every three years we ask college professors to provide feedback on the 18 chapters in our book. We ask whether our content is covered in their courses, what they like and don’t like, what is missing, and suggestions for improvement for our chapters. Some of these six professors are teach leadership courses having over 1,000 students each year, and here are some intriguing results:

·?????? About half of the professors covered concepts such as what is leadership, developing as a leader, ethics, power and influence, leader traits, leader behaviors, contingency theories of leadership, and leadership and change. The other professors did not cover these topics in their courses.

·?????? Most of the professors did not cover follower motivation, satisfaction, engagement, performance, potential, groups and teams, situational factors affecting leadership, or the dark side of leadership.

·?????? None of professors’ courses covered critical leadership skills, such as how to manage stress, set goals, provide feedback, diagnose performance problems, or build teams.

Although this a small sample, a fair question to ask is: What exactly are professors teaching in their undergraduate and graduate leadership courses? A lot of relevant content seems missing from their courses, and as a result students may be ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of leadership after graduation.

?

Master’s in Organizational Leadership. A few years back my daughter completed her Master’s degree from a prestigious university. We would talk two to three times a week to review the course content, activities, and assignments while she was completing her degree. I loved these conversations, as it was a great way to connect with my daughter and discuss the relevant research surrounding what she was learning, how concepts were interconnected, how they played out in the real world, and their implications for being an effective leader. Two things that shocked me about these conversations was the shallow understanding of the concepts and the lack of real-life experience of the professors. Her professors did not have a good grasp of the relevant literature and could not think critically about what they were teaching. Likewise, they had no real-world leadership experience and could not explain how the concepts played out in the workplace. My daughter has developed a well-tuned b.s. detector when it comes to leadership, although I am not sure what role her Master’s program played in this regard.

?

Leadership Educators. A few months ago, there was a conference for new educators wanting to learn how to teach undergraduate and graduate leadership programs. It was a great idea and noble cause. I offered to help facilitate the conference, as it was taking place less than 15 miles from my home, and I had written and sold many more college textbooks and trained more real leaders than the rest of the staff combined. But not being part of cool club, my offer was declined. Maybe this was a good call, as I could have made my fellow faculty uncomfortable given my earlier comments. The unfortunate consequence is that by not having an external perspective, the problems with what and who is teaching college students about leadership only gets perpetuated.

?

To be fair, there are outstanding educators teaching courses on leadership. I would go to any leadership course taught by Ron Riggio, Susan Murphy, Bob Hogan, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Bob Sutton, Rich Hughes, Robert Ginnett, Andrew Munro, Dan Freschi, Rick Lochner, Rob Kaiser, or any of the United States service academies, which place a premium on the research and application of leadership. But I fear that many of those teaching leadership at the undergraduate and graduate level neither have a good handle on the leadership research nor how to apply what we’ve learned to the real world. Academic freedom allows these same professors the latitude to choose what concepts to cover and how teach leadership. Leadership education is an area where colleges and universities could address some of the challenges facing organizations and avoid getting criticized for failing to prepare graduates for real world positions. This would in entail taking a more disciplined approach to leadership education, which most higher education institutions seem loathe to do.

?

?

?

Gordon Curphy is a former college professor who specializes in C-suite succession planning, executive coaching, top team facilitation, scaling effective teamwork, and leadership development. He has developed several successful commercially published leadership and team assessments; coached 200 C-suite executives; worked with over 600 top teams; trained 20,000 leaders; and sold over 100,000 books, chapters, and articles on leadership and teams. You can find more about Gordon’s leadership books and consulting services at:www.curphyleadershipsolutions.com and