Professionalizing Leadership - Interview of Barbara Kellerman

Barbara Kellerman's latest book, Professionalizing Leadership (2018), is a critique and challenge to those who are engaged in teaching and cultivating leadership of all types. I was privileged to be asked to interview Kellerman by the International Leadership Association and the transcript of the conversation is now available. The interview offers perspective on what drew her to write the book in the first place. It summarizes many of the points she makes in the book but pushes beyond that. At the core of the book and the interview is the need for leadership educators in all sectors to get serious about what they are doing. The stakes are very high and the fact that there are few documentable positive outcomes from over 40 years of effort is sobering. While deploring the fact that many resources have been squandered, she also says that the resources now dedicated to leadership learning can be redirected to focus on issues that matter - and it will matter a great deal for the future of all.