Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time

I had a chance to read an advance copy of this book (and in full disclosure, I endorsed it). This is one of the most important books on leadership that has come out the last decade. Professor Pfeffer of the Stanford Business School is bringing up a central issue on the topic of leadership: how do we know what is effective leadership from practices that aren't? He argues that the entire "leadership industry" as he calls it—management thinkers, executive coaches, CEOs, consultants, executive search firms—often gets it wrong. The title of the first chapter “Why inspiration and fables cause problems and fix nothing” tells you where this book is going. It’s a fascinating read, whether you agree or disagree with Pfeffer's arguments. It gets more provocative: We wish for modest leaders, but many of the best aren’t; we wish that leaders are “authentic” but again many good ones aren’t all the time; and leaders put themselves first (chapter title: Why leaders “eat” first). Backed by research, Pfeffer challenges key conventional wisdoms about leadership. If you’re in the “leadership industry,” this is a must read. If you’re being led by someone, then chapter seven (“Take care of yourself”) is a must read.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is one of those writers on business issues whose books one should not overlook. His books, The Knowing-Doing Gap, and Power, rank high among business books that must be read. This book is a reflection on a serious problem that is very poorly addressed. There are “too many leadership failures, too many career derailments, and too many toxic workplaces… and there is an almost unimaginably vast, list of leadership catastrophes.” Pfeffer asserts. He brings evidence to show that workplaces around the world are, for the most part “filled with dissatisfied, disengaged employees who do not trust their leaders” and that the leaders themselves are failing at ever increasing speed “in part because they are unprepared for the realities of organizational life.” Some 24% of surveyed employees are actively disengaged! Employees are very unhappy with their leaders: with fully 35 percent of U.S. employees reported that they would be prepared to forfeit pay raises just to see their managers fired! Contrast this with the finding by McKinsey that U.S. companies spend about $14 billion annually on leadership development, (that is some R 140 thousand million – even before our currency tanked!) and yet so many workplaces are staffed by disengaged, disaffected, and dissatisfied employees. The leadership industry in most countries is enormous and still growing. It “has failed over its roughly forty-year history to in any major, meaningful, measurable way improve the human condition, (despite) the thousands of leadership books, talks, blogs, classes, and leadership-development programs seeking to make leaders more effective.” Pfeffer notes. This book is Pfeffer’s attempt to explain why so many leaders fail. He draws on solid argument and evidence, as well as well recognized psychological processes to explain this frightful state. “Around the turn of the twentieth century, medical practice and medical education in America were pretty dismal. People were hawking untested and unproven “cures,” dependent more on their slickness and persuasiveness than on the actual science or medical efficacy of what they were pushing,” Pfeffer explains. When this became clear to the medical authorities, they closed 1/3 of the medical schools, began the licensing of doctors and the regulation of the medical profession. This has greatly increased the efficacy of medicines and the practice of doctors. The leadership industry, in its current state “also has its share of quacks and sham artists who sell promises and stories, some true, some not, but all of them inspirational and comfortable, with not much follow-up to see what really does work and what doesn’t,” Pfeffer notes. The parallels between these two industries are striking. Medicine is research-based and adapts and evolves with the growth of peer reviewed evidence. New medicines and techniques are constantly reviewed and revised based on their efficacy. In contrast, the leadership industry lacks this rigour. It does not have clear criteria by which to measure what makes a better leader. “Performance? And if so, over what time period and using what metrics? Holding on to your job as a leader? Obtaining the highest-possible salary for yourself? Moving on to a more prestigious position in another company as quickly as possible? Increasing employee engagement and reducing turnover?” Pfeffer asks. What specific workplace conditions should leaders be held accountable for improving? Why don’t our leadership programmes work? Consider the last one you attended and see how many of these more common attributes were present. “Not only do many of the leadership industry’s participants have no particular qualifications or training germane to their activities, but many also seem to possess little of the interest or intellectual curiosity that would cause them to do the work required to read and learn so as to build their expertise,” Pfeffer asserts. Instead, the leadership development is filled with the retelling of myths and inspiring stories that are “worse than useless for creating change.” There are a number of commonly accepted leadership traits that are taken as almost self-evident truths. These include humility, truth telling, modesty, authenticity and so forth. Pffefer debunks each with clarity and precision, and a single purpose: if we have been teaching that great leaders require these traits and they are not the traits required, that alone is a meaningful contribution to what doesn’t work, even if not yet, what does work. Take the need for authenticity, expressing what you really feel, doing what your feel is right, always and under all circumstances. This is often held up as the mark of a great leader. Pfeffer uses the example of Alison Davis-Blake, Dean of the Business School at the University of Michigan to illustrate his view. Within her first two years, she hired 21 new faculty members, increased undergraduate student numbers by 20%, introduced new master’s programmes, and facilitated raising $100 million for the business school. For any Dean to achieve this, they require qualities much the opposite of Davis-Blake’s introversion and a reluctance to speak. Quite the opposite of “authenticity”, leaders in the real world must be able to put on a show. It would be an error to foster being authentic as a desirable leadership trait. Setting unrealistic expectations for leaders must be a contributor to leadership failure. No, humility is not what make for leaders who deliver, nor is modesty, truth telling, servant-style leadership, and more, Pfeffer argues with cogency and evidence. Leadership BS was written to cause people to “rethink, to reconceptualize, and to reorient their behaviors concerning the important topic of leadership… it encourages everyone to finally stop accepting sugar-laced but toxic potions as cures.” Pfeffer’s call for accurate and comprehensive data, and development back-up by standards and measurements, that are made visible through charts, has the potential to do for leadership what it did for medicine. Readability Light -+--- Serious Insights High +---- Low Practical High ----+ Low Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy

I'd give it 6 stars had they been available. Iconoclastic analysis delivered with a style reminiscent of Lewis Lapham. I reviewed it on my KHIT.org blog, where I rant a lot on "leadership" issues in the fractious health care space (an arena rife with dystopian, Machiavellian BS). After I finished I bought my wife a hardcopy for her convenience. She's a C-Suite exec at the top of her game, an adroit survivor of the shark-infested corporate waters, a woman Corporate Director of Quality in a construction and engineering firm. She probably could have written this book. Midway through I recall thinking "uh-oh, are we gonna go all Hoover Institute here?" No. In the end, the book is hardly ideological. It's actually quite balance and humane. My only minor reservation is the author's claim that the book is "scientific." Citing myriad studies is a good and necessary thing. Whether this rises in the aggregate to scientific "meta-analysis" is another matter. The findings are "qualitative" to a great degree, and the risks of "confirmation bias" and "publication bias" remain a potentially nagging question. Still, there are myriad eye-rolling examples of irony, paradox, Dlibert-Zone wrong-headedness and, well, BS. I recall thinking of the joke about DC. It applies to corporate environments as well. "If you want a friend (in the workplace), get a dog." All of the cherubic chatter about the humanistic-value leadership "oughts," corporate cultures remain largely transactional, future-oriented, and carnivorous. No one gives a flip about what you've accomplished. What matters is the assessment of your future value. And notwithstanding that you may be in a collegial "Just Culture" today, it will likely not remain so. Shorter Pfeffer: "Keep Your Ear to the Ground, and Your Powder Dry."

Yes, the leadership industry is faked. So what? What are we leaders supposed to do? The book offers not that much advice after somewhat artificially probing the leadership fallacies. I was eager to get to the final chapter where I was expecting advices to counter attack all leadership B.S. The advices are common sense and very few in quantity and poor in quality.

Takeaways from reading the book: - Page 4: Research by Barbara Kellerman, Harvard's Kennedy school, shows that in the past 40 years, the leadership industry has failed to improve the human condition in any major, meaningful, measurable way. - Page 11: Studies show that 40% experience bullying at work. Bullying leads to stress and has negative effects on both physical and mental health.

Scary in the reality of what we are doing isn't working, sad that looking after #1 is the message to take away.

This is one of the most important books on leadership I have read and like many of you reading this I have read a lot. I found myself saying repeatedly "you know all this"..."you've experienced that"..."you've made that mistake too"..."if only I'd worked this out at that time and responded in that way.." This morning just as I write this review I see a piece published by Gail McGovern, CEO of the US Red Cross, "What Corporate America can learn from non-profits" again full of the "usual leadership b.s. stuff." I almost forgot that this is the same organisation who employed aggressive legal tactics in responding to freedom of information requests as to how it spends the publics' donations. It is a competitive world we live in - that's just basic human nature and it will always be so. That is why this book is essential reading for todays aspiring leadership candidates and hopefully for older dogs like myself it is not too late to learn! I only wish I had it twenty years ago starting my career.

Hard facts, lots of references, well based rational to every affirmation and - if you wish - hints of Machiavellianism? - or just taking the role of being the leadership industry's Cassandra?; I'd better leave that to your judgment. Anyway, a refreshing point of view and a much needed polemist in the face of so much wishful thinking we see every day with regards to this topic.