1 February 2006

A major conference on leadership is to be held in July this year at the University of Surrey at which  I have been invited to give the keynote speech.

My hope is that it will be a milestone on the way ahead that I have signposted in previous monthly newsletters. Essentially, that way is to establish what we (I am using the global 'we') really know about leadership and leadership development, with our grounds for knowing it. The corollary, of course, is that we shall then know what we do not know. The latter territory, the land to be explored, is the necessary condition for any meaningful and effective research, be it 'pure' or 'applied'. Both my recent books - How To Grow Leaders and Effective Leadership Development - have staked what I believe are our legitimate claims to knowledge.  I could be proved wrong, but it hasn't happened yet.  

One of our big problems is the sociology of the academic profession, the field in which I planted the seed of the new discipline of Leadership Studies as long ago as 1979. Although it is gratifying to see so many green shoots now shooting up - notably at Exeter and Lancaster Universities - the strangling presence of the weeds of academia are alarming. Will Leadership Studies survive?  

One of the real disappointments in the global context is the fact that the academics who showed an early interest in this field have ceased to make any contribution to the advancement of knowledge in Leadership Studies. Indeed as a species they are now nearly extinct. There are two reasons. First, they never asked themselves the simple question, what do we know and what do we now know? So they ended up chasing their tails. Secondly, they followed the dollar by focusing exclusively on leadership at the top of business corporations (see Harvard Business Review). In so doing they transformed Leadership Studies in its early form into the massive and profitable Leadership Industry. That business has made many gurus wealthy, but it produced nothing but intellectual confusion. We need now to renew our quest for truth. For truth is the only sure foundation of teaching and learning in the art of leadershi

Quotable Quotes
  'Our business is infested by idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.'

David Ogilvy, one of the great marketing communicators of the 20th century

 'He that would have pure water must go to the fountain-head'
Italian proverb

'For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think... We want more
thinking about the importance of things already known'
Sir Walter Moberley, a former vice-chancellor of Cambridge University