Gary Hamel on "The Leadership Training Fallacy"

I'm at the Conscious Capitalism conference in Austin this week. 

It was organized by Whole Food's founder and CEO, John Mackey.  There are a cavalcade of thought leader gurus here, and one of them is Gary Hamel.  He wrote the fabulous book, Leading The Revolution.   

One of his remarks really struck me:  "This country was founded by geniuses and mostly run by idiots. Conversely, many companies are started by idiots [with good timing].  What does this mean?  We spend much time and money training employees to become leaders and not enough time teaching them to be successful with crummy leadership in place." 

Wow.  If you step back and think of it, that is pretty deep.  Have you ever worked at a company with mediocre leaders, but good products?  If you, and your coworkers, knew how to succeed despite them, you are saving the company!  

Why would mediocre leaders still be in place?  Family run companies, organizational momentum, charisma, the list of reasons is endless.  Hamel's right, though.  I've never heard of training for success in a low quality leadership environment.  Do you have any suggestions?  

Comments

[Howard Cox]

Tim,

This is the most frequent question I receive on the speaking circuit. It is both a difficult question and a relevant one as many of us work in a less than optimal work environment.

I always recommend Stephen Covey’s 8th Habit:

http://www.amazon.com/8th-Habit-Effectiveness-Greatness/dp/0684846659/ref=ed_oe_h

& John Maxwell’s 360 Degree Leader:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785260927/bookstorenow600-20

I will check out Gary Hamel’s book.

Thanks for the tip and leading this discussion!

Howard

[Theresa Quintanilla]

At Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, they used to teach employees a course called Managing Up which was designed to help younger employees see positive ways to deal with a boss who 'doesn't get it.'

My own experience is that when an entire management layer is clueless, the best employees work harder to exemplify their discipline--marketing, finance, hr--and develop a few achievements in spite of their environment. These always make good war stories!

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[Bob McGannon]

Hi Tim,

We see this very often in my small company and we are trying to help. We have a 2 day leadership course we call "Intelligent Disobedience: The Difference Between Good and Great Leaders" where we address this issue quite often. The approaches we discuss work in many organizations, but not in all as the culture of "crummy leadership" is sometimes quite pervasive! But, we take heart in the fact that we are trying to help!

I'm looking forward to seeing if other suggestions are out there as well.

[KRIS]

Hi Tim

Have you ever read "Launching a Leadership Revolution from Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward. If not you will enjoy!!

[John Agno]

Malcolm Gladwell writes in this week's The New Yorker magazine that:

Success was (and still is) seen as a matter of capitalizing on socioeconomic advantage, not compensating for disadvantage.

In order to do business at the highest levels, it really helps to have been a powerbroker's classmate at Yale.

Yet, the underprivileged minority has none of those advantages or constraints of high society. The minority is free to keep social and financial considerations separate. He can call a bad debt a bad debt, or a bad customer a bad customer, without worrying about the social implications of his honesty. You can't tell the chairman of a FORTUNE 500 company that he's an idiot if you were his classmate at Yale. That is why truthtelling is easier from a position of cultural distance.