MythBusters?

Welcome back and may 2017 bring you the very best of success in all facets of your life!  Consider engaging a Coach to get you there faster.  (As marketing plugs go, where did that land on the subtlety scale?)

Over the holidays I did a bit of reading around “Leadership Myths”.  My dictionary notes that myths are “useful for what [they] reveal of the culture of the peoples … among whom [they] are current.”  One of the things that struck me in my readings was the invariable “cut and dried” certainty of the writers.  I noticed that the writers also tend to repeat each other a lot.

I’ve been around organizational leadership for a lot of years.  Maybe you have too.  One of the things that I have learned is that while there are true and enduring principles of leadership, their application is incredibly situation-dependent.  So, I get very suspicious of anyone who says things like “a leader doesn’t take control”.  Really?  I’m not sure that a first-responder Incident Commander would agree.

So, over the next weeks I’m going to look at ten “leadership myths” that have been thoroughly lambasted in the last few years by academic and business writers.  Are they truly “myths” or are they truths which just happen to be unpopular currently?  Or, like many ancient myths, do they actually have a grain of truth at their core?

My earnest hope is to spark a conversation for our mutual learning.  You may disagree vehemently with me.  You may have examples from your own experience that you want to share.  Whatever the case may be, let’s talk about it!