Leadership courses pump up the attributes of the leader more than the values, results and net economic value add they provided. Typical examples are:

• "leaders have a charismatic personality"
• "leaders give a sense of urgency"
• "leaders point to a 3rd party or outside threat"
• "leaders set a global benchmark"
• "leaders demonstrate a purpose or a core value"
• "leaders convince [their followers] their claim to a vision of long-term", etc.

How about, for once, considering that the leaders that succeeded actually meant it, rather than acted it out? I mean, read the examples above again, and ask yourself: don't they give you a sense that those attributes can be faked? Now consider:

• "leaders have demonstrated results that convince people of their ability to decide for them"
• "people tend to get convinced that a leader is indeed good for them"
• "people actually [willingly] subordinate their control in the hands of the leader"
• "people trust a leader to provide them a better direction, whether they've themselves done the right thing or not"
• "people don't want to know everything, they want to just have everything, and leader only succeeds by filling the gap successfully"
• "leaders not only have the attributes to convince people, they have the attributes to not break their trust by delivering the promised results in return for the tiny parts their followers turnaround as part of their promise"
• "leaders deal with the inventory of people like sheperds deal with the livestock of sheep that wants to graze freely and happily while sheperd deals with the strategy for the wolf and finding safe lands with lush greenery - say, in exchange for wool"
• "leaders really believe they can do it, they earnestly want to do it, and most of all spend a great deal of time questioning and cross-examining themselves about their relationship to everything else that goes around them"
• "leaders tend to take the blame and give the credit to their people's efforts, because they feel that way - not because it is a great PR technique that can win hearts", etc.

This topic was sponsored by the inefficiency of management literature and analysis that seems to approach the problem "rationally", "statistically" and "logically" -- but analyze only the skin or periphery of the issue. They touch the "attributes of the leader" in vacuum, but leave out the "connection of the leader to everything else". Specifically, "a leader is passionate" is an attribute that leaves out the reasons why he/she believes in those values, how strongly, how much of it is driven to what other people consider "value", how their passionate disposition "connects" with others, and how their consistency provides clear path of alignment for others. Superfluously, the former kind of literature describes the problem as if it is the description of the phenomenon, without describing how deeply people are affected by such a situation. While technically right, it is as helpful as describing waves accurately; when it is actually a situation of flood. The core problem is glazed around because they don't see a marker or a pointer, and any amount of deduction would be construed as unproven myth rather than a cause-n-effect "connection" -- a "causation" that if considered rigorously can be proved, as well as re-used over-and-over again, almost like the laws of physics.

See also Economics of Leadership.

- Kaleem Aziz.