Rant of the Week

Bill's Leadership Training

 

Bill's 21 Irrefutable Rules about Leadership Trainers:

Nobody who is really busy doing real productive work has time to indulge in this kind of narcissism that they call "leadership training".

Amazingly, the rules of leadership invariably serve the interests of the people who make the rules, and the people who sell leadership training.

Almost all people famous for leadership training never led a single real organization in their lives.  All of them lead organizations dedicated to making them rich by selling "leadership" training.

If you really believe you need leadership training, you can't be helped by leadership training.

You send your staff to take leadership training because you know that none of them will ever hold any authority over you.

There is not a single thing you would learn at a leadership training seminar that would have prevented you from investing in credit default swaps.

If you are selling leadership training to an audience of people who will never be effective leaders because they believe you can improve their leadership skills, you probably know exactly what you are doing-- especially when you offer them more of your tapes, books, and CD's.  And they all automatically buy them.

Leadership training is easy because no one can ever really disprove any of the bland observations you make.  For that same reason, leadership training is worthless because no one can ever prove it works. 

I hear you:  you are a weak leader who now believes he is a strong leader because he watched 9 hours of leadership training videos.   No, you are not.  You are a weak leader who will need to hire a consultant the minute you are confronted with a real problem because you still are not a real leader.

What is leadership?  Sounds noble, doesn't it?  What if they called the workshop: "how to boss people around"?  Not quite as glamorous, right?  But at one level, leadership is all about bossing people around and the trouble with this world is too many people who love to boss people around think they are leaders.

 

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