Leadership trends LO12640

LonBadgett@aol.com
Fri, 21 Feb 1997 10:17:41 -0500 (EST)

Replying to LO12626 --

> Hopefully somebody will take pity on a student doing research on
> leadership trends and will answer three questions.
> 1. What are the current "trends" in leadership?
> 2. How do current trends differ from leadership trends of the past?
> 3. What is leadership for self-directed learning in a learning
> organization?
> Wendy Fein

Wendy:

There are a lot of trends in the world, and there always have been. Some
trends are useful and others are harmful, but by and large most of them
are too transitory to worry about. The trends, though, may be more
indicative of a restless human nature than they are of reasonable or
proper behavior. If I counseled you about current leadership trends, how
should I present the information? Should I be like the fashion consultant
who spends one minute every hour on CNN telling us what rich skinny women
in Paris are wearing? Perhaps I should act like the college friend
telling us about the hottest new bars? Or maybe I should emulate the
slick financial advisor who picks the latest hot technology stock?

So now that I have given my general opinion of trends, let me share a
nasty one that I have seen in U.S. start-up companies. Rapid profits
available from public stock offerings prompt companies to go public as
early as possible in their development. The leadership of such companies
is fickle, unresponsive to long term development of people, excessively
devoted to stock performance as a single measure of business health, and
holds little or no loyalty to individual workers. The leadership of such
companies is composed of original founding members of the business who, in
their devotion to the company product or service, spend little time
developing anything other than core skills. They are narrow minded,
impatient, and unforgiving. Most importantly, they are supported in their
excessive behaviors by social trends to accept financial success as an
excuse for any behavior and to excuse blunt and aggressive behavior in
order to obtain short term results. Dark? Yes. Trendy? Unfortunately,
yes again.

Good luck with your search, I hope each reader of this list will give you
one or two of their favorite leadership trends because it would be a
fascinating thread to follow.

-- 

Lon Badgett lonbadgett@aol.com "A recent poll showed conclusively that most people don't believe poll results. Now I don't know what to believe." Emil Gobersneke

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