Header Image
Breadcrumbs
Site Tag
Content Wrapper
Page Title
Leadership is Messy
Leadership is Messy
May 27, 2008
From: Smith, A.F. (2007). The taboos of leadership: the 10 secrets no one will tell you about leaders and what they really think. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
There's nothing tidy or clean about leadership. It's messy, but so is the rest of life.
What makes an effective leader is a contradictory collage of motivations and drivers, rewards and costs. We can't teach leadership, not in the sense that we've been trying thus far. We can't look at all the theories of leadership and say: Do this, this, and this, and you will become or create a good leader. But we can understand leadership much better than we do now. If we take a look below the surface, into the blood, guts, and pulsing arteries of leadership, we are bound to understand leadership as a process much, much better. In doing so, we might even come to understand the leader as a person, too (Smith, 2007, p. 27).
The Taboos of Leadership is available on loan from the Ohio State University Leadership Center. To borrow this resource or any other resource, please go to the resource search page http://164.107.48.88/winnebago/index.asp?lib
Created: 2008-12-06, Updated: 2009-01-08
