Whew! What a great two days! I just got home from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, after attending a special Leadership Forum hosted by the Center for Association Leadership (CAL). It was a great program.

There was one speaker in particular that really "rocked my world" (altered my thinking) about understanding leadership. She was Dr. Barbara Kellerman. She holds an endowed chair at the John F. Kennedy School of Management, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. She was phenomenal. Though she has written many books on leadership in the public sector, general leadership, women and leadership, and more, she is a thought leader in two areas: bad leadership and followership.

Yes, you read that right: bad leadership. She has studied and modeled bad leadership behavior, and talked about being sensitive to the associated traits and how to be self-correcting. However, what gave me an "A HA!" moment was the issue of whether or not our current teaching on leadership is working. The "leadership training industry" is built around the premise that you can easily "learn" how to be a good leader by reading a book, taking a course, or even participating in programs that assess comprehensively a person's tendencies to lead well (Myers Briggs® Type Indicator), sensitivity (Emotional Intelligence), or leadership abilities (Leadership Skills Inventory).

These are all well and good IF AND ONLY IF a person is willing to be altered. To some extent, the current leadership industry often thinks that people are either "blank slates" when it comes to leadership, or at least really willing to grow and change. Dr. Kellerman's presentation, however, goes beyond a willingness to learn. It means committing to being changed in some way that may very well be changing a whole-life tendency or approach. The examples of bad leaders that Dr. Kellerman gave, however, were individuals that actually exhibited extreme behaviors, in some cases sociopathic behaviors that are not easy to overcome, or are impossible to overcome.

For me, that means it isn't enough to think that we want to learn, but rather we need to yearn to be changed, altered - "adjusted" if you will - to a different model. That means we really have to be held accountable, personally, or through others to make sure that we do change. In fact, that may not be possible at all. The other issue she raised is that good leaders can turn bad when they are in a position far too long. They begin to believe that they know what is right and wrong, and may develop non-mission related goals. So, watch out for that!

Which brings up another issue that knocked me in the head: Leadership is systemic. That means a leader must have a system to operate in, people that follow or listen to direction, and one or more individuals who placed them in a leadership role, all of which may enable the behaviors, good and bad, to come out. The board of a company that doesn't react to bad leadership behaviors (e.g., Enron) may very well be as culpable as the CEO who pulled off the fraud. Employees, on the other hand, who don't use a whistleblower policy to report unethical behavior, enable the behavior to continue. We talked about the question of when a bystander should become an activist, and when they should support the leader, and how the transitions occur. It really pointed to the need for looking at leadership as organic, as an element of culture that determines all parts of the system. It was an incredible session. Look up her biography and consider getting her books.