What I Didn’t Learn about Leadership in Graduate School
Hint: Application Rules!
I’ve been out of graduate school and working in the business world for about 22 years. When I worked in corporate America as an employee, I’ve managed departments and teams, learned a great deal about working with others, and matured (arguable so). Reflecting on my graduate days, I thought about the courses that helped shape who I am today as well as those that didn’t.
That is when I recalled taking a course on leadership and management. The only memorable thing I can recall is that the textbook might have been green.
I’ve seen a few textbooks that professors use to teach leadership. In them, the authors use several pages to explain things like the Great Man Theory, Trait Theory, Contingency Theory, Transactional Theory, Transformational Theory, and so on. None of these helped me lead, and I’m not the right person to ask what each means. Few practitioners probably could honestly provide examples of when these theories influenced how they led teams.
I want to be fair to professors who teach leadership. In graduate school, I had little interest in leadership or management. At the time, I had no intention to lead or manage others. If you went back in time and told my younger self that I would someday write leadership books, I wouldn’t…
