If Leadership is Everything Leadership is Nothing
I took a “leadership” seminar last month. It wasn’t choice that I made so much as it was a work requirement. One hour of a longer professional development course was given over to learning about “leadership.”
My instructor for the hour let us all know right off the top that he teaches a semester-long course that covers many more “leadership” topics than could possibly be taught in an hour. The one-hour seminar turned out to be an earnest attempt to squeeze the main points of that much longer course into a single short session. There were frequent references to the sorts of things we could learn from the longer course, if only we were fortunate enough to take it. His genuine belief in the power of what he called “leadership” made what could have come across as attempts at up-selling his captive students sound more like apologies for depriving us of the great content we were missing.
Since we were only learning about “leadership” for an hour, we missed things like personality type surveys, goal setting sessions, and various lessons in verbal communications. On the topic of verbal communication, the instructor offered an excited aside that many who take the longer course find that the “leadership communication” lessons really improve their marital relationships. I mentioned this fact to my wife afterward, and she didn’t think I ought to attempt any “leadership communication” in her direction.
The most striking revelation about this lengthy leadership course I most definitely am not going to take was that it includes an entire class session on sending email. Apparently there are important lessons on email-leadership in the longer course, complete with tips like “proofread your emails at least once before you send them” and “don’t fill in the ‘to’ field until the email is finished to avoid inadvertently sending it before it’s done.” Truly, these are revolutionary concepts.
I had no idea that leadership-through-better-emailing was even a thing before that fateful hour, but I think I know why I was so ignorant: I didn’t know leadership-through-better-emailing was a thing because it isn’t a thing. If leadership means anything, it has to mean more than the ability to send an effective email. If leadership is a useful concept at all, it has to be something more than the bland but competent administration that is taught in “leadership” courses.
I hate to pick on the gentleman who had the misfortune of teaching the seminar I endured, as he was outrageously sincere and ridiculously well-intended (and therefore anonymous for purposes of this screed). To be fair, his fervent commitment to better-leading-through-email-proofreading wouldn’t be out of place in a leadership seminar at a fancy place like Harvard. The Harvard Extension School’s course entitled “Influence and Persuasion in Leadership” covers such critical leadership topics as “Writing persuasive emails,” which surely includes tips like proofreading the damn things before sending them. The professional development arm of America’s most prestigious university offers that and other leadership lessons for the low, low price of $2,850 per course. Some may call it a bargain, but it makes me despair for the future of America if this is what passes for “leadership” these days.
Look, I’m all for writing good emails. I’m an obsessive email proofreader who always fills in the “to” field last. I can spend twenty minutes writing a fifty word email. I agonize over where to put in paragraph breaks, since I don’t want to break up closely related ideas but I also don’t want to create a wall o’ text. I hate sentence fragments and try to eradicate passive voice. Before I click “send” I always ask myself how I would feel about the message appearing on the front page of a newspaper, even though there’s rarely any risk of that happening. I’m an advocate for everyone adopting more rigorous email habits, but I don’t conflate improving one’s email routine with leading.
In amongst all of my obsessive-compulsive emailing over the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to lead both professional groups and Democratic Party organizations. I can’t claim to have been a wildly successful leader, but the groups I’ve led have had some important successes. Those successes happened because of the efforts of the people I was leading, not due to my email techniques. My email routines may have enhanced my leadership around the edges by avoiding embarrassment and confusion, but the effects were pretty marginal. Leading and emailing are very different things.
Leading requires both vision and compassion, two traits that are devilishly difficult to teach. Without vision, a leader can’t even see where her team is heading, and without compassion she won’t have the empathy she needs to motivate her people. Email skills may make for a competent administrator, but I want more than competent administration from the leaders I choose to follow. I’m guessing that better email practices are included in “leadership” curriculum because email habits can at least be taught in a course, whereas learning to truly lead takes more than even a fancy class from Harvard.
Every time the issue of “leadership” comes up, I think about Dwight D. Eisenhower. I’m sure Ike could write some mighty fine memos, those being the emails of his day, but memos didn’t convince the Allied soldiers and sailors to fight and die and eventually prevail on D-Day. Eisenhower’s message to those who were about to depart for Normandy was inspiring enough, but that’s not what motivated the men he led. Leadership is something more than a rousing speech or a heartfelt message, no matter how well written.
Because of the troops’ past experiences with him, those under Eisenhower’s command trusted his invasion plans even though those plans were known in their entirety to only to a select few. Even though everyone departing on that fateful day surely knew the peril they were about to face, they also knew that the Supreme Allied Commander wasn’t cavalier with the lives of those he ordered onto the beaches and into the air. While everyone faced grave danger, no one faced risks out of proportion with the grim task at hand. You can glimpse the leadership that inspired men to lay down their lives in the eloquent words General Eisenhower wrote in case the invasion failed, simple words that (had they been necessary) placed the blame squarely on his own shoulders. The brief message that aches with sorrow even decades later.
Leadership isn’t about avoiding typos or clumsy phrasings, or anything else that could be learned about effective communication in a classroom. I dare anyone to proofread Eisenhower’s somber, and thankfully unnecessary, words prepared in case of failure and improve upon them with trivial editing. I promise you that no one who thinks to improve that message through editing is someone I’d be willing to follow. Eisenhower’s ways weren’t the sort of leadership you learn in a class.
I suppose that I shouldn’t be too frustrated that the “leadership” taught in professional development courses doesn’t rise to the standard set by General Eisenhower. The typical business needs competent administration more than it needs true leadership. No Regional Branch Manager needs to lead his employees into battle, but he probably does need to send a lot of mundane emails. There’s nothing wrong with learning to be a competent administrator in an organization, and surely we need more competent administrators in this world. That shouldn’t be confused with leadership, though. I wish those two very different things weren’t so often conflated.
