Standards for Leadership

On Saturday, October 27, two hours after the terrorist attack by a white supremacist at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Dr. Barbara Kellerman took the stage to conclude the 2018 conference of the International Leadership Association. While a moment of silence was observed to honor the victims, questions swirled in my head.

Add October 27 and the 11 lives taken that morning to the incomprehensible list of sad anniversaries and legion of victims we mourn as a result of gun violence in the U.S.A. And let there be no question – this is a failure of reason and leadership and I won’t waste the time to explain why. This situation in the U.S.A. and many other examples in countries throughout the world highlight where leadership has failed – in business, clergy, education, and elsewhere. Bringing this into full detail, Dr. Kellerman asked the audience to look at the meteoric rise of the leadership industry over the last 40 years, an arc that just happens to match the rising realization of failed leadership. These are not curves that should match; if leadership specialists were as effective as we aspire to be, the curves would mark a huge “X” with inverse correlation between the two phenomena.

This was the context for a call to standards for leadership. Professionalizing Leadership (Kellerman, 2018), which I’ve previously reviewed, challenged the effectiveness of the leadership industry. It proposed that leadership specialists must strive for coherence, purposefulness, and long-term cultivation in order to have an impact. The International Leadership Association conference provided the platform to call for standards within the leadership industry that will require deeper and more sustained effort, will require appropriate credentials for those claiming leadership expertise, and will form the basis for assessment of outcomes, and refinement of practice.

Kellerman was deliberately provocative when she urged leadership specialists to establish standards. What she advocated wasn’t the recognition of elite institutions, programs, and processes, or a growing uniformity among all programs. Instead, the idea is to create standards that will provide reasonable expectations and professional practices that can inform all efforts to cultivate and recognize leadership capacity. Although formulating standards will involve some complexities, most people will readily agree to certain leadership expectations that should be the foundation of a standards statement – decency, respect, humanity, seeking the common good...

The leadership industry is maturing, there are now many specialists involved – faculty, staff, consultants, and coaches. Agreeing to standards will require effort, compromise, cooperation, and creativity but the ultimate outcome will be sustained transformation, documented impact, and credibility that will allow the field to survive. And, there is no question – standards are critical at a time when the basics of reason are being violated each and every day.

I left Dr. Kellerman’s speech almost euphoric, rushing to my shuttle. Excited about the conference and complacent about my travel, I missed the stop on the train that was to deliver me to the airport. When I realized my error and the fact that it might prevent me from getting home that evening, I became impatient, angry, and at least mildly disrespectful of a staff member on the train who I thought should have informed me of when to exit the train.

Then I realized – what standard do I expect of myself in relation to treatment of others? I became increasingly uncomfortable with the way I behaved. I had violated my own standards of conduct – decency, respect, appreciation, good humor, and hope. Fortunate for me, once I sought out the staff member I’d offended, and apologized for my impatience and rudeness, she embraced me with grace and appreciation, wishing me well on the rest of my journey.

Resetting my own standards, taking responsibility for my own actions, and offering apology set in motion six subsequent encounters with people who would help me. I would like to think that returning to my minimum standards of conduct allowed me to recenter all the subsequent interactions so that I was receptive to being helped. Six encounters followed that took me on a pleasurable path to home not only on time but one-half hour earlier than I would have had I made my original flight.

The link between the need for professional standards and holding myself accountable for personal standards may seem unrelated. I don’t think so. Standards, professional or personal are about expectation, holding ourselves accountable, modifying where we have not achieved what we had hoped, and improving the effectiveness of our ongoing practice. It’s that simple and it’s time we got on with it.