The leadership industry, as Kellerman and some others refer to it, has been in a growth mode for nearly forty years. While she acknowledges successes here and there, her book (Professionalizing Leadership, 2018) raises deep concern about the resources that have been, and continue to be, poured into fostering leadership with little to show for it. The book is a challenging read for leadership educators. Whether one agrees or not, Kellerman raises many very important issues and she is courageous in raising the bar to advocate that leadership learning and practice needs to become more professionalized in the way it conceptualizes, delivers, and measures progress.
I had the unique opportunity to interview Kellerman about her motivations for writing and implications of Professionalizing Leadership. Spoiler alert - the interview, published by the International Leadership Association, might be read even before the book; it introduces and extends many of her most important points.
Professionalizing Leadership (2018) is a follow up to the End of Leadership (Kellerman, 2012) in which she first raised concerns. She indicates in 2018 that her cautionary voice of 2012 is now reinforced by other scholars and organizations that are saying that learning about leadership is making little difference among the millions of individuals who participate in what is estimated as a $50 billion per year investment.
The critique begins with a number of unsettled questions that hold leadership educators back (pp. 4-6) including; who is a leader, what if any is the difference between a leader and a manager, how to teach leadership, who should teach about leadership, and ultimately whether or not it can be demonstrated that leadership even matters. With no consensus on these questions, she calls for leadership educators to get serious by striving for professionalization, a topic that she explores throughout the book.
Beginning with the question of who is a leader, Kellerman relies on a number of classic authors and philosophers who have explored over millennia the question of what leadership is and how to learn to do it. The earliest treatise focused primarily on positional leading but shifted beyond position and status as a result of late 18th century "Enlightenment" thinking. Among those credited as particularly important during this shift were Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) and Thomas Paine in Common Sense (1776), both of whom advocated that women/citizens should free themselves of tyranny of all types. In Kellerman's view, this marked the first time that followership was noted as important and deserving of equal attention to leadership.
Confidence in all sorts of leadership began to decline in the 1960s and was the impetus for James MacGregor Burns in writing Leadership (1978). Burns called for a sharper focus on leadership in the wake of the American political leadership crisis of the time. Burns and others created an explosion of theoretical perspectives which offered definitions and models of leadership that are used in various approaches to teaching leadership in education, for-profit and not-for-profit, government, and other sectors. Student affairs (referenced as student services) was also acknowledged for providing much of what is available in undergraduate leadership learning and given credit for providing some coherence to the way leadership was approached - primarily targeting students who want to make a difference and informed by the "Social Change Model of Leadership Development." But Kellerman's critique is that the work in leadership studies, and in teaching and practicing leadership, lacked coherence and cohesion, thus contributing to a number of conditions (enumerated on pp. 57-58) that are wasteful and show minimal impact.
The idea that leadership should be professionalized ran throughout the book. Two of the reasons that she asserted this are; 1) fields that have professionalized (i.e. medicine and law) have a level of expertise and credibility that can be trusted, and 2) the one industry that she cites as having made a real difference in leadership training, education, and development is the U.S. military, which has clearly used a professional model. Professionalization would require that the leadership industry have; a common body of knowledge, a system to certify those who teach and practice leadership, a commitment to service beyond the benefit of the individual, and a code of ethics (p. 102). In other places in her book, she mentions additional criteria for professionalization such as recognized experts to teach leadership, pedagogies to guide its learning, standards by which to judge it, continuing personal and professional development, and methods to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching and the practice of leadership. The accolades to the military are based on the broad availability to enlisted and officer ranks of the three distinctive areas of leadership training, education, and development and the long-term commitment to the unfolding of leadership development as a result of advanced learning coupled with experience. Perhaps most importantly, the U.S. military "assumes that no one ever would or should take on a leadership role without being properly educated, trained, and developed" (p. 154).
Adding to the thousands of leadership definitions in the literature, Kellerman proposed her own - "a leader is an agent of change, for good (a good leader) or ill (a bad leader)" (p. 77). Conditions that she identified as essential if the leadership industry and the practice of leadership itself are to gain credibility, thus moving toward professionalization, include: differentiate management from leadership; offer leadership training, education, and development, each with its specific focus on enhancing leadership capacity; recognize that bad leadership exists; give credit and equal attention to teaching and cultivating followership; make leadership learning urgent; and acknowledge that learning to be effective and ethical in leadership is a life-long learning and developmental commitment. Recognizing the ever-changing context that is so important to leadership, Kellerman indicated "You cannot be a leader in the twenty-first century, should not be a leader in the twenty-first century, without having some understanding of other people in other places, of other cultures in other countries" (p. 177). Other specific criteria that are more outcomes of professionalization include; "bestow on leadership programs a greater measure of dignity and respectability, restore to leadership a measure of the esteem that was presumed in the past, and elevate leadership in the eyes of the public" (p. 172).
Chapter 8, "Professionalization," begins with the assertions that the leadership industry:
I had the unique opportunity to interview Kellerman about her motivations for writing and implications of Professionalizing Leadership. Spoiler alert - the interview, published by the International Leadership Association, might be read even before the book; it introduces and extends many of her most important points.
Professionalizing Leadership (2018) is a follow up to the End of Leadership (Kellerman, 2012) in which she first raised concerns. She indicates in 2018 that her cautionary voice of 2012 is now reinforced by other scholars and organizations that are saying that learning about leadership is making little difference among the millions of individuals who participate in what is estimated as a $50 billion per year investment.
The critique begins with a number of unsettled questions that hold leadership educators back (pp. 4-6) including; who is a leader, what if any is the difference between a leader and a manager, how to teach leadership, who should teach about leadership, and ultimately whether or not it can be demonstrated that leadership even matters. With no consensus on these questions, she calls for leadership educators to get serious by striving for professionalization, a topic that she explores throughout the book.
Beginning with the question of who is a leader, Kellerman relies on a number of classic authors and philosophers who have explored over millennia the question of what leadership is and how to learn to do it. The earliest treatise focused primarily on positional leading but shifted beyond position and status as a result of late 18th century "Enlightenment" thinking. Among those credited as particularly important during this shift were Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) and Thomas Paine in Common Sense (1776), both of whom advocated that women/citizens should free themselves of tyranny of all types. In Kellerman's view, this marked the first time that followership was noted as important and deserving of equal attention to leadership.
Confidence in all sorts of leadership began to decline in the 1960s and was the impetus for James MacGregor Burns in writing Leadership (1978). Burns called for a sharper focus on leadership in the wake of the American political leadership crisis of the time. Burns and others created an explosion of theoretical perspectives which offered definitions and models of leadership that are used in various approaches to teaching leadership in education, for-profit and not-for-profit, government, and other sectors. Student affairs (referenced as student services) was also acknowledged for providing much of what is available in undergraduate leadership learning and given credit for providing some coherence to the way leadership was approached - primarily targeting students who want to make a difference and informed by the "Social Change Model of Leadership Development." But Kellerman's critique is that the work in leadership studies, and in teaching and practicing leadership, lacked coherence and cohesion, thus contributing to a number of conditions (enumerated on pp. 57-58) that are wasteful and show minimal impact.
The idea that leadership should be professionalized ran throughout the book. Two of the reasons that she asserted this are; 1) fields that have professionalized (i.e. medicine and law) have a level of expertise and credibility that can be trusted, and 2) the one industry that she cites as having made a real difference in leadership training, education, and development is the U.S. military, which has clearly used a professional model. Professionalization would require that the leadership industry have; a common body of knowledge, a system to certify those who teach and practice leadership, a commitment to service beyond the benefit of the individual, and a code of ethics (p. 102). In other places in her book, she mentions additional criteria for professionalization such as recognized experts to teach leadership, pedagogies to guide its learning, standards by which to judge it, continuing personal and professional development, and methods to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching and the practice of leadership. The accolades to the military are based on the broad availability to enlisted and officer ranks of the three distinctive areas of leadership training, education, and development and the long-term commitment to the unfolding of leadership development as a result of advanced learning coupled with experience. Perhaps most importantly, the U.S. military "assumes that no one ever would or should take on a leadership role without being properly educated, trained, and developed" (p. 154).
Adding to the thousands of leadership definitions in the literature, Kellerman proposed her own - "a leader is an agent of change, for good (a good leader) or ill (a bad leader)" (p. 77). Conditions that she identified as essential if the leadership industry and the practice of leadership itself are to gain credibility, thus moving toward professionalization, include: differentiate management from leadership; offer leadership training, education, and development, each with its specific focus on enhancing leadership capacity; recognize that bad leadership exists; give credit and equal attention to teaching and cultivating followership; make leadership learning urgent; and acknowledge that learning to be effective and ethical in leadership is a life-long learning and developmental commitment. Recognizing the ever-changing context that is so important to leadership, Kellerman indicated "You cannot be a leader in the twenty-first century, should not be a leader in the twenty-first century, without having some understanding of other people in other places, of other cultures in other countries" (p. 177). Other specific criteria that are more outcomes of professionalization include; "bestow on leadership programs a greater measure of dignity and respectability, restore to leadership a measure of the esteem that was presumed in the past, and elevate leadership in the eyes of the public" (p. 172).
Chapter 8, "Professionalization," begins with the assertions that the leadership industry:
- does not take sufficiently seriously its responsibility for teaching people how to lead,
- has the human and fiscal capital and pedagogical tools to improve, and
- includes experts and educators who must lead the charge (p. 162).
Hard to hear the critique but difficult to argue that a multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to leadership learning can't do better. And we should!
I have selected issues and perspectives from Kellerman's book, obviously choosing those that resonated for me. While I generally agree with her critique in calling for much deeper work in leadership training, education, and development (previously raised through my own book, Deeper Learning in Leadership, 2007), I regret that the work and literature of students affairs educators was not a body of knowledge with which Kellerman demonstrated deep familiarity. I was extremely grateful for her acknowledgement that differentiating training, education, and development purposes occurred "a few decades ago" (p. 59 & p. 63). To be accurate, it was copyrighted by Peg Anthony and me in 1979 and was published in Student Leadership Programs in Higher Education in 1981. While she advocated the TED framework as an essential distinction that leadership educators should make, she criticized those teaching leadership for not having seriously attempted to create a consensus about what matters in leadership learning (pp. 37-38).
Seeking consensus in the academy, let alone across the broader leadership industry, is not easy. The unfortunate reality of U.S. higher education is that faculty often do not know what student affairs educators do and of their scholarship. Thus, her book does not reference Student Leadership Programs in Higher Education (1981) nor the fact that it provided the basis for the CAS Standard for Student Leadership Programs; it also provided a model for leadership learning through multiple processes (courses, seminars, workshops, consultation, etc.), multiple purposes (TED), and for multiple populations (women, multicultural, positional/non-positional, adult learners, etc.). The larger body of research, scholarship, model building, and advocacy through journals and conferences that students affairs educators have contributed since the 1970s is substantial. Kellerman's vision of professionalizing leadership is already partially completed, or at least could be accelerated, if this body of knowledge were embraced.
