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Faculty Contribution
Benjamin K. Forrest Professor of Christian Education and Associate Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University
AGAINST LEADERSHIP I’ve been assigned, by the managing editor of this esteemed publication, to write an article with the title, “Against Leadership.” I can only assume that such an assignment comes from his imagined sense of irony — tasking me to write against myself — for my education, career, and publication record has, in many ways, been spent in pursuit of leadership, education, and leading. But alas, here I write on … against leadership. I hope the purpose of such an assignment is not to write against leadership in a holistic sense, but against the way that leadership is conceptualized and cultivated in much of our culture. Tackling “a-leadership” holistically surely lies beyond the scope and effect of such a short essay, and beyond what anyone would want to argue for — for it is eminently evident that leadership is necessary in our culture. So, I assume that the topic must be purposefully delimited to a segment of leadership that deserves to be written against. Two types of targets loom large when considering what critiques to levy against leadership. Thus, I will focus the “againstness” of my leadership dissent to the targets of leadership education and leader failure.
Targeting Leadership Education The easiest target to take aim at on the leadership landscape is the idea of leadership education and the proliferation of academic degrees in leadership. The reasons such a target is easily acquired in the sights of the skeptic is that the evidence of true leadership is realized in context rather than in classroom, in character rather than characteristics, and a longer term definition of success rather than immediate returnson-investment. Because leadership is by nature praxis, the academic pursuit of leadership can ultimately lead to inaction and theoretical assent rather than the transformation of a student to a sage.
Target #1: The Context of Learning Leadership Leadership is learned best in the context of leading rather than in the confines of a classroom. Yet, our academic pursuits situate much of leadership learning
in the context of texts. Books are valuable, but texts can only teach so much because leadership is an applied practice. Those looking into a leadership classroom, from the outside, often come to the conclusion that the academic pursuit of leading is an amorphous, softscience — at best. It does not have distinct shape, nor does it have any lines of demarcation between where it starts and stops. Chemists, within the academy, study chemistry. They observe reactions and walk through molecular equations. Their contribution to the field comes in the training of students for a wide variety of scientific vocations. Historians, in the academy, coalesce information from various mediums into understandable interpretations of the past for future wisdom and insight. Technology, and the professors who teach in these fields, invent and improve the practices of daily life. But leadership learned only in the classroom does not necessarily produce leaders.
Target #2: Characteristic Adoption and Behaviorism Leadership is based on character rather than simply the adoption of characteristics. The available leadership literature turns many away; it seems like never ending lists of characteristics that will theoretically create leaders. We are told that leadership is 7 habits, 10 practices, 18 principles, and 101 characteristics. This numerically prescriptive approach is both simplistic and overwhelming. Surely it is not the intent of the authors to propose that leadership is simply behavior adoption; yet, there is a temptation to turn this literature into a simple list of characteristics to adopt. It is curious to some, why are there seven habits instead of eight, or ten practices instead of five or fifty? Behaviorism, like the training of Pavlov’s dogs, supposes that input A equals output B. Leadership proposals that see the adoption of characteristics as true leadership errantly assume that input A (let’s say the characteristic of vision) will lead to output B (visioneering leadership). While vision can lead to visioneering, it is not as simple as input/output. Too much of the leadership literature, which theoretically