Popular versus Profound

Eric Jacobson posted a LinkedIn discussion concerning the best leadership books. He cited the nominations from three LinkedIn groups: ExecuNet Executive Suite, The Talent Buzz, and the Keller Graduate School of Management. These groups created a list of 64 books they think are the best. Eric is asking for more recommendations to get to a 100. The list is posted here and while I'm tempted to recreate the list in this post, unfortunately the list is so poor (with a few terrific exceptions) in my opinion that I just can't bring myself to do it.

I did a short review of the books cited and categorized them in the following manner:

  6  CEO perspective (written by a CEO)

  2  Communication oriented

  5  Fable 

  2  Fiction

  6  Historical perspective or biographies of historical figures

15  Opinion (some by business people, some by scholars)

14  Research oriented (actually had research evidence beyond anecdotal)

  9  Religiously oriented (by religious leaders or those with a strong religious bias)

  5  Sports (written by former athletes or those in the sports field)

About a third of the books had more to do with personal excellence or ethical training than leadership per se. And while there were 14 books that contained some actual research, the range of research was very limited. Eric Jacobson's LinkedIn post suggested that the authors most frequently cited were Welch, Maxwell, and Drucker - when in fact the frequency titles go to Maxwell and Kotter.

What dismays me the most is how generally we allow fable, opinion, and anecdote devoid of research to inform. Case histories, fables, and advice from the "been-there-done-that" can provide perspective and inspiration, but frequently they are poorly rooted in serious research. As a result this "advice" can cause people to engage in behavior that is not only NOT leadership-like, it can be detrimental.

The authors that were not mentioned demonstrates the sad state of affairs for serious leadership. Not mentioned were Kouzes and Posner, Argyris, Zaleznik, Kets de Vries, Tichy, Conger, Bass, Hamel, McCall, Mintzberg, Handy, Belbin, Birkenshaw, O'Reilly, Tushman, Kanter, Porter, Prahalad, - just to cite a few serious researchers off the top of my head. 

I fear we still live in an age where we would rather be guided by anecdote than research, believe leadership development is easy when it is hard, and default to "feel good" training instead of serious, difficult development. If we trained Olympic athletes in the manner most corporate leadership development is conducted (based on the Jacobson reading list I'm discussing in this post) then we would run the 100 meters in about 13 seconds, pole vault at about 12 feet, and swim the 50 meter freestyle in about 40 seconds.

Comments

[Robert Thompson]

Ron, you forgot The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable that uses real research as its basis...just saying :-))

Hope this finds you well. Sorry to have missed you in August.

Robert.

[Ron]

Robert, Great to read from you. Of course, some narrative books are far better than others! Sorry we missed each other in August as well. Perhaps 2010 will provide an opportunity to reconnect. Happy New Year to you.