{"id":15686,"date":"2017-12-08T00:04:58","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T08:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15686"},"modified":"2017-12-11T09:02:59","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T17:02:59","slug":"15686-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/15686-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretentious Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice: A Harvard Business School Centennial Colloquium<\/em> is an academic’s book about leadership. Many have written about leadership, some of whom have been good authors but not good practitioners, and so unintentionally and perhaps unknowingly they write a theory that does not ever find its place in reality. I think of the Bible college student who is assigned with the task to write a 10-year plan for a church plant: They might have an excellent theory, but this “thorough” paper has no value on the first Sunday when everything that happens, happens. There was a disconnect between theory and application.<\/p>\n

And so the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice<\/em> attempts to remedy this disconnect by bringing in experts in different fields who can bring in the best of the best teachings. However, this still isn\u2019t perfect because many of the fields are academic in nature and so what is produced is a leadership book that is attractive to academics. The book itself claims that this is a collection of writing from \u201cscholars\u201d. Unfortunately, the best leaders have often not been the been the best scholars and so the book has already limited itself in it\u2019s scope by disqualifying excellent leaders by their lack of pedigree. I suppose that these voices are not in this book because they are not respected in academic\u2019s world. After all, the description of the back cover of the book claimed it would elevate the conversation about leadership. Apparently, they assume that to \u201celevate\u201d you must bring in a scholar. They assumed that to \u201celevate\u201d the respect and credibility for leadership study we needed to hear it from the voice and tone of an academic.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known some pastors who have been marginalized because they don\u2019t have the right letters after their name. While I know a pastor who led his church only to inevitably closing it\u2019s doors permanently, and yet was accepted to be the \u201cDirector of Leadership Studies\u201d at universities because he had Ph.D. in leadership.<\/p>\n

Despite the constant whiff of academia that wafts out at the reader, this book does redeem itself. The benefit of it being academic is that it is heavy on the research and data. And this is a valuable commodity in the field of leadership. Empirical evidence from research and data help books take on a depth that is more significant than just the bite-sized John Maxwellian maxims of experiential leadership.<\/p>\n

There is good study and research represented within this colloquium. (Colloquium\u2026? Really?) The topics are brilliant and important to a leader\u2019s life. Topics like, \u201cWhat Makes Teams Of Leaders Leadable\u201d, \u201cDecision Making As A Leadership Foundation\u201d and \u201cPower And Leadership\u201d are vastly important for a leader. And yet the way these are presented are not in the right language for a real practitioner. The MEDIUM affects the message! And the dialect of this book encrypts it to become inaccessible to many of it\u2019s readers. It\u2019s like giving a\u00a0medical journal to a patient who really is just looking for a pamphlet on \u201cHow to Recognize Depression.\u201d They don\u2019t need the scientific findings and research notes that a doctor searches for. That\u2019s what this book is, the scientific journal or the research papers of the leadership field. Important, yes. It has its place, yes. But it certainly is out of sight and out of mind to the masses.<\/p>\n

Of course, there has already been lots of research and data-driven leadership books published. This is perhaps why Jim Collins’\u00a0Good to Great<\/em>\u00a0is often considered one of the best leadership book of all. It\u2019s research driven. Many leaders attempt to write down their leadership that they have intuitively picked up, and hope it translates and edifies on the other side of the page. Jim Collins present data-driven findings of effective strategies over the course of decades.<\/p>\n

The opposite of this pretentious colloquium would be the Tim Ferris\u2019 brand new leadership compilation, Tools Of The Titans; The Tactics, Routines And Habits Of Billionaires, Icons, And World-Class Performers<\/em>. This book, which is almost as thick of a book as Nohria and Khurana\u2019s (707 pages) is a sporadic, disconnected and immature compilation of leadership, self-management and self-leadership tactics. I can see it now –\u00a0 the academics rolling their eyes at this book, writing it off as elementary, and suspecting the author of capitalizing off the fame of the vast numbers of celebrity-leaders interviewed and name-dropped in this book. They wouldn\u2019t be wrong. And, yet, this book still has stuff that works. How\u2019s that for academic? \u201cStuff that works.\u201d Timothy Farris, instead of taking contributions from\u00a0professors of Harvard, Boston College, and Princeton takes input from Arnold Schwarzenegger, B.J. Novak, Seth Godin, Paul Levesque (Triple H), Tony Robbins & Glenn Beck to name a few. Consider even the difference between the titles: Handbook of Leadership Theory<\/span> and Practice <\/em>VS.<\/strong>\u00a0Tools<\/span> Of The Titans.<\/em><\/p>\n

Theory vs. tools. Theory is important. Tools are imperative.<\/p>\n

This split between academic and non-academic voices is part of what has caused, within my own tribe, to have a rejection of higher education. Within these Pentecostal churches, who emphasize the empowerment of the spirit of ministry, there is strong criticism toward spending our valuable resources of time and money on accredited education if there is not a track record of \u201cempowerment for ministry\u201d. Does higher education empower (well actually let\u2019s use the word equip for risk of sounding like we are competing with the Holy Spirit)… Does higher education, equip us to do more effective ministry. Which of these two books, Tools of Titans or Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice will produce better leaders?<\/p>\n

Of course, every tool whether it be a hammer, a screwdriver or air compressors, all of these tools started as a theory. But then it was proven.<\/p>\n

To be honest I\u2019m frustrated with both of the extremes represented by these two books, although I quickly will recognize they both have something to offer. My point is, there has to be a way to do both. <\/strong>Both will be best. And now I think I can see more clearly why Good to Great<\/em> is one of the best leadership books of all time. Collins, after all, was referenced almost a dozen times in this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice: A Harvard Business School Centennial Colloquium is an academic’s book about leadership. Many have written about leadership, some of whom have been good authors but not good practitioners, and so unintentionally and perhaps unknowingly they write a theory that does not ever find its place in reality. I think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[730,1017,410],"class_list":["post-15686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-handbook-of-leadership","tag-lgp8","tag-nohria-and-khurana","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15686"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15713,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15686\/revisions\/15713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}