Why Leadership Is The Most Dangerous Idea in American Business
If you're an entrepreneur, almost everything about "leadership" as we know it is bad for you. But there's another way to lead. Here are the rules.
Published June 2003
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEMaybe you've noticed: Never in the history of management science has leadership been more studied, worried over, theorized about, and debated than right now -- not least because for two years the world has supplied leaders-in-training with a (mostly unhappy) curriculum. The stock bubble collapsed. The economy soured. September 11 came and begat whole new anxieties that prompted unprecedented questioning about vocational life and leadership in communities of every kind. Corporate scandals and greed brought CEO reputations low and raised ethics concerns high. And now Iraq.
Throughout the contentious diplomatic run-up and then during the conflict itself, leaders were dissected everywhere. You'll recall the stories. Bush the autocratic unilateralist vs. Blair the participative consensualist. Rumsfeld vs. the generals. Churchill circa 1942 vs. all of the above (an op-ed smackdown that somehow Winny always wins). By the time this is published, there will have been more stories: How to lead. How we're being led. How we want to be led. The world's curriculum, like it or not, is rich with object lessons.
The problem is that, for entrepreneurs, those lessons are all wrong. Not because they're necessarily bad in themselves, but because they're all to do with the wrong kind of leadership. Almost the entire fevered leadership discussion of the moment is focused on one broad category of the art. Call it "charismatic" leadership, the label most often used by academics and experts (you'll hear it called "heroic" or "inspirational" leadership too). Please note that the practitioners of charismatic leadership don't actually have to be charismatic themselves. In fact, plenty of charismatic-style leaders are vibrant as brick (think Bill Gates). It's the approach -- the system -- that matters. And you'll find it in nearly every tiny business as well as most big ones. The charismatic approach is in play (whatever the personality of the organization's leader) as long as an organization is set up to be fueled by the personal energy and vision of a single individual, a larger-than-life figure. Charismatic leadership is leadership attempted or executed by force of personality and inspiration. It's the kind in which the leader is counted on to be tireless, indomitable, never out of answers. Do you know any companies like that? Thought you might.
Every seasoned Inc. writer certainly does. And we've seen what happens to such leaders -- successful ones, even. We've seen the high-flown founder who grew so sapped and fat that he couldn't take an evening stroll without stopping every block to rest. We've seen the natural toothpaste entrepreneur who lost himself and left for divinity school in desperation. And we've seen many versions of Jan Pringle.
But that's what charismatic leadership does in private businesses. It eats its young. It demands of leaders far more than it gives back. For entrepreneurs, it's toxic.
Pringle was the co-founder and charismatic leader of a successful Atlanta ad agency in the '90s when, as in all these stories, something changed. As writer Liz Conlin reported at the time, it was 10 o'clock on a brisk November night when Pringle, then 47, found herself sitting at her desk, staring at the wall in front of her. The late hour was typical. For 20 years she'd regularly clocked 12-hour days, six days a week. She had a presentation due in the morning for one of the biggest radio stations in town. The yearly budgets for two of her largest customers were due. She had 10 client meetings in the next five days.
But that night all she could do was stare at the wall. She couldn't get up, she couldn't leave her desk, she couldn't call for help. Her husband and the company's co-founder, Jim, innocently phoned to ask when she'd be home. "I can't come home...," she mumbled. "I can't leave." The next thing she remembers, her teenage son appeared at the door, physically pried her away, and helped her home.
After testing at the hospital, doctors concluded that Pringle suffered from a disorder aggravated by stress and that she would need to take an extended leave of absence from her company. Back at home, she lay down on the living-room couch and thought to herself, "I just want to die."
Pringle, thankfully, regained her footing and eventually rejoined her business, running it side by side with her husband. She groped her way toward changes in her workstyle and way of leading, and PDP carried on for another half-decade until she and Jim sold it and, in 2000, left for a new life on Fripp Island in South Carolina -- "a happy ending," Pringle says today. "No, make that 'a happy stopping off point' on the journey." She doesn't want to talk about PDP anymore.
