Last Sunday, I realised I’d been manipulated. As a ‘power follower’, who is determined to ask questions of our leaders and society no matter how uncomfortable they may be, I got a bit of a shock. Let me explain how easily we can be manipulated.
It happened at a family dinner, over pizza. My brother showed me that there is no such thing as ‘alcohol-fuelled violence’. It was a belief that I had never thought to question.
In the early 1980s, publishers released an average of three books on leadership a year, writes Barbara Kellerman, in her book The End of Leadership. By the end of the decade, that number had grown to 23. And today? Well, a Google search will scare the pants off you. There are thousands, if not millions.
The underlying assumption about leadership is that it is so important that the success or failure of any organisation depends upon it. There is no evidence to support the view that great leaders create successful organisations, Kellerman tells us.
I’m a professional misfit.
The media, at its best, is about independent critical thinking. Challenging stuff is the misfit’s role because it’s harder to be challenging when you feel you belong.
I am proud to have contributed to that ideal of independent thinking to the best of my abilities while I was a journalist.
The problem the world is facing today is not so much a lack of leadership as a dearth of quality ‘followership’.
Look no further than the candidacy of millionaire businessman and ultra-right conservative, Donald Trump, for the President of the United States.
The world is suffering from an epidemic of experts. Experts bring a conviction to their ideas and an art to their expression that is hard to challenge. But we must. Why? Because the influence of experts can be dangerous.
Experts once told us not to cuddle our children if we wanted to be good parents. Experts once told us that the solution to the ‘slum problem’ was to build a very tall concrete tower and put all the poor people in it. And a particularly evil self-appointed ‘expert’ told us that the world’s problems would be solved if we simply gassed all the Jews, gays, and gypsies.