Maybe ‘authentic leadership’ is total bullshit

The Context Of Things

From here:

“Leaders need to be true to what the situation demands and what the people around them want and need,” he says. “Each of us plays a number of different roles in our lives, and people behave and think differently in each of those roles, so demanding authenticity doesn’t make sense.”

This is from Jeffrey Pfeffer, who’s a professor at Stanford. I’ve quoted him a couple of times before, including in this post about why companies don’t operate according to moral norms. He’s got a new book out called Leadership BS.  The whole idea is that “the leadership industry” — let’s say “training,” give or take — is worth about $70 billion, with 35% of that (about $25 billion) being spent on leadership/management training.

Pfeffer argues that the whole industry is kind of BS (hence the title of the book) because of all the reasons you’d expect:

• See/hear…

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