Professionalizing Leadership

Abstract

Leadership is an occupation—not a profession. Why is this? Why have medicine and law evolved into professions that require extended periods of education, training, and development, but not leadership? How has it come to pass that while the ancients—think Confucius, Plato, Machiavelli—thought learning to lead was the work of a lifetime, the contemporary leadership industry presumes quite the opposite, that learning to lead can be accomplished quickly and easily. Leadership has no body of knowledge, or core curriculum, or skill set considered essential. Leadership has no metric or clear criteria for qualification. Leadership has no license or credential or certification considered by consensus to be legitimate. Leadership has no professional association to oversee the conduct of its members—or to guarantee minimum standards. Leadership receives no attention from federal, state, or local officials, who tend otherwise to regulate not only professions, but vocations. Finally, unlike a profession, leadership does not necessarily imply service, or a shared code of ethics to ennoble or enhance the enterprise. Professionalizing Leadership looks at a leadership culture that is widespread and deeply entrenched. It looks at a leadership context that enables and sometimes even encourages ascension without clear credentials. It looks at an industry that is enormously profitable but entirely unregulated. It looks at a pedagogical practice that falls stunningly short of any imagined ideal. And it looks to the future, exploring what can be done to bestow on leaders a semblance of the gravitas associated with professionals.

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