Un Transformational Leadership

I once assisted Nancy Nazer on an article about untranformational leadership. It included, or at least implied, the rather obvious observation that transformational leadership programs were a rather unlikely thing. What is the chance that you are going to take a manager, put them through a one or two day program, and have them come out transformed?

Nancy went on to talk about the design of a saner, longer term approach to leadership development, but I want to go in a different direction here. I wonder why the rather strange notion of transformational leadership would develop at all. I used to attribute it solely to the demands of marketing—someone offering transformation would have a better chance of selling their program than someone promising that their course might lead to modest improvements. However, on reading Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age I notice something new.

Unlike the established Catholic orders of Europe where one would simply be born into the church and the church would universally be the bedrock of society, there is, particularly in the United States, a Protestant approach which encourages transformation. The sinner, quite possibly a man spending too much time at the tavern gambling with his buddies, would find salvation through a transformational experience and become a sober family man and disciplined citizen. This can happen because they really do want to change and because there really are two reasonably distinct modes of life.

Thus, transformational leadership courses may find some of their acceptance because a society has already bought into this idea of transformation. It would be interesting to see whether established Catholic or Buddhist countries would be as eager to embrace transformational leadership courses as Americans are.

People generally hate it when you take what to them is a simple idea, “Please take my leadership course”, and embed it in a historical-social context. But if one ever wondered why a certain business practice seems normal one place and absurd another then it is precisely in these historical-social factors that you find the answers.

On a more practical level if, as a business person, you find the idea of transformational leadership appealing you need to ask whether that appeal comes from a sober judgement of the effectiveness of this sort of program or from a more general attraction to the idea of transformation.

Most of business thinking is focused on straightforward facts immediately at hand but one can’t help but hope that thinking grounded in the great sweep of history would at least on occasion provide robust insights otherwise unavailable.