A recent book by Anthony F. Smith, “The Taboos of Leadership” suggests that we the public, have been greatly misled about leadership. He contends that there are 10 taboos of leadership and that by exposing them loosen their power. His list of secret taboos are challenging to discuss, personal, revealing, politically incorrect, and yet have tremendous power. .
Smith speaks of 10 leadership taboos. Here are mine for the moment – fallacies from my perspective, yet what I see playing out often in the business world. I plan to keep a running list, so who knows where it will stop . . .
Taboo 1 – There is one best way to do leadership. There tends to be an incredible urgency to find the guru/author/consultant/business leader that has done leadership “right” (whatever right is).
Taboo 2 - Leadership is something you do – something you can master or at least learn the “basics”. It can fit nicely on a to-do list and be checked off – I did leadership today.
Taboo 3 – If Business X and Leader Y are “successful” then I can copy and implement everything they are doing and be equally as successful.
Taboo 4 - Leaders can’t be authentic. In fact, true authenticity may be a core quality to great leadership.
Taboo 5 – If I can just learn leadership skills and use them in my calling, then everything will go smoothly. My belief is that anything that involves people is and will always be messy.
Which Taboo is a part of your mental tape or unspoken beliefs?
Taboo buster,
Jan Hinton
Stone Soup Coaching
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on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Servings in Business.
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