Professionalizing leadership

Abstract

"Over the last 40 years, the leadership industry has grown exponentially. Yet leadership education, training, and development still fall far short. Moreover, leaders are demeaned, degraded, and derided as they never were before. Why? The problem is leadership has stayed stuck. It has remained an occupation instead of becoming a profession. Unlike medicine and law, leadership has no core curriculum considered essential. It has no widely agreed on metric, or criteria for qualification. And it has no professional association to oversee the conduct of its members or assure minimum standards. Professionalizing Leadership looks to a past in which learning to lead was the most important of eruditions. It looks to a present in which learning to lead is as effortless as ubiquitous. And it looks to a future in which learning to be a leader might look different altogether - it might resemble the far more rigorous process of learning to be a doctor or a lawyer. As it stands now, the military is the only major American institution that gets it right. It assumes leadership is a profession that requires those who practice it to be taught in accordance with high professional standards. Barbara Kellerman draws on the military experience specifically to develop a template for learning how to lead generally. Leadership in the first quarter of the present century is different from what it was even in the last quarter of the past century - which is why leadership taught casually and carelessly should no longer suffice. Professionalizing Leadership addresses precisely the problem of how to prepare leaders in accordance with professional norms. It provides the template necessary for transforming leadership from dubious occupation to respectable profession. "-- Provided by publisher. "In Professionalizing Leadership, leadership scholar Barbara Kellerman lays out a plan to remedy the field's vagueness by advocating testing, certification, and regulation that befit a true profession. She takes a historical view to examine how our values have shifted and why the endeavor of leadership has diminished in most institutions, with the exception of the American military. The twenty-first century has largely been about expanding the rights and education of the many, but has left comparatively little focus on leaders-that is, the few. Though many have ambitions to become successful leaders, the leadership programs they are offered are too easy to get into and insufficiently rigorous once students are admitted. Leadership studies, Kellerman argues, must build on a solid intellectual foundation and recognize the distinctions among educating potential leaders, training for leadership, and developing great leaders over time. Professionalizing Leadership illuminates the pitfalls and potential of leadership education, and outlines a logical sequence for professionalizing the field" Provided by publisher.