A Crisis In Leadership
Leadership Crisis?
Is there a “leadership crisis” in the world today? Recently I was criticized by an editor for saying that the “leadership crisis” is alive and thriving. James McGregor Burns the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the book Leadership (1978) coined this phrase 30 years ago and according to this expert editor the subject has been discussed thoroughly and is old hat.
Old hat? I am not sure what he meant by this or how he rates today’s leaders and the status of leadership in our country and the world. The President of the United States has an approval rating in the high 20s, his Vice President ratings is in the low teens and Congress is even lower. The leaders in the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan and China aren’t faring a lot better. Our institutions religious, business, government and even sports all have been shaken by scandals. The US dollar is in the toilet, our national debt is approaching $10 trillion (it has almost doubled in the last 7 years) and the price of oil is breaking records everyday (yesterday it was 6 times higher than when Bush took office). If there isn’t a crisis of leadership we certainly have more than our share of bad leadership.
What is the cause?
It doesn’t take a genius to recognize a problem, especially not one as painful as bad leadership (who is not affected by it?). Nor do we have to spend a lot of time discussing leadership especially during this long, drawn out campaign season; we have all those talking heads on TV doing this all day and all night for us. A better question is what is causing so much bad leadership and leaders? Burns offered some insight into the problem 30 years ago when he said most of us including the experts would have a problem knowing what leadership is. He said in his book if a Martian came to earth and asked an earthling to take him to his leader, the earthling would not know where to take him. Thirty years have passed since Burns wrote this and in my opinion very little has changed. In fact we can’t even agree on what leadership is, according to leadership expert Warren Bennis, he is aware of at least 860 definitions of leadership.
This is a very powerful topic that needs to be address, and I believe you addressed it well. It is so true that leadership is lacking in our nation and in our world. People are are so blind to the truth nowadays, they seem to just go with the flow as long as they can live there “me-ism”. It is quite sad of what we as a blessed nation, a great nation have become, lacking leadership with strength and humbleness. I do appreciate your efforts knowing that someone is addressing the issue that is imperative to our future.
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!