It's 2 more days to my assignment due date. Pressure? Yes... Panick? Yes... Disillusioned? Certainly!!! Disillusioned not because I did scrabby work, but as a result of having done in depth review of some leadership literature. There are 3 reasons for my disillusionment, let me explain...
Firstly, whether I study leadership or not does not make any significant difference to the way I see things. The incredible amount of time spent reviewing those literature, coupled with a lot of self-doubt, did little more than what we already know without studying it. Indeed there were valuable learning in the form of new nomenclature and vocabulary, but one who doesn't study it will likely have a more positive attitude toward leadership than one who did.
Secondly, most of these literature used unbelievable amounts of outer-planet jargons to convey a simple idea. It is like reading Chinese written in ancient prose in the 21st century, for example: "知知为知知， 不知为不知， 是智也." The use of such prose in leadership literature appears to be an attempt to obscure the shallowness of an argument but instead seek to elevate it to a degree that fits the communicative norms of PhDs and Professors. "... naturalistic coherentism, rather than a priori, as was the case in hypothetico-deductivism..." (Lakomski, 1999) I almost swallowed my tongue reading this! For novice readers, I warn you to stay away before you begin to doubt your own language ability!
Thirdly, and most importantly, the promiscuous use of "leadership" and "leader" in practice today appears to be manifested from the work of leadership scholars through years of dubious definitions and assumptions. Its like casually calling Zinedine Zidane a "great" footballer just because he controls the ball better than anyone else on earth. If a CEO reward you when you perform, and punish you when you fail, how different is he to a manager? Yet everyone unanimously label him a "leader" that has "leadership" even if he kills to bring in revenue. This is what I call the "erosion of leadership"; the spirit of leadership has eroded since time immemorial.
After all the reading, I cannot figure out how "leadership" and "management" differ, neither can I distinguish a "leadership" theory from a "management" one. No wonder "leadership" has been casually bestowed upon anyone with authority over a group of people, this is certainly not what Confucius (551 to 479BC) meant when "君子" is a person with "an emergent quality" who "radiates and makes others want to follow, based on the respect and trust [he] generates." (Fernandez, 2004)
I don't think I am qualified to say this, but I still have to say it... leadership research needs an overhaul!
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