Jim Citrin Leadership by Example

I've long believed that focus and hard work can help just about anyone become an effective leader.

A provocative new book, however, takes issue with this conviction. In "The Taboos of Leadership," Anthony F. Smith, CEO coach and founder of Leadership Research Institute, contends that the public has been sold a bill of goods on leadership.

Secrets Divulged

"Leadership is being propagated as a task not unlike dieting or cooking," Smith told me in a recent interview. "We've come to the point where we want everyone to be a leader. But just because we may want that, it doesn't mean it can happen."

According to Smith, leadership is exceedingly messy and difficult, and few people can actually pull it off. Yet the better that followers understand the realities of how their leaders think and act, the healthier their organizations become. That's why he wrote his book -- to "divulge the secrets that no one will say about leaders."

Those secrets are the taboos of leadership, the things that are politically incorrect, embarrassing, intimate, threatening, and difficult to discuss. Taboos have their power, Smith contends, because they touch a nerve and serve, in organizations, to define the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

The 10 Taboos

According to Smith there are 10 taboos of leadership, and "simply acknowledging that the taboos exist and why they're difficult to discuss provides us with ammunition to dilute their power."

In that spirit, here are the 10 leadership taboos:

1. We still don't understand the true nature of leadership.

Leadership development is a billion-dollar industry. But the sanitized models of leadership that often come out overlook what leaders actually think and do. This includes thoughts and actions that fall on the darker side of persuading others to act in line with their agenda.

2. Charisma plays a critical role in who's chosen as a leader.

People are impressed and influenced by good looks, strong communications skills, and a palpable aura. Why? Because we want to identify with and be inspired by people we perceive as similar to us.

3. Politics is a necessary leadership skill.

No leader achieves his or her goals without being skilled in getting what they want, even when they lack the authority to do so. Whether this involves saying what people want to hear, using information selectively, or doing an end run to get the desired decision, people skilled in these political behaviors tend to be the ones that rise through the ranks.

However, going for what you want by playing this game is seen as unsavory. So leaders work hard to appear less political -- which is itself a political act.

4. Gender matters -- or maybe it doesn't.

Discussing whether women make better or worse leaders than men, and why less than 2 percent of Fortune 1000 company CEOs are women despite the fact that they hold close to half of all middle-management positions, is a huge taboo.

There's also a disconnect between the talk about more "feminine aspects of organizational leadership" -- collaboration, empowerment, trust, concern for the whole person, and an emphasis on interpersonal relations -- and the fact that the most proven and effective leaders exercise the more "male characteristics" of ruthlessness, power-hoarding, and the competitive will to win at all costs.

5. Leaders secretly feel that they deserve special treatment.

There are few things more toxic than the notion that leaders deserve special treatment. This takes its most explicit form in the area of executive compensation, but it's also present in the other trappings of power.

Of course, leaders today convey that they don't receive special treatment and are, in fact, no different from anyone else. Yet, in their private thoughts, most CEOs feel perfectly justified in receiving disproportionately high compensation and perks such as private air travel. After all, from their perspective, they're responsible for the well-being of thousands of employees.

This double-standard is a hot-button issue. It brings up stinging associations with social injustice, tax breaks for the rich, military deferments for the well-connected, legacy appointments to elite colleges, and so on.

6. Leaders play favorites.

One of the most sensitive issues in corporate politics is the role of favoritism. Is it right that anyone should get ahead simply because he or she has worked closely with the boss before, or knows him or her socially? Is it more important for a leader to be surrounded by the best people, or by people he or she feels comfortable with and can trust?

It's taboo for a leader to promote friends or recruit former lieutenants, but they do it anyway. The reason is that chief executives are more isolated at the top than most people in their organizations realize. As a result, they're vulnerable to and dependent on those they turn to for advice, information, perspective, and emotional support.

This is why leaders choose people for their inner circle they feel comfortable with and whose skills and thought processes are familiar. There are obvious pitfalls in this practice, such as a lack of objectivity by the leader in assessing performance, insufficient attention to how the individual fits the culture of the organization, and -- most dangerous -- filtering out important information that the leader may not want to hear.

7. Leaders often overstay their welcome.

Why do leaders hate the issue of succession? Because it goes against their grain. Leaders find it exceptionally hard to separate themselves from their work, and often wrap their identity in their job and title.

No one should be surprised by this. Every human being, leader or otherwise, fears a lack of significance perhaps more than anything else. So while finding a successor may well be a leader's most important task, it's probably the least natural one.

8. Work-life balance is a charade.

A leader's success comes at a high price, in the form of more hours working and less time with friends and family. It's a price most people aren't willing to or can't pay. But over the past decade, societal pressure has resulted in an idealized version of how to live and work.

In this context, the drive and focus that the exceptionally successful exhibit is actually regarded as a negative role model to be curtailed rather than emulated. People are insatiably curious to know what it takes to get to the top, but when most people learn what's really required to get there they aren't prepared to make the sacrifices.

9. Leaders are driven by blatant self-interest, and that's OK.

It's taboo to openly say that your work serves your own self-interest. After all, today's leadership is supposed to be centered on values, ethics, and integrity.

While these are, of course, wonderful attributes, the fact is that leaders focus on them only to the extent that it helps them get what they really want.

Ethics and values are important, but it's naive to ignore their role as a part of the business equation. For instance, many companies are currently "going green" to combat global warming, but would they do so if it were against their economic self-interest?

10. Leadership is addictive.

Sure, leaders have to work hard, and there are a lot of responsibilities and demands. They don't really have any semblance of a work-life balance. Their health and relationships often suffer and their personal interests are generally limited to a narrow set of activities that feed their business.

On the other hand, being at the top means getting lots of attention and perks. Leaders receive respect, credibility, and authority just by virtue of their position; can assert their will over others to get things done; and are surrounded by people who march to the beat of their drum, not the other way around.