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Why classic leadership teaching doesn't work

IMD Professor Jack Denfeld Wood argues that many business school leadership classes make the mistake of developing the skill to talk about leading, rather than actually exercising it.
By · 22 Feb 2013
By ·
22 Feb 2013
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Leadership is an essential element—perhaps the essential element—of effective management. Exercising leadership responsibly requires more than just providing a vision, communicating it effectively, mobilising others to follow, guiding the collective progress and being aware of the obstacles in your path. It also requires deep awareness of both the conscious rational and unconscious emotional elements in individual and collective behaviour.

Virtually all management and business schools have classes in leadership. These classes are taught by professors who lecture, discuss cases and show videos of "great leaders” and the basic message boils down to an exhortation to behave in a similar manner. There is a problem with this kind of teaching. It doesn't work. Read more.

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Jack Denfeld Wood
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