What is the Future of Leadership Development After the Presidential Election?

by Ginny Telego

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to serve in an advisory role for a peer mediation training for 5^th grade students at a local elementary school.  The students in the training are members of the Student Council at the school.  The main facilitators for the training were two college students who have a passion for finding ways to resolve conflict that doesn’t involve violence. 

As I was assisting the lead facilitator in preparing an outline for the training (two 1 hour sessions), I found myself conflicted in what we were trying to accomplish.  Here’s why.

The current presidential election – on both sides and in all political discussions it seems – is riddled with candidates and their support teams doing and saying some pretty vicious things to stir up support for their campaigns.  As I watch this continue to escalate, I am struck by several thoughts:

1. Is this the new path for leadership development? 
2. Should we do away with all school programs and policies that have to do with teaching young people how to deal with conflict without using violence and bully behaviors?
3. How do we balance explaining to young people that the people who want to lead our country can behave that way but they cannot?

From a leadership development standpoint, I am wondering if leadership philosophies based on command and control will once again become the “norm” after decades of working to create leaders who are less narcissistic and more collaborative and self-aware.   Thousands of leadership development programs exist that have been built on developing the emotional intelligence of leaders, with the goal of making organizations better places to work.  When potential leaders of our country are espousing untruths, feeding fears, exchanging school-yard insults and creating division, it begs the question – where is the emotional intelligence and does it matter?  It’s coming from both sides of the political aisle, which makes it even more frustrating for those of us who have spent years working to create programs aimed at helping leaders grow their emotional intelligence, not leaders who spew vitriol at each other.  Is this how leaders are going to start talking to each other and their employees?  After all, if that type of leadership behavior is what gets rewarded in the presidential election, why not use it everywhere else?

I think these are questions we need to be thinking about as the political arena continues to heat up.

There has been a great deal of research done on leadership, with differing opinions on what makes great leaders.  Narcissism has come under fire as a negative but there is also research that shows it is a necessary trait of great leaders.  In a McKinsey & Company article titled “Getting beyond the BS of Leadership Literature” (Jeffrey Pfeffer) the author notes that leadership development based on morality is not realistic.  Pfeffer shared examples of well-known and respected leaders (Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Nelson Mandela) who sometimes had to “do what was necessary to achieve important objectives.”  He states that “moral framing of leadership substantially oversimplifies the real complexity of the dilemmas and choices leaders confront.”  There is no doubt that leaders are often in positions where, they have to “do” things that we may think are “bad” in order to get things done and possibly benefit the greater good.

So where does that leave us in developing leaders who have emotional intelligence but are also able to make difficult decisions that may not always be popular?  Spewing insults at others does not seem to be a characteristic that leaders should be rewarded for. But this year’s presidential primary races are filled with this tactic.  How will leadership development experts address this in their programs?  Our equine assisted action learning program, like many others, has been built on creating authenticity, trust, respect and collaboration and doesn’t incorporate this juvenile skill being used by these potential leaders.   As unpleasant as it is, it seems that the portrayal of what a “strong” leader looks like in this presidential race is something that leadership development professionals have to find a way to address.  At what point do we sacrifice our values for results? In their book The Leadership Challenge, authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner repeatedly talk about their research on leadership and the top traits that followers look for in a leader.  Trust is at the top of that list and they go on to offer extensive discussion on the role that values play in becoming a trusted leader.  Again, given the current atmosphere of vile conversations among people who are vying to lead the United States (as well as many who are running for state offices), how do those of us in the leadership development field address this in our programs?

At some point it would seem that we have to stop focusing on being angry and begin to look at how our view of a strong leader has moved from confident yet compassionate to mean and nasty.

My next blog will address the second point at the start of this article:

• Should we do away with all school programs and policies that have to do with teaching young people how to deal with conflict without using violence and bully behaviors?  How will the language and behaviors of our political leaders affect school suspensions for students who “act out” by using physical and emotional violence against their classmates?