Pivot Points: Five Decisions Every Successful Leader Must Make

Preface : A Different Approach to Leadership and Careers

Leader. Not a leader. We judge who is and is not a leader quickly to summarize our overall impression of who should get our attention and support. In organizations large and small, a common complaint is that there are few leaders but many executives. Colleagues talk about strong leaders and weak leaders, but isn’t weak leader an oxymoron?

Many surveys have shown that the primary consideration of career satisfaction and employee engagement has to do with how leadership at the place of employment treats people and how it runs the business. There are too few leaders—among bosses as well as all the people one must consider teammates. But the blame game compounds the problem, and everyone ends up stuck on a treadmill of unrewarding effort.

It’s a quandary, even at companies making an admirable investment in leadership development programs—which are estimated to be a $50 billion industry when you include business schools. The trend of making leadership a performance measure for all levels of professional positions has only confused its meaning. Leadership has become the code word for judging the success potential of a 25-year-old, the promotion readiness of a 43-year-old, and the cost-value benefits of a 55-year-old. Why is the yardstick of success for individuals, teams, and companies so misunderstood?

We clearly need to approach leadership differently from the overdose of prescriptive advice that misses nuances of systemic ...