The End of Leadership

Introduction: Twenty-First-Century Leadership—and Followership

I make my living in “leadership.” I have written and edited more than a dozen books on the subject. I have taught leadership at the graduate and undergraduate levels for over thirty years. And I have led or been part of various leadership centers, institutes, and associations. Why then write a book that bites the hand that feeds me? Why take on a profession in which I myself am deeply entrenched? Why pick a fight with many if not most of my colleagues—others who, like me, till this soil, some of whom are good friends and acquaintances?

The reason is that I’m uneasy, increasingly so, about leadership in the twenty-first century and the gap between the teaching of leadership and the ...