Truth About Managing People ... and Nothing but the Truth, The

Chapter 27. Most People THINK They Know What Good Leaders Look Like

Despite all the studies that have been done trying to find out what makes an effective leader, the fact remains that there is still a great deal that we don’t understand. For instance, there seem to be very few, if any, traits that continually differentiate leaders from nonleaders. And there is a lot of conflicting evidence that makes it hard to generalize from. But here’s an interesting twist: While leadership researchers may have difficulty agreeing on what makes a leader, the average person on the street doesn’t seem to have that problem. Lay people (including many managers and senior executives!) have little difficulty describing what they think leaders look like. People regularly ...