Goose Theory, Witch Doctors and Leadership

I was talking to my friend over the weekend – on Friday he’d been on a leadership training course.  He couldn’t play me at swingball, he said, because he literally had sore ribs from trying to suppress hysterical giggles during the course.

He said the tutor had mentioned the Goose Theory of Leadership which, as its title suggests, is simply the idea that by everyone taking a turn at leading, the whole team gets further; in the same way that a gaggle of geese can fly longer distances by working together and taking turns at the front where the wind resistance is strongest. So far, so fine. The trouble was, he explained, because a good number of the course participants seemed particularly keen on the idea, asking more questions and scribbling furiously, the tutor started to develop the analogy off script.  The more engaged the students got, the more recklessly she pursued her analogy, and the crazier and more useless it became, until in the end she pointed out that the goose’s egg was an aerodynamic shape. “Of course, eggs don’t fly, but you get my point”, she argued with all seriousness. My friend had to leave the room before he wet himself.

How much utter rubbish is spoken and written about leadership?  Like anything that humans barely understand but know is powerful, the topic of leadership attracts witch doctors, illusionists, and, yes, quacks.

Last year I remember two well respected sector leaders, on a panel, debating whether good leaders create followers, or whether they create other leaders. An interesting enough question, though hardly something to get hung up on.  Yet the two of them seemed bewitched; and both argued with apparently blind belief that their half-true phrase was definitely right and the other’s point was completely wrong. When a member of the audience suggested from the floor that both views might be right in different circumstances, the two panellists acted as though they’d been slapped across the face, and then proceeded to agree with each other that the questioner “didn’t understand the issue”. Another example of sensible people losing the plot when talking about leadership.

To keep the witch doctors and craziness in check, I think we need meaningful conversations amongst practitioners on the ground; practical, common sense sharing and learning about how leadership feels, and how we can make it work for us and our organisations.

It doesn’t matter where those conversations happen as long as they are meaningful and reflective.  I’m not anti-theory. I’m with Kurt Lewin that “there’s nothing so practical as a good theory”. But we need to spot the difference between useful theory (itself grounded in real practice) and the clever sounding but ultimately shallow rhetorics and quotes that surround the topic of leadership.

Leadership matters too much to be left to the witch doctors and their goose eggs.  One place to have these conversations is the innovative Barclays-NCVO Leadership Development Programme that runs in London, Leeds and Birmingham. It blends good theory and good practice and helps develop your skills and self-understanding. If you’re interested, why not have a gander?

Dr Richard Piper, Head of Consultancy and Innovation, NCVO