Warren Bennis includes a chapter in his book, Why Leaders Can't Lead, entitled The Pornography of Leadership. Within the four pages, he warns against a type of leadership that one can only consider pornographic. It is leadership that is "distant, remote, calculated, vicarious...too far from the classroom, from the munitions plant, from the battlefield, from the people, from love."
He speaks of leadership that is removed from the real life of people and exists in a realm that is concerned with the mechanics of everything moreso than the humanity of everything. He says,
What's important, it seems to me, is the capacity to see things in wide perspective, to receive impressions and gain experiences directly, not vicariously, impressions that point beyond the experiences and data themselves - continuity and purpose.
At the end of the chapter he writes,
Our leaders must reacquaint themselves with the world, must explore in the presence of others, must reach out and touch the people they presume to lead, and must, occasionally at least, risk making a mistake rather than doing nothing. In the meantime, they will continue to sound as if they were talking through a plate-glass window - distant, isolated, removed from the complex lives of living people.
The title of the chapter is provocative, the message of the chapter is convicting. Once again, I'm reminded that having a position of leadership doesn't make one a leader. It is when one engages and influences the lives of people that real leadership begins.
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