I recently discovered an interesting blog called Managing Leadership, by Jim Stroup. His last several posts have been a series that is challenging the notion that there is some kind of distinct leadership personality, that is made up of lists of competencies and is somehow more special than the personalities of the rest of us.

The most recent entry challenges the notion that leaders bring particularly unique talents to positions of authority

As Peter Drucker insisted, we need to build organizations that can be run by ordinary men and women of mortal mien. This is done by designing organizational structures and procedures that can be managed by men and women who have mastered a common set of practices and skills.

In such organizations, leaders don’t provide vision and issue orders to awe-struck morons. Rather, ordinary, and perfectly competent, workers and managers shoulder the work, figure it out, and get it done. Moreover, they professionalize the process so that the next person in line can pick up where they leave off and keep going, improving, and contributing to the whole.

The implication inherent in the modern leadership movement’s teachings about what a leader is and how to be one is that leaders bring special abilities and skills to organizations which otherwise lack – and which desperately need – them. This is an indictment of the managers and members of those organizations which won’t hold up.

I keep going back to Peter Senge’s definition of leadership (capacity within the system to shape the future) and my argument that leadership and authority are two different things. I agree with Jim that we need to change the conversation about these topics.