Professionalizing Leadership

Barbara Kellerman

Takes a hard look at our implicit if not explicit claim that learning how to lead is quick and easy -done in a course or a workshop or an executive program, in a week or a weekend or a term or a year
Provides a bold alternative by asserting that leadership must become a profession - like medicine and law
Makes an all-important distinction among leadership education, leadership training, and leadership development
Draws on the military - the only major American institution that can "legitimately claim" to teach how to lead - for information and ideas on how to do it right
Provides a lucid template for what it will take to transform leadership from dubious occupation to respectable profession

Professionalizing Leadership

Barbara Kellerman

Description

Over the last 40 years, the leadership industry has grown exponentially. Yet leadership education, training, and development still fall far short. Moreover, leaders are demeaned, degraded, and derided as they never were before. Why?

The problem is leadership has stayed stuck. It has remained an occupation instead of becoming a profession. Unlike medicine and law, leadership has no core curriculum considered essential. It has no widely agreed on metric, or criteria for qualification. And it has no professional association to oversee the conduct of its members or assure minimum standards. Professionalizing Leadership looks to a past in which learning to lead was the most important of eruditions. It looks to a present in which learning to lead is as effortless as ubiquitous. And it looks to a future in which learning to be a leader might look different altogether - it might resemble the far more rigorous process of learning to be a doctor or a lawyer. As it stands now, the military is the only major American institution that gets it right. It assumes leadership is a profession that requires those who practice it to be taught in accordance with high professional standards. Barbara Kellerman draws on the military experience specifically to develop a template for learning how to lead generally.

Leadership in the first quarter of the present century is different from what it was even in the last quarter of the past century - which is why leadership taught casually and carelessly should no longer suffice. Professionalizing Leadership addresses precisely the problem of how to prepare leaders in accordance with professional norms. It provides the template necessary for transforming leadership from dubious occupation to respectable profession.

Professionalizing Leadership

Barbara Kellerman

Introduction: Learning Leading - Lame Undertaking
PART I - BECOMING A LEADER
Chapter 1. Past
Chapter 2. Present
Chapter 3. Future
PART II - BEING A LEADER
Chapter 4. Occupation
Chapter 5. Profession
PART II - BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL
Chapter 6. Inclusion
Chapter 7. Evaluation
Chapter 8. Professionalization

Professionalizing Leadership

Barbara Kellerman

Author Information

Barbara Kellerman, James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School

Barbara Kellerman is the James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. (in political science) degrees from Yale University. She is author and editor of many books and articles on leadership and followership, and speaks to audiences all over the world. In 2015, 2016, and 2017 she was ranked by Global Gurus as # 13 among World's Top 30 Management Professionals, and in 2016 she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Leadership Association.

Professionalizing Leadership

Barbara Kellerman

Reviews and Awards

"Kellerman's work is exceptional and presents the manner in which the development of transforming leadership is thoughtful and valued." - T.M. Mckenzie, Gonzaga University, CHOICE

Professionalizing Leadership

Barbara Kellerman

From Our Blog

Professionalizing leadership - development

Learning to lead should consist of a certain sequence in a certain order. Like doctors and lawyers, and for that matter like preachers and teachers and truck drivers and hairdressers, leaders should first be educated, then trained, and then developed. Previously we have addressed leadership education and training. What finally is meant by leadership development? How are leaders developed ' as opposed to educated or trained?

Posted on July 7, 2018

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Professionalizing leadership ' training

Leadership is taught as casually and carelessly as ubiquitously. With few exceptions, the leadership industry sends the mistaken, misguided, and misleading message that leadership can be learned quickly and easily in, say, a course or a workshop; in a year or even a term. Which raises this question: What if leadership were conceived a profession instead of an occupation? What constitutes good leadership training?

Posted on May 1, 2018

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Professionalizing leadership ' education

"In the past, leadership and teaching how to lead were considered the most consequential of all human endeavors." Barbara Kellerman looks at three crucial areas of learning leadership; leadership education; leadership training; and leadership development. In this post, she discusses the importance of leadership education and how it should be approached and improved.

Posted on March 12, 2018

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