If the leadership industry is to realize its promise and potential, it will have to evolve. It will have to become, like the rest of America, more inclusive.
We both spend our lives researching, teaching, and writing about leadership and agree with the conventional wisdom that leaders are important. Good leaders and bad leaders and the overwhelming importance of each have become a fixation, an obsession even. There are numberless leadership centers, institutes, and programs; courses, seminars, and workshops, experts, coaches, and gurus—all narrowly focused on leaders at the expense of everyone else, including their followers—confirming that point.