Posts Tagged ‘Value based leadership’
Buzzword-based Leadership
Taken from http://www.davishtaylor.com/
Leaders and managers subscribing to Value(s)-based Leadership are a recent annoying trend in Scandinavian media. While the philosophy itself probably has old roots – my guess is Humanistic Psychology, Human Potential groups and a variety of self-help and human resource approaches (I have absolutely no knowledge of management theory, and Wikipedia doesn’t help) – it is a newly discovered disturbing presence on my TV-screen. Here hordes of nice people blur the distinction between work, life and (secularized) spirituality with buzzwords chosen to represent the core values of their corporation: respect, competence, creativity… here is a list from About.com:
(…) ambition, competency, individuality, equality, integrity, service, responsibility, accuracy, respect, dedication, diversity, improvement, enjoyment/fun, loyalty, credibility, honesty, innovativeness, teamwork, excellence, accountability, empowerment, quality, efficiency, dignity, collaboration, stewardship, empathy, accomplishment, courage, wisdom, independence, security, challenge, influence, learning, compassion, friendliness, discipline/order, generosity, persistency,optimism, dependability, flexibility (…)
The problem with this approach is two-fold. First of all, they are platitudes, the very essence of bullshit bingo: Nobody in their right mind would disagree with courage, wisdom and independence? Or loyalty, credibility and honesty? I understand the motivating intentions behind this use of words; positive thinking is an optimistic and at times working approach. But looking at most of the internet websites I googled, values seem to be filled with power, transforming lazy peoploids into capitalist übermensch and leaders into visionary bodhisattvas.
