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In This Episode:
Part two of our look at leadership as a buzzword. The last episode covered why it’s a problem. This one covers how it got this way, from hundreds of competing definitions to relativism, title inflation, and a leadership training industry that keeps getting paid whether or not it actually works.
What You’ll Learn
- Why having hundreds, or by some counts over a thousand, competing definitions of leadership makes the buzzword problem worse, and why most existing definitions describe the “how” instead of the “what”
- How relativism and the push toward “authentic” leadership have turned leadership into something self-focused instead of something built on effectiveness and serving other people
- What the Leadership Industrial Complex is, and why billions spent on leadership training hasn’t fixed the trust and engagement problems it’s supposed to solve
- Why leadership training so often gets judged on whether people liked it, not on whether their behavior actually changed months later
- How title inflation keeps feeding the confusion over what leadership really is
- Why vague job descriptions and interview questions about “demonstrating leadership” make it harder to hire people who are genuinely good at it
- How engagement driven social media keeps rewarding leadership advice that feels good over advice that’s actually true
Resources Mentioned
- Peter Northouse’s definition of leadership (paraphrased in this episode)
- Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2026 (Engagement stats)
- Leadership Training Market Size
- 650 definitions
- Books about the leadership industrial complex: One of them was Leadership BS. It has some good points, but I disagree with some of the overall conclusions he makes.
Transcript
Why Leadership Became a Buzzword
Welcome to the Real Truth About Leadership, where we debunk myths and teach what works. My name is Thomas Harris.
In the last episode, we talked about how leadership has become a buzzword and the dangers with that, why that’s an issue. In this episode, I want to talk about the why it has become a buzzword.
Like, what are the conditions, what led to it being where we’re at now? And so we’re going to go over different parts of that, and then in the next episode, we’ll talk about things we can do about it.
The Lack of a Clear Definition
One of the big reasons is something that really goes well with it being a buzzword is that there isn’t that clear definition that people say, “Yes, this is leadership, no it’s not.” Because sometimes it’s seen in so many different ways.
In fact, one study or one thing I was looking at, one article, they were talking about how one said there’s 1,400 different definitions of the word leader and leadership, which is insane. And another one talked about that there’s 650 existing leadership definitions that they found when they were looking at it, and that most of those have to do with the “how” instead of the “what.”
Confusing the “How” with the “What”
And that made me think because first, there’s sometimes people equate leadership with, of course, the leadership team, like the person in charge—the CEO, the vice presidents, they’re the executive, that’s leadership and everybody else is management. Or they see leadership as the visionary, or or things like that.
They see it as the charismatic leader, whatever it is. But when I see the “how,” that reminds me of how I often see leadership defined.
So sometimes people will say, “Oh, leadership is making decisions. Leadership is building relationships.” And these are to a degree good things.
Like, you do want to build relationships through people. You do want to make decisions, but you also want to empower others to make decisions.
But these are the “how,” right? They’re not like leadership isn’t decision-making; decision-making is decision-making.
And if you define leadership as decision-making, you may think you’re supposed to make all the decisions, which as a leader, you’re not. Generally, you want to pass decision-making down.
And if you define leadership as just building relationships, well you may have a lot of good relationships, but when your business fails because you didn’t do anything because you’re just building relationships, well that’s not helpful, right? So the “how” is not the “what.”
Like, what is leadership? And we talked about that last time.
A Definition Worth Standardizing On
And I just say all this to say there is a lot of confusion of what leadership is. And people try to define it in many ways.
And the definition that I talk about and that I teach, and that’s very similar to others that people would probably consider more authority people—the the definition, of course, the one I’ve kind of paraphrased, comes from Peter Northouse, and again others are similar: it’s the process of guiding people toward the accomplishment of a goal through influence.
Or the short version is just guiding people somewhere through influence. And if we all came around as “this is a definition, this is the definition that we follow,” that would help us when it comes to leadership being a buzzword.
And one reason I like that version that Peter Northouse did and that paraphrase version I’d use is because it’s not also reactionary. Because I also see some things similar to that, but they’ve people have faced bad leaders, authoritarian leaders, so they kind of swing the pendulum far.
Relativism and “Authentic” Leadership
Anyway, one big reason: the poor definitions, a lack of definition. Another big reason that I find especially today is relativism.
And in our society for many, there’s a lack of objective truth. It’s whatever truth fits you is you, and that’s okay.
And I see that as as having infected leadership. Because that’s a lot of the mentality today: talk about being authentic, talking about discovering your style.
And in many ways leadership, in many cases, has become narcissistic. It’s about you, it’s about what feels good to you, you quote-unquote being authentic, you doing your thing, finding your style, finding your philosophy and doing it.
But that’s not what leadership is. Leadership is about what the need is and being effective.
It’s about serving, it’s about the motive of serving and getting your people toward that goal, right? Like if leadership is guiding people somewhere, your job is to get those people there.
And it’s doing those things to do that. It’s not about what feels good to you or what feels quote-unquote authentic; it’s about doing what’s effective.
And truth is, anytime you’re learning something new, anytime you’re doing a skill you may not be good at, it’s not going to feel authentic or good because you’re learning it and it’s new. But that’s part of life.
The Contradiction in “Live Your Values”
And truth is, when you think about this—and this is a whole another topic, I don’t remember if I did an episode on this or not, I know I have an article on it that I’m probably going to update soon too, hopefully—is like with “authentic,” a lot of the websites out there, or at least some of the ones I’ve seen, even some authority sites, they talk about authenticity, being an “authentic leader.”
And they say, “Live your values.” And it’s funny because they say you should live your values because that’s how people trust you because you’re living your values.
Which I’m thinking, well if your value’s being a jerk or, you know, being again narcissistic or whatever, do you think people are going to respect you just because, “Well, he’s a jerk but at least he’s being authentic about it”? You know, no.
But they never talk about the negative values, right? But they say all that—live your values—but then they often say, “Well, you live your values, but all authentic leaders are this, this, this, and this.”
And I’m thinking, okay, you can’t have both. Like you just prescribed something that makes someone a good leader that you think makes someone a good leader.
Leadership as a Skill, Not a Style
Anyway, there’s this whole idea that leadership is whatever feels good to you. “How do you like to”—I’ve seen posts—”How do you like to lead?” “What’s your style?” and you’re focusing on you and your style, and that’s again not what leadership’s about.
It’s a skill based on principles, and based on the principles, you adjust based on the situation, kind of like building a house: you have the principle foundations that make a good construction and then you adjust based on it.
Or even something like soccer: there’s, you know, certain principles of what makes a you effective, things you need to learn, skills, and then you adjust based on the situation and the need, right?
And when we think everything’s okay because it’s “you,” then we get a lot of ineffective and bad leadership because a lot of people’s “you” is not good, it’s harmful and hurtful. So leadership isn’t anything we want it to be.
There’s things that make it good and not good.
The Leadership Industrial Complex
Another reason is the Leadership Industrial Complex. And I’ve read a couple of books recently kind of related to this topic or they use this as a starting ground for their book, and a lot of disillusionment about it.
And I’ve seen some articles about it. And when you think about the industrial leadership complex, you have billions of dollars spent on leadership training.
And I don’t have an accurate number because when I’ve looked it up, I’ve seen different numbers in different places. I know it’s in the billions at least from everything I’ve seen, but how much I’ve seen such variance I can’t really say.
But a lot of money is spent on leadership training. And you have from higher ed and industry with all the certificates and degrees and stuff.
Then you have conferences, you have people the consultation companies, coaching companies, and so on.
Money Spent, Trust Lost
And the big disillusionment about it is all this money spent, yet we still have such poor leadership. There’s still such a lack of trust in leaders.
Like when you look at the studies: lack of trust, people quitting because of their bosses and managers. You look at the engagement rate of employees from Gallup, for example, their studies—and I believe worldwide, the last one I saw was in the low 20s of how many employees were engaged.
And then I think in the US it was in the low 30s, like around 32-33% engaged. And the rest not engaged.
That’s not a good thing. And then you have the statistics of stats of the lack of trust.
You have things like the Great Resignation, all these things that show that leadership isn’t well. You also have, you know, when you have the company saying that leadership development is like one of the big issues they have in their companies.
Despite all the money spent, things aren’t working well.
Why the System Doesn’t Change
And there I think there’s different reasons for that: some of it is what’s being taught, the training, the incentives for when people try to apply what they learn, things of that nature.
Someone told me a long time ago when I talked about leadership and what makes a good leader and how these companies aren’t following it, and they told me to think about the fact that the people in those leadership positions at those companies don’t benefit from changing.
They benefit from the system working as it is. And if you look at the industrial complex, the leadership complex, many of the arguments I’ve seen from people who are disillusioned by it are that this thing, this system works for many of those people who make their money off the leadership today.
Because they make those billions of dollars and we’re still not getting good leadership, so more and more money is spent on trying to do it on things that apparently the way it’s done or for different reasons isn’t working.
Poor Teaching and Training
And with the industrial complex, part of the problem like I talked about is what’s being trained and taught. And I think that’s part of the issue and there’s other issues with that as well.
But that’s kind of part of the issue too, is that the incentive can be to keep it the same way it is now because some people are benefiting from it.
And tied to that, another reason is poor teaching and training. And we kind of just mentioned that, but a lot of what is taught is not accurate.
Often it’s personality-based, or it’s about what feels good to you, what’s your style—kind of the narcissistic thing we’ve talked about before. And they may focus on philosophies and theories versus the skill and what you need to do to lead.
What Gets Rewarded Gets Repeated
Also think about it this way: when people are looking for a leadership speaker, often what they’re looking for is inspiration and motivation versus teaching this is what you need to do to lead well.
And so what gets rewarded gets repeated. And if people just love inspiration/motivation even if it doesn’t really help them become better leaders, that’s what’s going to keep happening.
Also, from some of the things I was reading in those books, it was talking about how often what is graded when it comes to the training is people’s responses to the training itself, like did they like the training? And if they liked it, then it was a good training, right?
Or what was their response to it? And often the grading from what they were saying was not on if the training was effective that three months down the road there was a change.
Does that kind of make sense? And so a lot of times things are reinforced because people like it because it feels good or motivational, not necessarily because it helped them.
Title Inflation
Another reason that we talked about before in the last episode is title inflation. How people are moved up in a position that’s labeled leadership somehow whether they actually lead people.
And that, of course, helps us increase and helps create the issue we have with it being a buzzword because of all the other issues mixed with it, some of which we talked about before.
Content Inflation
And then you have content inflation like we talked about before. Anybody can post about leadership, right?
And then the system, the algorithm rewards engagement, not truth. And so the things that not necessarily aren’t true, but the things that people like to follow or like and click and share, those are the things that are repeated.
And because those are the things that are engaged, the things that get the likes, then people want to keep producing that content because they want to keep getting the likes. And then you combine that with the relativism we talked about, and then leadership can be almost anything as long as it gets likes.
Job Descriptions, Interviews, and Hiring
And then we have job descriptions, interviews, and the hiring process. And part of again is the lack of definition.
And all of it mixes together. Because with the lack of clear definition of leadership, and when the organization itself doesn’t have a clear definition of what they mean by leadership, then when they’re trying to hire for leadership, how do they know what they’re looking for?
So it’s easy to hire people who aren’t effective. Or they may be thinking this is leadership or different people have different definitions of leadership, and it hurts that hiring.
Or they have things in the job descriptions like “Must demonstrate leadership.” But with that being so vague, what does that even mean?
And in interviews, it can be similar too because they ask about certain things, or their definition of leadership’s different or off, so they ask questions related to what they think or are calling leadership even though it’s not.
And they end up hiring the wrong people, or people who actually know leadership, they answer appropriately, but the people who are interviewing don’t have an understanding of it, so they don’t hire the person because of their misunderstanding.
Closing Thoughts
I think you kind of get what I’m saying. When you don’t have that clear definition, it’s going to hurt and then perpetuate the issue.
Those are some of the reasons why leadership has become a buzzword and things that perpetuate it. I know some of those interlink, but I hope it helps kind of give a clear picture of it.
And in the next episode, we’re going to talk about what we can do about it. See you next time.