heroic leadership

The true leader is essentially a hero - someone who does something outstanding. The appointed manager cannot compel hero worship. We admire heroic leaders too much sometimes, thus depending on them and disempowering ourselves. These days, heroic leadership is out and post-heroic is in. Still, one important question remains: Does heroic leadership have a place in organizations? If heroic leadership can add value, then managers need to learn which style to use and when. Lee Iacocca and Jack Welch were heroic leaders, strong characters with firm answers. However, recent financial scandals have cast doubt on the wisdom of granting so much power to any individual. Complexity has made it harder for one person to know it all anyway. The Level 5 leaders described by Jim Collins in Good to Great illustrate the post-heroic style: they possess the humility to involve others in developing new strategic.

Peter Drucker’s views Heroic Leadership interestingly, it was the same James Burns who introduced the concept of Heroic Leadership. But it wasn’t as some think. Perhaps misled by a misunderstanding of what the name represented, some have corrupted Burns’ concept of Heroic Leadership such that it has become the ultimate representative of the less desirable transactional type and for much that has gone wrong within organizations in recent years. Yet Burns introduced Heroic Leadership not as an example of transactional leadership, but as an example of the preferred transforming type.

Resources:

1) http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/leader_model_boje.htm#heroic

2)http://www.humanresourcesiq.com/business-strategies/columns/drucker-and-heroic-leadership/

3)http://www.newworldofwork.co.uk/2011/03/03/heroic-leadership-%E2%80%93-a-summary/

4)http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/leadership_styles.htm