[note background=”#F6F6F6″] This is a guest post by Professor Fernando Pargas, the author of the book Ending the Male Leadership Myth. He teaches management at James Madison University in Virginia. His specialties are international management, interpersonal skills and organizational behavior. You may connect with Professor Pargas on Google+. [/note]

Leadership, it’s such a powerful, yet overly used word in our society.  We teach it in universities, not only as content in a business class, but entire semesters and workshops are dedicated to it. 

Politicians have adopted it for their own needs: they criticize their opponent for his/her lack of “leadership” and bill themselves as great leaders.  We men are particularly fond of the word; it was men who came to believe that simply by being male, we had a birth given right to it.

It was easy to research for my latest book examples of the use and misuse, understanding and misunderstanding of leadership, but it was harder to realize how much I too had bought into the misnomer of leadership.  I wrote there that as an international executive in charge of establishing, opening, joint venturing or managing businesses around the world, I experienced this blind faith in leadership first-hand.

Continue Reading…