Few concepts have received as much general attention in the last two decades as leadership. If you enter the word leadership in search engine of the largest virtual bookshop , you will find issue with more than one hundred thousand titles. To this enormous dimension we should add a rich multiplicity of works that, while dealing with the same reality to which we refer with the aforementioned concept, do not, however, use this word directly. Suffice it as a button of sample a large number of classical works on ethical and political excellence.

When I ask attendees of my programs at IESE Business School at the University of Navarra, after logging on to bookshop Amazon.com via the Internet, the reasons for such success publishing house, they are all over the place. For example: "It's not clear what leadership is all about; there are as many theories as there are authors; there's a lot of hot air; it's fashionable; it's easy to write about leadership; it makes money" and a long etcetera of similar opinions that coincide in being critical of the phenomenon, to which, moreover, they deny a scientific approach in the sense of rigorousness. Meanwhile, they acknowledge a treatment ranging from esoteric to banal, superficial and with little theoretical foundation.

On the other hand, there are many who believe that leadership refers to something important for the work of individuals, organizations, countries or families; that it can be approached from multiple points of view; that it is necessary for professional progress; that it is difficult to elaborate a comprehensive theory and internship simultaneously; that it describes a multifaceted and, in some aspects, changing reality, while in others essential features persist over time.

"Leaders are not born, nor are they made of a special dough with a singular DNA."

What is not leadership?

Leadership is not something esoteric, a rare skill , a set of behaviors specific to a few and inaccessible to the majority. It is not just any raw subject , like the marble in which Leonardo da Vinci saw the sculpture already made, and whose creative work simply consisted of extracting what was already bidding to appear.
Leaders are not born or made of a special dough, with a singular DNA. Although they may go through processes of development staff and professional, they do not grow as leaders, but are confirmed or fail. Those who are good are because they already had potential; and those who are not are because they either failed or lacked what only birth can provide.
Nor does leadership exist exclusively at the top of organizations, from where the leader controls, directs, encourages, influences and leads. It should not be forgotten that the main ingredient to create a star is the rest of the team.
Leadership is not a charisma: a gift that some people have to seduce others, who become their followers. It is time to overcome as obsolete and harmful a conception of leadership that at best should be left for bad movies.