A gallop through leadership
A gallop through leadership Author: Philip Beddows Originally published in The Boardroom Magazine: July 2008 With companies spending more than ever before on leadership development, Philip Beddows ask what qualities define great leadership – and whether heavy investment to nurture them is paying off A professor from one of the world’s leading business schools recently introduced the subject of leadership with the statistic that a Google search on ‘leadership’ resulted in approximately 200,000 references and, on Amazon, over 35,000 books. At the end of the talk, one of the audience asked: “If we accept the evidence of Amazon and Google that more has been written on leadership than ever before in history, and that more money is being invested in teaching and developing leadership in business schools and via talent management programmes in organisations, are we developing better leaders?” The professor had no answer. When I posed the same question to a number of business