Unlearning Leadership by Dr Richard Claydon.

A decade ago, you would have found me sitting at a small white desk a the back corner of an academic office scratching my head about how I was going to teach the Leadership MBA Module I’d just inherited from the previous incumbent.

The text book proudly announced all of its theories had been verified by research and data that was less than seven years old.

Problem was, I hadn’t read any of it in my research. Even worse, what I was reading made very little sense to me. It didn’t resonate with anything I’d previously encountered in research on high performance in complex conditions (which is a reasonable definition of effective leadership).

I cobbled together a program that I was willing to teach, and then launched myself into an investigation into leadership theory that eventually consumed my thinking.

In this DD, I am going to cover the three theories that I think should be stripped out of leadership development as they have no empirical basis.

• Leadership Styles - your fixed, personal leadership style doesn’t seem to make a blind bit of difference to organisational performance
• Achievement Drive - despite being everywhere in the leadership literature, it seems like a high need for self-achievement predicts horrible leadership performance
• Leadership Traits - there are some that predict effective leadership performance - sadly, not those promoted by leadership studies

You be the judge. Should I include these in my programs as unteaching content, or just leave them out and focus on what does work?

Dr Richard Claydon is the co-founder of EQ Lab, and the designer of the Future of Leadership module at Macquarie Business School’s Global MBA Program (ranked #6 globally by CEO Magazine).

He was awarded the highest achievable marks for a Ph.D in behavioural science. A Harvard Top-200 Management expert and business columnists for the Guardian newspaper have described this research as “a touchstone for the future work in management and organisation”, “outstanding in daring imagination” and “at the forefront of modern discussion and debate.”

Richard is a tier one tennis player, have coached tennis professionally, and also designed the tactics creator for the multi award-winning and world-leading management simulation, Football Manager.