Episode notes
Barbara Kellerman, professor at Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government and the author of Why We Follow Leaders — and Why We Don't - has long argued that we have to look at leadership as a system; leaders, followers, and context. For any leader, there is at least one follower, she says.
Tom Bohinc's Prometheus Leadership System doesn't use the word "follower" — and that's not the only difference between the two approaches.
This is a first conversation between them — a primer, with follow-up sessions planned. Barbara uses position (authority, influence, power) as her distinguishing principle and Tom calls this "position-leader".
They agree more than they expected: that leadership resists mechanical definition, that the field has focused on the power position for too long, that context matters and so does choice. But listen past the agreement and the seams show.
None of it gets settled here. It isn't meant to. These are the fault-lines the work keeps returning to — and the conversation itself, two people of reasonable standing thinking in the open, turns out to be a small demonstration of the thing they're trying to describe.