# n-ethno: leadership obsession: “The West Wing” vs “House of Cards”

<< In “Leadership BS” a book published last year, Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, identifies five virtues that are almost universally praised by popular leadership writers—modesty, authenticity, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and selflessness—and argues that most real-world leaders ignore these virtues. (If anything, they tend to be narcissistic, back-stabbing, self-promoting shape-shifters.) To Pfeffer, the leadership industry is Orwellian. Its cumulative effect is to obscure the degree to which companies are poorly and selfishly run for the benefit of the powerful people in charge. That’s why bosses spend billions on leadership seminars: they make corporate life look like “The West Wing,” even though, in reality, it’s more like “House of Cards.” >>

Joshua Rothman. Shut Up and Sit Down
Why the leadership industry rules.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/our-dangerous-leadership-obsession

https://mobile.twitter.com/NewYorker/status/702359780438974464