What would business do without its faddish buzzwords? Is the
bottom-line really so boring? Transformational leadership was once in vague,
with little actual attention to raising subordinates’ moral compasses. Decades
later, everything was about drivers—a
power-aggrandized version of cause. Then
consultants, dreaming perhaps of their kids’ little league, turned the profession
into an analogy and suddenly became coaches.
One difference is of course that most actual coaches have been players in their
respective sports, whereas how many leadership coaches have been business
executives or sat on a board? “Leadership assistant” is better, if in-house, otherwise "leadership adviser," assuming sufficient study or experience in leadership. Then amidst
global warming and activist stockholders, “E.S.G.” could be heard in boardrooms with the frequency of a trope.[1]
Must business be led by a herd-mentality? Such leadership is internally
inconsistent, for leaders are by definition ahead of the crowd, leading it rather
than squawking like lemmings. In the case of E.S.G., which stands for “environmental,
social, and governance,” the chatter eclipses recognition of the befuddled condition
of the combo. With such different things in the mix, it is no wonder that a study
attempting to quantify E.S.G. came up with mixed results. So the metric and purportedly related financial performance may not be very useful after all.
The full essay is at "E.S.G. in the Boardroom."
