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Three Myths of Leadership

Martha Miser

Aduro Consulting

My husband likes to poke fun at my profession. He insists that if you put the word leadership into the title of any publication, it will immediately go to the top of the best-seller list. “Leadership for Losers,” he says, “it’s a slam dunk! Write it, and we can retire on the profits!”

Like any good joke, my husband’s contains more than an ounce of truth. In fact, he’s identified a very real issue: Leadership is a booming industry. And apparently everyone is an expert on leadership. With this in mind, we need to ask ourselves a few critical questions: Exactly what are we selling? For whose benefit? And toward what end?

The Archive

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Articles on leadership, organizational change, and human development, written for leaders doing meaningful work.

Essential Framework

10 Insights From the Field

After decades of working with leaders and organizations, Martha Miser distilled these ten essential insights. They represent the core of what we've learned about leadership, change, and building more human organizations.

10 insightsExplore

Three Myths of Change

Author and mythologist Betty Sue Flowers says that a myth is a belief or story that we've stopped questioning. Although myths are neither inherently good nor bad, when we accept a myth as truth, we develop a blind spot - a learned cluelessness - about that topic.

7 min readRead

Do Not Obey in Advance: Making Space for Dissent in Organizations

We live in an unsettling time: an age of unrest and uncertainty, where the mood of the moment teeters between visions of hope and ominous clouds of darkness. Given this climate, many people have begun to look for solutions that will bring stability to their lives.

15 min readRead

Leadership: Purposes, Perils and Possibilities

In my early 20s, I landed my first professional role as an entry-level budget analyst in a mid-sized New England city. City Hall was a rough and tumble environment where strength, directness, political cunning, and a certain facility with profanity were valued.

11 min readRead

Running on Empty: Fatigue and the Future of Work

"It's crazy here," he said to me. "I'm insanely busy. It's just been wild." Sound familiar? Many of my client meetings start this way, with a litany of the nearly impossible demands of work and home.

9 min readRead

Brains and Buddha

Brain research is all the rage these days. Everywhere I look, I see articles and books about neuropsychology and other branches of neuroscience that are unlocking the mysteries of the human brain.

7 min readRead

Help! We're Trapped in an Industrial Mindset and Can't Get Out!

I'm a very organized person. I love to plan, whether it's a monthly budget, a summer vacation, a meeting agenda, or my to-do list for tomorrow. Most days my penchant for planning is useful - it helps me be efficient, responsible, and reliable.

9 min readRead

The Case for Compassion

Compassion fatigue. We've known for years that overexposure to trauma can produce hopelessness and cynicism in caregivers, educators, and first responders. In 2012, journalist Nicholas Kristof extended this notion to the broader public.

9 min readRead

Ambassadors of Trust

Years ago I worked with a CEO who would bemoan the inability of his staff to see beyond their own function, project, or individual need. Exasperated, he'd say, "I'd give anything to have people who could work together for the greater good of the company."

9 min readRead

Today's Corporate Mystic

Years ago I read a book called The Corporate Mystic: A Guidebook for Visionaries with Their Feet on the Ground. Written at a time when narratives about hard-driving CEOs were popular, this book was never destined to be a best seller.

10 min readRead

Metaphors for Change: Finding Balance in a Polarized World, Part 1

"Where you stand depends on where you sit." It's been more than 40 years since I first heard these words. It was a warm summer day in Syracuse, New York, and I was sitting in a large auditorium on the first day of my master's program.

9 min readRead

Metaphors for Change: Finding Balance in a Polarized World, Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed the prevalence of win-lose ways of thinking and speaking and how they create polarization and conflict across the spectrum of human systems. Still, I would suggest that people are not irrevocably stuck in a given point of view.

12 min readRead

Lessons from Frederick

I kept thinking about Frederick. To be honest, I tried to write another article, but it was boring. And that damn mouse kept creeping into my head and clamoring for attention – insisting he had something to say to the house-bound about leadership and beauty and poetry.

7 min readRead

All Ears: The Gift of the Introvert

To this day, I love being alone in my internal world. It's not that I'm unsociable. It's just that I long for the moments when I'm entirely with myself, when I no longer have to translate what's in my head.

9 min readRead

Exploring Leadership

Ideas thatchallenge business as usual.

Subscribe for new articles.

Three Myths of Leadership

More to explore.

10 Insights From the Field

Three Myths of Change

Do Not Obey in Advance: Making Space for Dissent in Organizations

Leadership: Purposes, Perils and Possibilities

Running on Empty: Fatigue and the Future of Work

Brains and Buddha

Help! We're Trapped in an Industrial Mindset and Can't Get Out!

The Case for Compassion

Ambassadors of Trust

Today's Corporate Mystic

Metaphors for Change: Finding Balance in a Polarized World, Part 1

Metaphors for Change: Finding Balance in a Polarized World, Part 2

Lessons from Frederick

All Ears: The Gift of the Introvert

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Ideas that
challenge business as usual.