The leader's conundrum: A paradox of distortion

© 2016 selection and editorial material, Richard Bolden, Morgen Witzel and Nigel Linacre; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved.John Lawler and Jeff Gold argue that we confuse leaders with leadership. The consequent focus on the development of individual leaders creates a paradox of distortion. They offer what they call the leader's conundrum, which describes the process whereby senior leaders seek to control events and in so doing suffer a loss of control. Combining practice and theory, John Lawler brings his experience of helping business leaders plan and implement team alignment during points of transition, while Jeff Gold is Professor of Organisational Learning at Leeds Beckett University and has written extensively in this field