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Power Platitudes
Top 5 Clichés To Avoid in Leadership Content
The field is overflowing with truisms and vapid feel-good storytelling
Of all the topics I regularly write about, leadership is perhaps the most frustrating. The business world is rife with leaders convinced they have valuable insight to share. In my quest for smart and engaging interviewees, I’ve often found myself suffocating under a deluge of vapid books, articles and seminars on becoming a better leader.
Let me save you some time. Not every leader is a leadership expert.
Those who are can be hard to recognize, since being a successful leader does not guarantee — or even require — innovative or reproducible ideas. The first thing to look out for is red flags; indicators that a self-proclaimed leadership guru is more grifter than trailblazer.
To me, the biggest deal breaker is whether or not a content creator peddles leadership clichés.
Thinking around leadership has evolved throughout the digital age. We’re seeing genuine change in moving away from hierarchical organizational models with heavy information control, toward flatter models with better information sharing. This shift carries with it a new…
