No other country in the world is so obsessed with the topic of Leadership - in business, government, civil society and the military - as is the USA: and it wants the world to follow its lead. You can now get US-inspired MBAs on every continent, while the US government, authoritarian billionaires, and right-wing foundations put hundreds of millions of dollars a year into US-style programmes of leadership and leader development all around the world.
Yet, over the decades, the USA's authoritarian leaders and command and control leadership models have failed miserably and, in many cases, criminally, with disastrous consequences for millions of its citizens at home and many other countries.
Before the current ecological, economic and security crises, high-flying American leaders have led their followers into many ignominious failures and toxic scandals: Vietnam, Savings and Loan, Michael Milliken, the collapse of the Asian and Argentinian economies, Worldcom, Enron, 9/11, New Orleans, Iraq, sub-prime mortgages, Bernie Madoff, the US systems of education and health care, the denial of global warming, and much, much more.
By contrast, it is hard to find instances of the successful deployment of American leadership in any field of human endeavour.
This thread will explore what has gone wrong and why and what US leaders and citizens can to to remedy the situation.
