information about leadership may significantly reduce or even pre-
clude its effective use. Often our mind-set stands as an invisible
obstacle to innovation and learning and renders us informed but
not knowledgeable. To become more knowledgeable, we will have
to accelerate a process of self-examination and resist the tempta-
tion to seek simple answers.
This process is a difficult one. Even for the leader who is will-
ing to challenge his or her mind-set, the task can be daunting. We
simply don’t have good methods for challenging the way we think.
Without good methods, many leaders have opted not to explore
their own assumptions and have instead chosen to experiment with
behavioral models that are easy to understand and apply and give
them a greater sense of predictability and control. For many, these
approaches have represented a pragmatic solution to the question
of how they will upgrade leadership. Predictably, these methods
rarely engender meaningful improvement beyond a quick but fleet-
ing jolt in productivity.
We need look no further than the list of the most popular lead-
ership books on Amazon.com to see our addiction to easy, quick
answers. Three of the top twenty best sellers are More Than a Pink
Cadillac: Mary Kay, Inc.’s Nine Leadership Lessons; The One Minute
Manager Meets the Monkey; andLeadership Shock... and How to
Triumph over It: Eight Revolutionary Rules for Becoming a Powerful
and Exhilarated Leader,and all are given a rating of four or more
stars by readers.
At times in the past half-century, the arguments for reexamin-
ing our leadership thinking have been compelling. Douglas
McGregor made it his lifelong work to help leaders down a path of
self-examination and discovery.^1 Even though he was recognized as
the foremost thinker of his time, much of his message has been
misinterpreted or ignored.
McGregor realized the complexities involved in challenging
one’s own context for viewing leadership information and sug-
gested a number of methods to begin the process. He believed that
leaders might find it easier to examine their thinking if they had a
construct that could provide a comparison. He suggested Theory X
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