There’s a new version of The Lost Arts of Leadership now available on our Articles page. This presentation, originally created for the 2022 Kanban Global Summit in San Diego, reveals several techniques that are seldom taught in management or leadership courses but which effective* leaders have been using, wittingly or otherwise, down through history. They are available to you, with a little practice and imagination.
I inserted a new slide 5, documenting that ordering people back to the office is not leadership. It’s micromanagement, and it gives talented people one more reason to consider their options.
It’s important to keep in mind that top talent is jumping ship even in an environment of mass layoffs in the tech industry.
The accompanying Notes, also on the Articles page, contain what I would have said during the presentation if I had had a couple more hours to give it. They provide commentary, additional data, source citations, suggestions for further inquiry, and an occasional snarky remark.
Here is a YouTube video of me giving the original version of this presentation in August 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGcSg-gEFhA&t=9s I strongly suggest that you carefully study the Penn and Teller video on the original slide 15 (now slide 16) starting at 15:40. It doesn’t play on the original version of the presentation linked above, but you can watch it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo5BRAKvJoA What they’re illustrating is a very powerful technique for manipulating orientation. One way to put it is that they’re operating inside their audiences’ OODA loops, Boyd’s favorite magic technique.
*”Effective” doesn’t mean that you’ll like them.
Slightly East of New 
Great stuff, as always.
But after a lifetime of working in groups – public, business, and volunteer – I believe we need to work on being good followers.
Bad followers are ubiquitous in our America. Not so much in business, where leaders have sticks to force obedience. But modern America has a large fraction of people with great self-esteem (the California Committee to Boost Self-esteem is one of history’s great successes). Such people often feel themselves well suited to lead – but in my experience they usually don’t want the responsibility of leadership (I told my Scout troop’s adults that leadership means above all an assumption of responsibility).
No surprise, since schools and youth organizations are obsessed with training leaders. Everybody is taught that they should be leaders. Seldom is a word said about being good team players.
Worse, training to run teams is usually expressly anti-leadership – exacerbating the above problems.
Thanks, Larry — very important points. Chet