Don't Follow Leaders

We are living in a post-leadership age. We don't need leaders, not in politics, not in business, not in our professions, not in our personal lives, and not in our homes. Leadership exists as a mask for the power hungry, and it is always manipulative and always anti-democratic.

Going further, author Colin Bower contends that the business leadership industry is comparable with pyramid schemes. He argues that the strategy of leadership - to influence people at a subliminal and therefore at an undetectable level - is fatal to individual autonomy. The so-called virtue of leadership is an inheritance from militaristic closed societies. It has no role to play in peace-loving, democratic open societies. Bower recommends that we tell those who set themselves up as our leaders to get lost. If we do so, he says, we take the first step toward becoming more authentic people ourselves, and toward building better and happier societies.  Don't Follow Leaders recognises no political ideology, and brings a wholly new topic to the global debate about the new kind of world in which we should want to live.

This is what Prince Mashele, Executive Director off the Centre for Politics and Research had to say about Bower's book: 'At a time when South Africa is facing the worst leadership crisis since 1994, Bower opens our eyes to see politicians as human beings, not as messiahs.'

Stephanie Vermeulen, author of EQ: Emotional Intelligence for Everyone & Stitched-up: Who fashions women's lives? was similarly impressed by Bower's thesis and wrote, 'Women striving for equality clamour for hierarchical positions but intelligence will only triumph when shrewd men and women initiate a systems overhaul that consigns leadership to the scrapheap of ideology.'

Dawie Roodt, Chief Economist at The Efficient Group, summarised it all by saying 'This is contrarian Bower at his best.'

If, after reading this book, you'd like to engage with author Colin Bower he can be reached at princealbertcolin@gmail.com.