I’m going to rant a bit about leadership platitudes. I search the web from time to time in search of new and exciting information about leadership and life. In the leadership space I am constantly amazed at the repetition of same things over and over again. Is it that we just don’t get it—and therefore need to be bombarded with the same old stuff? Or are the platitudes part of the problem?

I find myself wondering about the platitudes I consistently see.

• “Be a team player”
• “Vision is everything”
• “Followers ponder while visionary leaders take action”
• “Everyone can be a visionary leader”
• “Change is constant”
• “Authentic Leadership is all about trust and integrity”

While all true, perhaps, I wonder about the efficacy of offering these simple thoughts in a complex world.

So many thinkers and speakers are reducing leadership to a pithy phrase, a clever quote or a well-packaged story. Perhaps this falls on deaf ears because authentic leaders who are struggling with the content of their lives and feeling the weight of responsibility on their shoulders know that leadership is far more complex and change is far more difficult, such that it cannot be reduced. It is a process, above all else, that requires one to be present in the moment, find the magical elixir of interventions, offers, requests, guidance, facilitation and force needed to produce a shift. No set of homogenized phrases does justice to the challenge.

I find myself wondering about what I offer to leaders and whether it is any different. The only thing I can say at this moment is that I am committed to the inquiry. I’m not so quick to say: “oh, just be yourself,” or “you need a vision”, or “tell the truth; it always is the best way,” as I used to be in my younger years. I yearn for a deeper exploration within myself and my clients where the question and the exploration of what is needed, is richly contoured and where solutions are born out of deep reflection and discovery. I find it is far more important to seek and find the right places within which to find one’s leadership than to quickly offer something that seems on the surface to be appealing.

What if we threw out everything we know about leadership and wondered anew? Might we find something different, and perhaps might that difference make a difference?