More than 4000 books on leadership are available from online retailer Amazon. Leadership is a hot topic. A particular favourite of authors is to pick the lessons of leadership from the great men (and women) of history.
There are dozens of works about the obvious contenders in the leadership stakes, usually those who governed in times of war -- such as Washington, Lincoln and Churchill. Military leaders themselves figure prominently and readers can learn the leadership secrets of everyone from Alexander the Great, and Attila the Hun, to Ulysses S. Grant and Douglas MacArthur.
For those seeking a gentler, kinder type of leadership there are descriptions of the management methods of Gandhi, and Martin Luther King jnr, and even Florence Nightingale. The ultimate example of a book in this category is Jesus CEO. Meanwhile, there are few retired chief executives of Fortune 500 companies who haven't committed their thoughts about leadership to paper. And then of course there are the books that rejoice in titles such as Horses never lie: The heart of passive leadership.
Studies of leadership approach the topic in a huge variety of ways but they all have one thing in common -- every one of them is about leadership. Leadership might be an elusive concept, leaders might come in all shapes and sizes, and there are as many different styles of leadership as personality types -- but you know leadership when you see it.
Those in business are more comfortable with the concept of leadership than are politicians. CEOs can shape the direction, and therefore the success of their own companies. By comparison the power of politicians over their own parties is more limited. The history and philosophy of a political party circumscribes what a political leader can do, as does the fact that at their core political parties are voluntary organisations.
For many politicians good politics is about having good policies. Good leadership comes a distant second. The media encourages this attitude that puts policy above leadership. Commentators complain that the voting public doesn't pay enough attention to the issues. Journalists regularly lament the rise in this country of American-inspired presidential campaigning whereby political parties attempt to focus the attention of the electorate exclusively on their respective leaders.
The reason that parties adopt such personality-driven strategies is not because they don't have policies. At any state or federal election there will be dozens of policies from the parties. Whether or not those policies are any good is a different question, but it is impossible to argue that there is an absence of policy.
Political parties shape their campaigns around their leaders in response to the demands of an electorate that wants to know who it is voting for.
To most voters, personality is more important than policy or politics. Voters aren't stupid. There's a reason they think this way. Politics and the events that determine politics are unpredictable -- and voters know this. In two days it will be the fifth anniversary of an event that few Australians would ever have contemplated the possibility of. Even fewer would have imagined the potential of their country being "at war" in 2006.
Voters assess the personality of their political leaders in order to make a judgement about how their leaders will react to the unpredictable and the unforeseen. Voters need to be able to trust their political leaders. The focus on personality is not the bane of Australian politics that it is often made out to be, and in fact it is an essential component of politics.
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie is better than most at personality politics. He has taken presidential campaigning to new heights. His whole term of office has been one long photo opportunity. If there's a problem he'll fix it -- personally. And the more money he can spend on a problem the better. Any semblance of a commitment to structural reform has been abandoned in favour of financial solutions that come courtesy of a resources boom and ever-growing GST revenues.
No one is quite sure what Labor's policies are, but it doesn't seem to matter because Queenslanders like Beattie as a leader. Regardless of the outcome of the state election tomorrow, this is the lesson from Queensland for federal Labor, and the coalition parties in opposition in the states and territories.
A good leader with bad policies will beat a bad leader with good policies every time.
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