Very few business people have any idea what the word leadership actually means or how to use it effectively to help their organization change.
Sorry, leaders, you have been thinking about and doing leadership all wrong. You may have been brainwashed into believing leadership is a more evolved, effective, and humane form of management. Or maybe some guru convinced you that leaders do leadership to followers. You have likely been led astray by people who desire to profit from continuing the failed philosophy of leader-centrism. Anything with “leadership” in the title seems to sell, even if it is just mislabeled management practices or organizationally unhelpful neuro-psychological pseudoscientific nonsense. Leadership and management are not synonymous and are labels for different social phenomena.
In an era of rapid technological disruption, geopolitical instability, and workforce evolution, traditional notions of leadership—centered on charismatic, top-down “great men” (or women) who self-identify as leaders—are obsolete and organizationally toxic. That’s the core argument in a provocative new essay by Matthew Chodkowski, EdD, Co-Founding Director of the Institute for Postindustrial Leadership. Published in the Cadmus Journal, Volume 5, Issue 5, on December 8, 2025, Chodkowski’s piece calls for a radical overhaul: ditching the popular fixation on individual leaders and embracing a “postindustrial” model in which leadership is a shared, interactive organizational change process that is engaged in by “collaborators.” Leaders do not necessarily engage in leadership.
For executives and managers grappling with talent retention, innovation stagnation, and hybrid work challenges, this shift isn’t just academic—it’s a blueprint for thriving in the 21st century. The winners in today’s interdependent, ambiguous, volatile, and rapidly changing business operating environment will be the organizations that become highly adaptable, able to change quickly and with agility. Relying on the leader-centric model of leadership has organizations paralyzed, awaiting the arrival of a great savior leader, while the more collaborative organizations naturally get busy adapting with ease.
The Outdated Leader-Centric Model
Chodkowski traces the roots of modern leadership back to ancient Egypt and to philosophers such as Plato. Still, he pins the current paradigm on 19th-century thinkers like Thomas Carlyle, who championed the “Great Man” theory: history as the biography of heroic figures with innate traits. This evolved into the 20th-century industrial model, where leadership equated to the actions of bosses wielding authority over passive followers. Popular books, from Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” to Jim Collins’ “Good to Great”, reinforce this by focusing on leader traits and behaviors, rather than the relational dynamics of 21st-century leadership.
The result? A “crisis in leadership” caused by a toxic mind virus that causes a gross misunderstanding of the word “leadership” and an exaggerated overestimation of the actual value of leaders. Surveys cited by Chodkowski, including a 2019 Gartner report showing only half of leaders feel equipped to inspire teams and a 2015 World Economic Forum poll where 86% saw a global leadership shortfall, highlight the fallout: disengaged employees, toxic cultures, and billions in lost productivity (Gallup estimates $550 billion annually in the U.S. alone). Critics such as James MacGregor Burns and Barbara Kellerman echo this, arguing that we’ve obsessed over leaders while ignoring the collective process. As Chodkowski puts it, “We know far too much about leaders and far too little about leadership.”
A Postindustrial Shift: Collaborators Over Hierarchies
Drawing on scholars like Joseph C. Rost, PhD, Chodkowski redefines leadership as “an interactive influence relationship among collaborators who intend and enact real significant changes that reflect their mutual purposes.” Gone are disjointed roles of “leader” and “follower”; in their place are collaborators who conjoin in interactive influence, sharing power and aligned by mutual purposes. This is not mere semantics—it’s a response to today’s realities: flatter organizations, diverse global teams, and problems too complex for solo hero-leaders.
Chodkowski critiques the “leader-follower dichotomy” as a historical error, rooted in perceptual biases like “hypocognition” (our inability to conceptualize beyond hero narratives). He introduces “collaborator conjoinment,” in which individuals psychologically bind to shared goals, fostering collective intelligence. In practice, this means executives must move beyond commanding to co-creating: encouraging bidirectional influence, valuing diverse inputs, and focusing on systemic changes rather than quick wins.
For managers, the payoff is clear. In volatile markets, collaborative leadership builds resilience—think agile tech firms like Google or Spotify, where cross-functional teams drive innovation without rigid hierarchies. Chodkowski warns that clinging to industrial models perpetuates issues such as ego-driven decisions and follower disempowerment, thereby stifling adaptability.
Reeducating for the Future: The LEAD Approach
Reconceptualizing leadership demands reeducation. Chodkowski details his LEAD (Leader Education and Development) program, a principle-based “learning laboratory” for all organizational levels, not just bosses. Unlike trait-focused trainings, LEAD emphasizes unlearning old paradigms through experiential workshops, coaching, and reflection on scientific principles (e.g., behavior as a function of the person and the environment, per the social psychologist Kurt Lewin, PhD).
Participants confront myths—such as equating management with leadership—and internalize five foundational principles and 64 guiding ones to shift mindsets. The goal: develop collaborators who collaborate authentically rather than performatively. Chodkowski reports transformative outcomes, with alumni applying principles to real-world challenges, from team restructuring to cultural overhauls.
Executives might balk at the introspection required, but in a talent war where 50% of workers prioritize collaborative cultures (per recent Deloitte insights), investing in such reeducation pays dividends. It’s not about creating more leaders—it’s about enabling everyone to lead organizational change collaboratively. This approach democratizes leadership responsibility without diminishing management’s authority and responsibility.
The Call to Action
Chodkowski ends with a summons: Usher in this paradigm one collaborator at a time. For businesspeople, this means auditing your own models—are you training mislabed management, such as servant or situational leadership? Are you empowering well-trained, collaborative teams, or idolizing status-seeking, power-hungry individuals who are fighting to be recognized as a “great” leader?
In a world of AI-driven change and generational shifts, postindustrial leadership isn’t optional; it is essential for sustainable success. As economist John Maynard Keynes noted, the real challenge is escaping old ideas that we believe are true, but prevent us from being highly adaptable. Chodkowski’s essay provides the map—now it is up to businesspeople to think in new ways about leadership so that they can develop collaboration as a core organizational competency, before it is too late.
To learn more about The Institute for PostIndustrial Leadership and its LEAD Program, visit https://collaborationinaction.com