Leadership Is Overrated: How the Navy SEALs (and Successful Businesses) Create Self-Leading Teams That Win
Kyle Buckett and Chris Mefford
HarperOne/An Imprint of HarperCollins (August 2023)

Leadership really does matter. “It’s just that it’s highly overrated.”

To what does the title of this book refer? According to Kyle Buckett and Chris Mefford, “In this book, we make a simple argument: small but dedicated teams of empowered individuals can and do outperform large organizations driven by top-down leadership.” This is what Margaret Mead had in mind when observing, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

They go on to point out, “Changing the culture of a team. an organization, or even an entire nation sounds daunting, but as we will soon see, this sort of change is happening around us every day. Cultures can and do change quickly, especially when it’s a matter of life and death. And for some of us, it actually is — at least when it comes to the survival of our organizations.”

All organizations need high-impact leadership at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. Buckett and Mefford agree. “Pulling from our own experiences, insights, and research, we address the very real and significant financial cost, human cost, and cost of lost opportunities — for both individuals and companies — caused by a leadership cultured that is broken and laughably overrated. If you’re read  to shake things up, make a real difference, and transform your life, career, and organization, it’s time to change everything — starting with how much control we give the leader.”

These are among the strategic objectives that Buckett and Mefford discuss in Chapters 4-11. Each has the prefix HOW TO

o Define the core values by which to define your organization
o Formulate the compelling vision of where your organization is headed
o Become self-led at all levels and in all areas
o Create a workplace culture of empowerment
o Develop self-led teams
o Develop empathy between and among individuals and teams
o Develop the power of “walking the talk” by everyone throughout the enterprise
o Establish and enrich rituals that reinforce the workplace culture

As I read this book, I was again reminded of my favorite passage from Lao-tse’s Tao Te Ching:

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”

The relevance of this passage to Leadership Is Overrated is compelling.

These are among Buckett and Mefford’s concluding thoughts:

“Leadership is overrated because we’ve misunderstood what it is. Effective leadership no longer crequires a single person at the helm for the rest of that person’s life; in fact, new models for organizing teams of people demonstrate that this is not only no longer necessary — it’s harmful.  to recognize the importance of creating great cultures; we need to understand that without the agility and humility of a self-led team, we stands to repeat the past and build yet another bureaucratic institution that doesn’t live up to the potential of what it could continue. The future of our organizations, and therefore our world, is in looser, nimble squads of self-led teams. It’s not enough to recognize the importance of creating great cultures; we need to understand that without the agility and humility of a self-led team, we stand to repeat the past and build yet another bureaucratic institution that doesn’t live up to the potential of what it could contribute.”

I congratulate Kyle Buckett and Chris Mefford on a brilliant achievement. Bravo!

Here are two suggestions to keep in mind while reading Leadership Is Overrated: Highlight key passages, and, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to the questions posed within the narrative. These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.