Book Review: Genership 1.0, A New Word for a New Leadership Practice

Abstract

David Castro’s new book, Genership, promises to shake up a genre that has become very tired over the past 15 years. Most books in print on the subject of leadership or management offer an increasingly predictable blend of advice grounded in common sense, generally suggesting simple strategies for getting along well with others while achieving effectiveness as an executive. The prototypical example would be the late Dr. Steven Covey’s advice to “synergize” and “begin with the end in mind.” Leadership books also often lapse into a disconcerting kind of auto-hagiography in which successful leaders moralize while telling tall tales about their successes and glossing over their challenges, something like watching NBA highlights instead of real games. The tape always looks good when you edit out the air balls! Stars always overcome their challenges, and we too can succeed by learning to mimic their excellent practices. So the story goes.

But Castro’s book does something courageous that we haven’t seen before in this genre: He questions the very concept of leadership itself, thinking through its limitations. “Imagine walking into the International Academy of Management and suggesting that management is an idea whose time has passed,” writes Castro. Indeed. This is a challenging and refreshing approach, akin to Galileo asking Ptolemy’s followers to swap the sun for the earth as the center of the solar system. Castro’s central thesis in Genership is that leadership practices have the potential to evolve into something better and stronger. His book describes this evolution and encourages it, inviting us to see the eagle waiting to emerge from a soon-to–be-extinct pterodactyl.