Leaders In London

Obama, according to Kevin Eikenberry’s leadership competency test. He beats McCain on ten out of the twelve core leadership competencies and is within 1.5% of him on the other two. 750 people rated the two contenders in the test. I’m assuming Kevin took their political views into account somehow in conducting this survey. Here’s one of the key slides:

You can download the complete report here (he asks for your email address).

Paris Hilton for President

I’ve wondered about the connection between celebrity and leadership for some time. People increasingly ‘follow’ the lives of celebrities - ‘follow’ as in read about them, watch news items about them, live their own life vicariously through the life of the celebrity. There is something of the ‘uber-you’ about celebrity culture (projecting your own life onto the more glamorous life of someone else) which mirrors some less desirable elements of ‘followership’ in leadership theory - the tendency to give up on ’self’ and instead follow the will of the leader.

So, when John McCain’s people created an attack ad last week claiming Barrack Obama’s whole persona was more celebrity than leader - likening him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears - they opened a whole can of worms. Here’s Paris Hilton taking up the challenge by saying to “that white haired dude” that she is, like, totally ready to lead, and that she is busy looking for a vice-presidential running mate. Worryingly, her energy policy (towards the end of the clip) sounds like it’s worth a second listen.