Reading a colleague’s blog, I ran across the following:

A symphony conductor is usually a good musician, but seldom a world-class performer. The most effective university deans are often not the best professors. The ability to lead … to Engage Others and to Turn Them On … rarely coincides with being at the tip-top of the … Individual Performance Heap.Which is not to say that leaders shouldn’t have a fingertip familiarity with their particular line of business. But the factors that make you good at the “people stuff” and the “inspirational stuff” and the “profit-making stuff” are quite distinct from the factors that vault you to the Pinnacle of Individual Mastery.

In business, alas, it’s all too common to promote the “best” practitioner to the job of leading other practitioners. The best trainer becomes head of the training department. The best account manager becomes head of the sales department. And so on. Tellingly, that’s not how things work in … True Talent Enterprises.

So why do we go that route in business? Beats me. Gross stupidity? Maybe. But more likely: a refusal to see that leadership is … a discrete, limited, special quality.

A sentiment I’ve long understood, but I’ve not come across any better vocabulary for it.

SOURCE: Re-Imagine! (2003), pg. 321 | Tom Peters