Maxwell's Leadership Myth #3: The Knowledge Myth

John C. Maxwell, p. 15 of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Follow Them and People Will Follow You,Nelson Books, 1998, says:

Most people, believing power is the essence of leadership, naturally assume that those who possess knowledge and intelligence are leaders. But that isn't automatically true.

Agree, but I can't see how a leader can succeed without knowledge and intelligence. Knowledge can be acquired, and there's one writer I just heard about who argues that intelligence can too.

Maxwell's right that possessing knowledge doesn't make you a leader. I think an explanation comes from what Chip and Dan Heath, in Made to Stick; Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, (New York: Random House, 2007) on p. 46, call the Curse of Knowledge: when

we start to forget what it's like not to know what we know. [p. 46]

When we learn something, we have trouble understanding what it's like not to know when we know. Unless the leader makes a conscious effort to transcend this curse, he or she may not ever get people to follow them.

Read the Heaths' book it's really excellent from start to finish.

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