Leadership has been a blank canvas on which we paint the fantasies of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy. Its romanticization through charismatic, transformational, authentic, servant, ethical and sustainable leaderships has been vulnerable to corruption. Even when leaders convince others and themselves that they are benevolent and inclusive, they can nevertheless enact colonial, racial, economic and gendered violence. Leadership may not, and perhaps should not, be redeemed.

Speaking within just the Anglophonic world, we have at our disposal language that more precisely and accurately captures the activities that so-called ‘leaders’ do. Administration, coordination, collaboration, communication, supervision, team-building and decision-making may be more useful descriptors for the day-to-day practices of people whose work involves responsibility to others. Relinquishing broadbrush illusions of leadership may also allow us to name the activities conducted in governments, organizations and communities that may have been obfuscated by the romance with leadership, including domination, discrimination and exclusion.

While we may imagine leadership to be exemplified in the gripping speeches delivered by charismatic CEOs or the bold decisions handed down in the executive boardroom, these activities only occasionally feature in the mundane reality of managerial work. What makes business and organizations function is the work that happens in the space between people; the unglamorous processes of coordination, collaboration and communication that knit the various and varied activities of workers together. Anti-racist feminist thinking would also remind us that what makes the seemingly heroic work of leadership possible is the oft-invisible labour that is disproportionately performed by women and people of colour as carers in the organizational and domestic spheres. Leadership and organizations are reliant on the work that happens at home, including the people who cook, clean and care for workers and their families that enable them to continue working. To celebrate individual leaders in our societies is to fixate on a narrow and relatively insignificant part of humanity. It overlooks life's rich interconnectedness in favour of a romance that serves only to bolster the status of our society's elites.