The Proliferation Of Self-help Books

I have always been amazed by the proliferation and popularity of self-help books. Any number of self-help books have been written and a large number of them sell like hot cakes. I have also read a large number of them during the last two decades-like Be Brilliant, Being The Best, The Magic Of Thinking Big, How To Be A Star At Work etc, to name a few. My thinking and experience have led me to believe that the possible reason lies in the reluctance or failure of the organizations where we work( and where we spend a great chunk of our life’s time) to take responsibility or even interest in making the individual employees succeed. This, I believe , is true about books in leadership too. Any number of books again are available describing the characteristics or traits of leadership. Very few talk about or deal with the organizational involvement in leadership development. This is because very few organizations take serious initiatives and responsibility for developing leaders. If one wants to become a leader, it is his responsibility to build and develop the various leadership traits. The same must also be true of executive coaching. What is more surprising is that even late Mr.Sumantra Ghoshal, who despised the systems approach of treating individuals just like another machine in an assembly line and written influential papers on the need for organizations to create and develop social capital, had written a self-help book titled A Bias For Action alongwith Heike Bruch.

My own experience in a variety of organizations prove the same. None of the organizations did anything to help or facilitate for my becoming successful.