What does leadership mean to you?
Does it give you a thrill to think of others looking up to you, awaiting breathlessly your slightest, but ever-wise, decision; or leaping to carry out your least, but always-firm, command?
If so, you may have the necessary instincts to command a flock of sheep, or to hold determined sway over a band of cutthroats (each of whom will, of course, be merely biding his time until he can cut your throat and grab your position). Yours will, however, be essentially a one-man operation. You will be able to accomplish little through others. Most of your time, probably, will be spent in grumbling over your subordinates’ incompetence or stupidity, in arbitrating their petty squabbles, and in settling endless private grievances.
Your subordinates will be incompetent, no doubt. You will have discouraged competence in them as a threat to your own autonomy.
They will quite possibly be stupid as well. Who, blessed with any intelligence, would remain for more than a few weeks in the condition of mindless obedience that you impose on your subordinates?
Inevitably, too, they will squabble, for you will have reduced them to positions of insignificance not only in your eyes, but also in their own.
And they will brood endlessly on their petty grievances, whether real or imaginary, simply because you have never held before them any vision that might have lifted them out of themselves.
When people are not inspired to give of themselves, they revert naturally to thinking what they can get for themselves. For such is the state of the unregenerate ego: self-centeredness, and the unending query, “What’s in it for me?”
Egocentricity is invariably self-defeating. While it seeks only self-gratification, it closes off the very channels by which it might achieve true fulfillment: self-expansion, progress, and creativity.
If a leader glories in the importance of his position, he will infect his subordinates with the same attitude. Never will he be able to inspire in them the dedication which can bring a project to success. Everything he attempts to accomplish must eventually bog down in incompetence and unless its sights are set almost at ground level in failure.
For the tenor of every group endeavor is always a reflection of the spirit of its leadership. I myself came to this understanding after trying for years to deny it. I had the job of organising groups under the coordination of an international headquarters.
My endeavor was to free those groups from uncertain dependency on any one leader. It was only gradually that I came to see that I had been working against a simple reality of human nature: Rules and procedures are no substitute for creative leadership. And it was then I realized that leadership means cultivating people, not abstractions.
For as the leader is, so will the group be. A good leader attracts good subordinates or in some cases simply magnetizes them so that they become good. A bad leader, on the other hand, can dissipate the magnetism of even the best team.
No one with spirit, moreover, would remain longer than absolutely necessary under the direction of anyone completely lacking in spirit.
