Do people become leaders by accident? How much time do aspiring leaders have to prepare for their moments of great responsibility?
A leader entering into a great position of responsibility can only draw on the capital that he or she has brought to that position. And often that capital has been invested decades ago… you don’t have time as you’re rising within some organisation, as you’re competing with rivals… to sit around to re-educate yourself in the great classical texts.1
In a pessimistic interpretation of this quote from a talk by John Lewis Gaddis, leaders tend to be past their peak at the point of assuming power. The project of achieving a position of responsibility is energy sapping.
Is this a general rule? What about cases where leadership is a mission rather than a “career” and a natural extension of disposition and character?
Lincoln famously had less than a year of formal education, but is thought to have been a good leader. It is said he had common sense. He was able to align capability with aspiration.
Common sense … is like oxygen: the higher you go, the thinner it gets. John Lewis Gaddis
新官上任三把火 (xin1 guan1 shang4 ren4 san1 ba3 huo3) is a Chinese observation about new leaders: A new leader lights three torches.
The three torches stand for explicit signals or actions of a new leader designed to mark his or her arrival. Suddenly there is a new wind. The tone changes. New slogans replace the old. Strategic pillars are introduced. A media campaign is launched. Investments or divestments are announced.
A new leader must project confidence without making baseless promises.2 First impressions can make or break a new leader, it is said.3
Watch leaders you “like” or “dislike”, what signals do they send? What messages lie behind the signal? How does the light from those newly lit torches move through the country/organisation? Are they flashbang grenades, or soft candle-lights? Does the new light cast new shadows?
The quality of the light will, for example, say something about the extent to which a new leader is comfortable with ideas that go beyond strictly logical, consecutive reasoning.
I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.4
Nations and organisations are composed of people like the body of an individual is composed of cells. Watch how a leader works with allies, advocates, and champions to carry the flames of the new torches. Who is chosen? Who volunteers? Who is excited? Who prefers to stand in the dark?
But just as there are animal bodies and human bodies, each one of which is an assemblage of cells as large in relation to a single cell as Mont Blanc, so there exist huge organised accumulations of individuals which are called nations: their life does no more than repeat on a larger scale the lives of their constituent cells, and anybody who is incapable of comprehending the mystery, the reactions, the laws of these smaller lives, will only make futile pronouncements when he talks about struggles between nations. But if he is master of the psychology of individuals, then these colossal masses of conglomerated individuals will assume in his eyes, as they confront one another, a beauty more potent than that of the struggle which arises from a mere conflict between two characters; and they will seem to him as huge as the body of a tall man would seem to the infusoria of which more than ten thousand would be required to fill the space of a cubic millimetre.
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time - Time Regained5
Volumes of self-help books proclaim that we are all leaders: CEOs of Self.6 Some books suggest quick changes we can make to become happier or more successful, to turn our ships around.
Common sense is like oxygen, the higher you go, the thinner it gets. Leaders are often lonely.7 Similarly, the more you think about what it is that you really want to achieve as a “CEO of Self,” the harder it is to think of an answer. Why do you need an answer?
Meditation is practised alone without torches.8
When you see a new leader, look out for the three torches. For those who have been around for a while: are their torches still alight? Has the quality of light changed?
And how about you? What torches are you carrying, and why?
The best torches burn naturally. A philosopher becomes a leader against his will, it is something forced on him, it involves a great sacrifice. A sage, asked to become king, escaped and hid in a mountain cave until the people smoked him out and forced him to lead.9
See, for example Herman Cain’s adventure story. Variations include the notion of an “inner CEO”, and the brain or prefrontal cortex as the CEO of the body.
See, for example, the reflections of Manfred Kets de Vries
A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, Fung Yu-Lan, p.13. See also, https://ctext.org/lv-shi-chun-qiu/gui-sheng/zh, p.16 in https://archive.org/details/LushiChunqiuGerman/page/n35/mode/2up.
Image Credit: Street lights, Belfast. The lights, on the ornamental lampposts outside the City Hall in Donegall Square North, Albert Bridge.