Politician or Leader?
As you may have noticed, here in the United States we’re well into our never-ending presidential election season. Personally, I find it an appalling process.
Here we are, trying to elect the person best able to lead the world’s most powerful country at a time of great turmoil both domestically and around the world. Yet the system currently in place is more geared to winning a pandering contest than to actually finding a good leader, much less the great statesman…or stateswoman…we so desperately need to guide us wisely through these difficult times.
When I look at the candidates, their debates, speeches and pronouncements, what do I see? Not strength of character, not reflection. Competency? It’s about making up the facts rather than carefully analyzing the results of past actions. The truth is irrelevant. Ideology reigns. The candidates avoid nuance at all costs while refusing to acknowledge the complexity of events and solutions. Unshakable core values and beliefs are nuisances, since the candidate’s object is to offer each constituency whatever it is they want to hear. Destroying others is a more effective tool than putting in the effort to develop and espouse good ideas. Ego reigns supreme.
This is hardly what we need from a leader, be it the president of the United States or the CEO of an organization.
Good leadership requires good thinking. It requires proficiency and competency developed and guided by reflecting on past actions, both good and bad. Peter Drucker said “follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
Good leadership requires you to move from the linear thinking of day-to-day consistency to the complex thinking required to deal with divergent intrusions of unknowable events. It needs to be based on facts and reality and adapt as new information appears.
Good leadership requires a firm and unshakable base of core values and beliefs, a vision of the future that excites and energizes, and a strength of character and will that holds firm against the continual buffeting of the winds pushing you off course. It’s not about being motivated by a desiring to please or adjusting your message to tell people what they want to hear. It’s about staying true to your beliefs and winning people over as they see the path to success you are building.
Most importantly, good leadership requires an ability to connect with everyone and engage them in the journey. You need to be open and honest with yourself and everyone else, absorb and learn from successes and failures, and be willing to listen to both assenting and dissenting voices.
You need to find the ability to navigate all this and speak in ways that inspire, energize, and unite all in the common quest for a better future.
It’s not easy. It takes hard work and a willingness to put the greater good before personal gain. It takes the strength to voice hard truths and accept facts and events as they are, not as you wish them to be.
Mull it over. How do you lead? How would you like to lead? Like you’re always working to get elected or as a leader with a vision that inspires others to follow?
As Pogo said years ago, “We have met the enemy, and they are us.” The American people can’t be bothered to think. These blowhards and yahoos pick up momentum only because we give it to ’em. I’m not a particularly deep thinker, but I feel like a member of an endangered species. I sure want leaders who think long, hard, and deeply about what they’re doing. The success of a democracy depends upon an informed populace, which we no longer seem to have. It’s scary!
It’s the dumbing-down of democracy. You (Steve and Cliff) are both so on target with a most unpleasant reality that I can’t think of anything serious to add that wouldn’t be downright depressing. So instead I will add a visionary viewpoint from the little-known, but fabulous, social and political satirist A. Whitney Brown:
“When our forefathers created the office of President it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, the woods were full of leaders of presidential timber. In those days, all you had to do was vote for the man you liked the most, and then forget about it for four years.
But then something happened around the Tyler campaign. It degenerated into the lesser of two evils. You had to vote FOR the man you disliked the least. Now, it’s come to the point where you have to vote AGAINST the candidate you dislike the most.”
[from AWB’s book “The Big Picture’ (c)1991]
So nice to see comments from erudite readers who can quote such luminaries as Pogo and A. Whitney Brown. Be nice if our leaders both political and business were as thoughful.