The art of leadership L050
Henry Kissinger (U.S. secretary of state under Richard Nixon) said that leadership is the art of ‘taking people where they would not have gone by themselves’. This of course presupposes that we know where people really want to go, even when they don’t yet know themselves. Sounds a bit arrogant doesn’t it? It reminds me a bit of the Steve Jobs quote when he said of his apple inventions, that people didn’t know what they wanted ‘till he designed and
created it’.
So for the leader, what is it he has that others don’t have? – A sense of what the future holds and how to lay hold of it; an instinct that if others could see what she sees they would want to go there. And so we lead. Without fear or apology, we attempt to ‘take people where they would not have gone themselves’.
Seeing the future is a vague science at best, and we tend to look down on the fairground crystal ball gazer. So what is it based on? It is based on hunches, early trends, a knowledge of what is wrong with the ‘here and now’ and needs fixing. It emanates from our reading and our discussing with interested others. It flows from a passion for observation and questioning. It springs up from asking the right questions, the ‘what could be?’ type of questions. It comes with blinding flashes of revelation or just quiet growing convictions.
Are we always right? Of course not, but we need to be right more often than not, or our credibility for leadership is shot through. Our reputation grows as others look back on our track record, and see that on key occasions we did ‘take people where they would not have gone themselves’, and they loved it, they were glad they followed. We led them to a better future.
So let’s dream, let’s have the confidence of our convictions to lead. And let’s have the humility to say when we got it wrong. Getting it wrong may dent our confidence for a while, and our reputation may need some repair work, but it can be thoroughly redeemed by a contrite admission that we were wrong, and a frank assessment of what we learned by the experience. No-one gets it right all the time.
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