Do you see yourself as a leader?
This is a writing prompt.
A couple of years ago, I had a vice-principal who was encouraging me to take my principal qualifications. She told me that I have leadership qualities, that I like to move conversations and ideas forward. I appreciate what she said but I don’t know that that’s what makes for a good leader.
I’ve worked for people who I think are great leaders, and I’ve worked for people who aren’t. I sometimes look at how my friends handle themselves and think about what they must be like in their jobs, how they carry themselves, how they’ve gotten to where they are. Leadership is about other people. It’s the people who understand other people who make for good leaders.
I’m not sure that I understand myself well enough to even begin to think about others. Perhaps, leadership doesn’t require a strong sense of self, but I’m sure it’d be helpful.
Leadership, too, can be more subtle. One of my students once told me that he started making sourdough bread after watching my videos on my attempt at it. What are now called “influencers,” of which, I’m only one among many, are contemporary society’s thought-leaders. Once ordinary people who built a platform guide our decision making.
We are not the independent free-thinkers we like to think we are. If we accept the Hegelian dialectic, that a thesis and its antithesis move ideas forward when they synthesis, it might be true that it’s impossible to be a truly independent thinker. We need contradiction to progress.
We are not the independent free-thinkers we like to think we are. If we accept the Hegelian dialectic, that a thesis and its antithesis move ideas forward when they synthesize, it might be true that it’s impossible to be a truly independent thinker. We need contradiction to progress. That would mean that leaders must view disunity as opportunity.
As an academic exercise, that sounds riveting to me. In practice, I’d rather not. I don’t turn on the library lights when I get in in the morning because I don’t want people to know I’m there. Yet, somehow, they still seem to find me. In this, I fail in my attempts to lead people astray.
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