This conversation has infected popular culture for the last decade or more, made much worse by all of these blunt instruments that attempt to pass themselves off as 'tests' in attempts to tell you something about yourself. Be a ladder climber! Shatter the glass ceiling! Be this! Be more of that! I don't know where I saw it, probably LinkedIn, but some article raised the 'are you a lion or a lamb' debate...again. Talk about continuing to go about it all wrong.
The argument made a
thousand times over on a daily basis assumes that it is highly desirable to be a 'leader', or, more likely, thought of and worshiped as one. The deification of this term has gotten completely out of hand. It also assumes those who are 'followers'
need to work hard on those aspects of themselves to be more of a 'leader' themselves or they'll never reach any kind of success. Success, measured financially, mind you...and those arguments make people writing books and selling seminars a lot of money in this arena. The problem I have with the positions posed is that they always appear to make a generalized judgment call about you - you are either one or the other; you're either yinked or yangked. This diminishes people into people into being, or at least think they are being, something less than what they very likely are.
Now, it is fine to be a leader, but I also challenge the way it is presented. If this were a formal article for something like The Atlantic or Salon.com I'd bother digging up examples of everything I've read, tidy up my rhetoric (maybe...I miss Christopher Hitchens immensely...incendiary fuck that he was), repeat myself less and make it all presentable in a way that might fetch me some bloody cash. I'd love to make a living lending my opinions, thoughts on solutions, problems, everything. Save maybe global macroeconomics I have an opinion on just about everything.
Where was I? Wherever I was, I remember thinking that the Myers-Briggs test, while fun, didn't quite get it right either. I saw another article recently criticizing that test.
Had to go looking:
http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/why-myers-briggs-is-totally-useless-but-wildly-popular/?_r=0
Just another way to categorize people into those selectable traits you want to hire, trimming off the fat. Just wait til you can go to the Gene Counter and order up the type of human or clone you need. Of course, people learned a long time ago how to circumvent many requirements, and they'll continue to break those peoples' rules. Great, isn't it? But - if you exhibit the traits a hiring entity wants, you're hired. The cynical, sarcastic twist of thought is that it saves much time and money in terms of not having to get to know the person, or they don't bother and it becomes a long-term, festering mistake. The fun part is how hard people are bitten by this in the end. Most publicly, many people are elected to extremely high positions in government when they have absolutely no business being there. Stay the course...ICEBERG!!!! Oh, wait...never mind...it'll melt completely by the time we get to it. Won't it?
But I digress.
True leaders lead inadvertently - when they are so unabashedly passionate about something that they spend much of their life working on it, and it shows. They lead only by the example (yes...! Where has this phrase gone?!!) they demonstrate. Actions > Words. They are not looking for people to lord over or delegate to. They are not seeking notoriety, but a little credit where it is due sometimes helps immensely as it can be empowering, and it most often comes from those who benefit directly from those actions being presented. True leaders will find it difficult to delegate, at least at first, until whoever is trying to lend a hand works with them to create a productive dynamic. Everyone knows someone like this, and if they are even remotely like-minded they'll want to follow, to help, to participate. Ultimately to dedicate part or much of themselves as well. Even though most pseudo-leaders flail around pitifully, they usually have some measure of fear to dish out to keep people in line. Following. Grudgingly.
The way I see it, which is painfully obvious to anyone capable of kinder-caliber critical thinking*, is that a person has traits of both depending on what the subject or task at hand might be. A person might be relatively benign at their primary job but they might be the icebreaker for a massive local movement to assist homeless through their church. Or vice-versa. Not everyone is a leader at everything they do. If you encounter someone who is trying to be, then that should raise red flags.
*I should mention that I would very, very seriously consider adopting the election of children over some of our current governing officials and those occupying the most highly paid layers of corporations.
The true solution is to get people to ask questions about themselves and find answers to what makes them tick, not to be told what they are by someone else's outline of definitions. When a person truly knows themselves they find their passions and act accordingly. I think we know where that leads us.
©2015 Michael Pichahchy
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