Managing Leadership^®

We’ve all heard the phrase: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It was put into the mouth of Socrates twenty four hundred years ago by his student, Plato, in a dialogue called “The Apology.” In the dialogue, Plato examines the clash between unthinking orthodoxy and critical speculation. The irony in this instance is that the ones who live on are those who don’t examine their own lives, and the person who perishes is the one who does.

It’s an irony that should be familiar to us, since it hasn’t changed much over the years. In any domain of life, questioning dogma, or dogmatists, can be perilous. And we all know dogmatists who obtain power and influence one way or another and then, neither questioning their own competence nor submitting it to questioning by others, begin to exhibit it in unwarranted ways.

Last week, Joe Raasch, who authors The Happy Burro, touched directly on this in a comment here. He said that one of the dumb types we routinely encounter is the person who “had a success years ago, and leans on ‘that one time’ as evidence of their knowledge for all future events.” We are all complicit in this, inasmuch as we initially encourage, then tolerate, and finally simply fail to challenge this attitude and its consequences.

Socrates’s fatal characteristic was his refusal to succumb to this. The Apology is Plato’s recounting of his teacher’s defense against various charges made against him by the State, which charges, it was suggested in the dialogue, may really have been prompted by his supposed presumption of intellectual superiority over others.

He was sure this could be easily shown to be wrong in the face of the facts, and so he set about to identify all of the many great men of Athens he thought would be easily found who were smarter than he. Here is what he discovered:

. . . the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better.”

He had gone to the politicians, the poets, the artisans – seeking out those among them who were widely regarded as experts in their various fields, certain he would find men demonstrably smarter than he. But what he found in all of them was this shared trait he described about the poets:

. . . not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.”

concluding:

. . . upon the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise.”

Or, similarly, about the artisans:

. . . because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom . . .”

Listen to that again: This defect in them – this overweening confidence – overshadowed their wisdom.

Moreover, their wisdom was, itself, often not really wisdom at all, but what we might call a Socratic genius, something that they sort of channel from the wider sea of human experience, knowledge, and insight – but with little control, and no real comprehension.

Managers must have both control and comprehension. And they approach attainment of these not by presuming their possession of them, but by questioning it.

The self-examining manager, or the Socratic genius – which do you want working for you? Which do you want to develop in your organization?

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Here is a list of all the posts in this popular series:

1. Radiating Imbecility
2. Rays of hope
3. Pulsating inconsistency
4. Radiating confidence
5. Blind faith
6. Mirror, mirror . . .
7. Socratic genius
8. Socratic ignorance
9. Socratic method
10. First principles
11. The Socratic attitude
12. Why we do what we do
13. Recon by fire

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