One of the modern leadership movement’s most prominent expounders was recently quoted regarding (one of) his view(s) of what a leader is. This one involved a curiously ineffable quality that a leader presumably has which seems to strike people when he or she enters a room, evidently radiating leadership pheromones in all directions, and placing in abject thrall all on whom this fairy dust benignly settles.
Perhaps the sales adage that we buy on emotion and rationalize on logic has wider business implications. It could well be that this is the secret behind all the peculiarly romantic images we see painted of our current, or ideal, leaders: we simply want the adventure of epic and glamorous endeavors in our lives, in place of the rather more frumpy, workaday world we have somehow found ourselves married to.
So, we declare our unending devotion to and faith in this elusive promise, and, starry-eyed, dream on, propping up these fragile hopes with ever-more implausible constructions of leadership characteristics. In the course of our daily work of actually getting things done, we pause to read about the imminent arrival of, fantasize about our own revelation as being, or delude ourselves that we are under the unerring protection of a great leader of one form or another, as determined by how our emotional needs are shaped at any given moment by our ever-changing business-generated insecurities.
It’s a compelling story, but it really is just a fairy tale that distracts us from a far greater and grander reality: the managers we have, the managing we ourselves do, and the work we together engage in are what put roofs over our heads, food on the table, clothes on our backs - not the daydreams that we hope will give us respite from our toil.
And the fact that these do that, with ever-growing benefit to ourselves and the world at large - that is the actual story here. This putatively homely profession of management that we engage in is the real-life drama. Sometimes the magic may seem to be long gone. But just pause and step back for a moment from the imperfections with which we have become intimately familiar, and give yourself once again a chance to see the still grand aims and undying hopes with which we invest it.
It really is magic. It is worth our ever-renewing devotion to it.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
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Today’s tip: Speaking of grand aims and undying hopes, please stop by to see this pro and con commentary about the latest project in the realm of corporate philanthropy with a capitalist twist, from Gary Becker and Richard Posner’s blog.
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Technorati Tags: leadership, leader, sales, business, daily work, manager, profession, management, Valentine’s Day, corporate, philanthropy, capitalist, Gary Becker, Richard Posner
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2 Comments
Ah, Jim, you have made my day. I’m not likely to find a niftier phrase than “radiating leadership pheromones in all directions” any time soon.
Nice post. So much of the discussion of leadership leaves out the doing part. You wrote about this yesterday. It’s a bit like romantic literature.
There the stories are all about falling in love, the torrid glance across a crowded room and the role of destiny. Romantic literature doesn’t have much to say about getting up early to feed the baby or cooking or cleaning or taking out the garbage, but that’s how life is lived for most of us.
And through it all there are people like my aunt and uncle who put together a very successful life doing all of that and kept the romance alive and well. I realized that years ago when I visited them and suddenly understood that you could always tell when my aunt came into the room by the look of joy on my uncle’s face.
Wally,
Thanks so much for your visit and kind comments. But I must say that, however much you praise the volley, you never fail to ace the return:
” . . . you could always tell when my aunt came into the room by the look of joy on my uncle’s face.”
Wow.
Thanks again, and always, for your visit, your penetrating observations, and your inestimable work.
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