What comes first: the leader or the leadership?
This is just another view of the chicken or the egg paradox. However, the statement, which comes first: leader or leadership, may shed some light on the leadership discussion.
The stock market.
The market is going down as many know and the same market is waiting for a special event or a leader to change the situation. You might be wondering, “if I’m going to buy now, will people follow me?”
Their argument may be that we have seen enough bad news and that stock valuations are too low. Now is a good opportunity. But people won’t follow you. Why not? Because they don’t know you. Because you don’t have a name. This is different from when Warren Buffet announces that he will intervene. People could follow him. However, as we could see, his leadership status was not enough to change the market.
The recent election.
Obama was not (yet) a leader when he was a Senator in the United States Government. He though he votes -followers- to be elected senator. That is part of the political process where some leadership is required to get to the next level. He campaigned for the Democrats the same way Hillary did. His true leadership qualities came through when he started a new campaign, focused on change, and gained a following, which makes him a leader. He becomes a leader.
Change in history.
When Ronald Reagan received Mikhail Gorbachev at the White House, he said: “there is no proper history, only biography” (quoting a phrase from Ralph Emerson – biography of Gorbachev, written by Andrei Grachov). Gorbachev’s biography is that of a leader, but it was the situation in Russia in the early 1980s that required a change… Reading Gorbachev’s biography, I tend to think that he became a leader, he got the status of a leader, but leadership… I didn’t find much about it in the biography.
HJB
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