What makes a person a great leader? (Lede/ TL;DR/ Spoiler: Learning makes a great leader.)
There was a time when leadership was thought to be the result of innate personal traits. In 1840, Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle gave a series of lectures on heroism in which he proposed that human history is defined by “great men” with qualities that empowered them to transcend society and lead others.
Apart from being a sexist artifact of its day, Carlyle’s Great Man theory doesn’t account for obvious contradictions in the traits of historically effective leaders. Consider: If leaders are tall like Lyndon B. Johnson, what about famously short Napoleon? If leaders are loud like George Patton, what about Franklin “Walk softly and carry a big stick” Roosevelt, or Boutros “The only way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence” Boutros-Ghali?
Carlyle’s theory doesn’t really matter here because it’s not going to help you be a better leader.* (*Unless you have somehow learned to become taller or shorter, in which case you have my attention.)
Rather than evaluating who leaders are in terms of innate qualities, which has led to all sorts of racist/sexist/eugenics/bell curve/external locus of control misattributions and bad social relationships and policies, it is far more enlightening and productive to ask: What do effective leaders do? We can learn and practice behaviors, strategies, and tactics.
Pro Tip: Beware the “characteristics” hedge; too many authors equivocate and split imaginary differences between traits and behaviors.
As you swim the sea of leadership studies and listicles of leadership characteristics from HBR, Forbes, and many, many others, it’s also worth looking at leadership in the context of a culture where everyone imagines they’re a leader. Last time I checked, a leader was defined by (a) followers, and (b) going someplace new and bringing followers along.
It turns out that leaders do lots of interesting things. Some leaders listen, some take risks, some have morning routines, some eat meat, some don’t, etc.
There is only one thing I can find that every leader has in common and that leaders fail to do at their own peril.
Leaders reflect on their own learning. Here’s how you can too:
Decide that you want to learn. You’ll spot opportunities for learning more easily if you’re looking for them.
Decide what you want to learn. Do you want to solve a problem? Master a concept? Perfect a skill? Understand an aspect of our changing economy, technology, government, or natural environment?
Practice mise en place. Get organized. You may not have a lot of equipment, but your tools are important, including your attention. Set a timer, clear your browsing tabs, turn off your notifications, and settle in for a properly focused work bout.
Curate your experience. You don’t need to blog or do anything performative that is visible to other people, but actively recording your actions and impressions will help you make more sense of things. Journal. It worked for Marcus Aurelius and it will work for you too.
Specifically, record what you learn. Answer the question: What did I learn today? Make sure to account for how you are different today than you were yesterday as a direct result of your learning. If you haven’t changed, you still learned – at least one way that you didn’t make progress – so take the opportunity to imagine how you will do things differently tomorrow.
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What did you learn today? Drop me a line – I’m curious!
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Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.
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Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription.
Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.
What I’m Listening To –
The other night I listened to my teenage daughter describe how she sees the practice of religion as a social construct (her words). I realized the time was right to introduce her to the greatest linguist of the 20th century. No, not Chomsky, and get outta here with that Pinker stuff. I mean George Carlin. We started with Carlin on the Ten Commandments, quickly segued into Carlin on religion, and then time traveled to one of the first albums I ever owned: A Place for My Stuff.
What I’m Reading (Short) –
When I was a kid, tattoos were for Navy vets and prisoners. Then Madonna and Dennis Rodman changed everything. From time to time, I’ve thought about getting inked – my favorite designs are Mister Cartoon’s fine line blacks and grays – but I make decisions based on how I think I’ll reflect on them in the future, and I always imagined looking at my 80-year-old crepe paper skin and thinking, “That tattoo looks like crap.”
It turns out I was seeing the future for a lot of people. From GQ: Why Is Everyone Getting Their Tattoos Removed? “In 1991, two hikers accidentally discovered a 5,300-year-old mummy named Ötzi the Iceman in the Tyrolean Alps. His wrists and torso were covered with 61 tattoos, making him the earliest known tattooed human. In the millennia since, the lifecycle of a tattoo has become comically brief. Maybe the TikTok brain and attention-span problems of Gen Z have filtered all the way into their attitudes about tattoos. Gen X’s tattoos were so hard-won and transgressive that they tend to last forever. (To say nothing of the rare tattooed boomers.) Laser technicians theorized to me that people aged 35 to 50 tend to live with their tattoos for a decade before regretting them, whereas the younger generation—who never grappled with much stigma in the first place—regret their tattoos more quickly, within two to three years. Easy come, easy go.”
What I’m Reading (Long) –
I’m still working my way through Determined by Robert Sapolsky. I like the way Sapolsky approaches chaos theory and emergent complexity to differentiate the likelihood of probable outcomes from the existence of deterministic systems. I’ve also become fascinated with cellular automata and specifically Rule 22. I’m sharing that now because I have no real idea what I’m talking about yet, and I suspect some of you might – if you do, please feel free to drop me a line. Once I get my head around Rule 22 I’ll write more about it. I will say this much for now: Graph paper never looked so good.
Quote I’m pondering –
Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
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David Preston
Educator & Author
Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE
Header image: A few shelves of the library I finally downsized. Via David Preston.
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