Leadership Archives - James E Hartley

Odysseus: Natural Born Leader

Everyone likes the idea of a role model for leadership.

Here is the candidate of the day for that honor: Odysseus.

There are thousands of books on How to be a Leader. Thousands. Yet, one of the best of them is also one of the oldest books in the world: Homer, The Odyssey.

(As always—if you don’t read Greek, get a good translation. Life is too short to read bad translations. I highly recommend Fagles.)

As a leadership text, Homer makes a fantastic starting place for a debate on what make a great leader. Odysseus is a Leader, with a capital L.

Why? His virtues, beautifully illustrated in his stops along the way home, all point in one direction—never get distracted from your goal. The man who succeeds is the man who avoids the temptations of the moment, always keeping a firm focus on the end goal.

And then, in the magnificent endgame, Odysseus goes out and takes what he wants. He schemes and acts decisively. Slaughter in the Hall. Blood everywhere. “How it would have thrilled your heart to see him—/splattered with bloody filth, a lion with his kill!” (23:51-52).

In the contest Odysseus vs (insert leader of your choice): who wins? Odysseus by a mile. The man is clever and silver-tongued and strong and brave. He takes what he wants and all good people rally around him because he is a Natural Born Leader.

The framing story amplifies the point. The book begins with Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, wondering if he is really good enough to follow in the footsteps of his long lost father. As the story develops, Telemachus grows into maturity and becomes every bit the man his father is. And then the book ends with a marvelous display of the passing of the heroic virtues from Laertes to his son Odysseus to his son Telemachus.

Homer asks the Muse to sing for our time too—and that is Homer’s challenge to us—are we good enough? Can we too rise up and lead like Odysseus? Or is our age so degenerate that we no longer recognize heroic leadership when we see it?

Homer would be utterly depressed by the classes I have taught using this book as a model for leadership.

I try really hard to convince my students that this is True Leadership, that simply rising up and acting is the best possible, if not the only, form of leadership. I try to convince them that the slaughter in the halls should be replicated at a college—a single slaughter of the noisy, lawless students breaking quiet hours during finals week in one of the dorms would be a magnificent act of leadership and bring untold benefits to the campus for years to come.

I fail at convincing my students of this. Every single time.

None of the students seem to think murdering their fellow students as a means of bringing order to the society is a good idea. (Shocking, I know.)

Indeed, they all seem to think this sort of action isn’t really leadership at all. They argue that true leadership really needs some sort of ethical core, that for example, Odysseus is sorely lacking in mercy. They want more conversation, less action.

While I never concede the point in class, the students are right. (Insert sighs of relief from the Reader who was hoping I don’t really think a slaughter in a dorm is a good idea.)

Yet, faced with the starkness of Homeric leadership, it really is hard to see what other type of leadership would merit the name. Odysseus, standing in the halls after the slaughter, is a magnificent image. One part recoils from the image, one part is attracted to it. Who wouldn’t want to follow Odysseus into battle?

Leadership in a Democracy

Why is is so hard to get a Great leader in a Democracy?

The answer may lie in the First History of Leadership, the origin not only of something recognizable as a history book, but the first historical textbook on leadership: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War.

A note on editions: if you want to read this book, there is no contest about which version to read. The Landmark Thucydides, edited by Robert Strassler, is really the only choice.

An amazingly edited volume. The maps alone make it worth the price—instead of one or two maps at the outset, there are maps on every single page in which the action changes venue; you never have to flip a page to get a sense of where you are in the world at the present moment. Who knew that a surfeit of maps could make a book so enjoyable?

The footnotes are also amazing. The side notes indicating what is going on in every paragraph are invaluable for finding things again. The typeset is incredible.

I so want to say that I am totally in love with The Landmark Thucydides, but I am afraid that if I said that I would be committing biblioadultery—having given my heart to the Library of America, I am not sure I can be unfaithful to my other love. But, if I was the adulterous type, The Landmark Thucydides would be my new bibliomistress. But, please don’t tell the Library of America—I am not sure how jealous she is.

The beauty of the volume aside, the book itself is fantastic.

[An aside: I first read The Peloponnesian War when I was interviewing for a job at Mount Holyoke. I even talked about the book during my interview with the Dean of Faculty. (And I got a job offer. Coincidence?)]

As a manual of leadership it raises an incredibly provocative question. Thucydides is telling the story of the Death of Athenian Democracy. The cause of Death: Suicide.

Thucydides places great emphasis on the speeches given by assorted figures. At the outset we get Pericles and the marvelous Funeral Oration extolling the virtues of Athenian democracy. Over time, the speechmakers devolve more and more into demagoguery.

One way to read this book: democracy generates leaders who make the best speeches. But, the ability to make a great speech is not the same as the ability to be a wise and good leader. So, what happens when the best speechmakers are unwise or downright self-serving? Well, you end up with pointless wars which hollow out and eventually destroy the country.

The application is pretty immediate, and hard to dispute. In modern America, Rock Stars win. Think about it; when was the last presidential election which was not won by the person with greater Star Power? Coolidge or Harding??

At a minimum, in the entire time I have been politically aware (since I was 10 and Carter beat Ford), the candidate who was more like a Rock Star won. (Even the totally uncharismatic George Bush Sr fits that rule—he drew Dukakis as an opponent.)

But, do Rock Stars make great presidents? Sometimes. Sometimes…not.

That leads to the fascinating dilemma. Suppose that by having a democratic government, you are doomed to end up with poor leaders who have nothing other than fine oratory skills. Does that make democracy bad?

I am more ambivalent about this matter than I would like to be. From time to time, I have toyed with being a closet monarchist. One virtue of monarchy is that you don’t have to lament the sad state of the public when you see bad leaders. If a king is a bad king, that’s just the fault of heredity. If an elected president is a bad President, then that is the fault of the electorate. Somehow, blaming a bad gene pool is more comforting than blaming a few hundred million people for not choosing wisely. Hence my monarchist tendencies.

Then again, if I could really switch the country over to a monarchy, I am not sure I would.

One of the virtues of being a college professor is that you can have opinions and not have to worry that anyone is ever actually listening to you and might do what you suggest.

In the end: the lesson from Thucydides for leadership: Leadership is giving a Great Speech. If you want to be a leader, learn the art of rhetoric.

Meditations on Leadership

Why do you want to be leader?

Is there any reason to desire to lead?

Marcus Aurelius would like to have a word with you.

You want fame?

People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out. But suppose that those who remembered you were immortal and your memory undying. What good would it do to you? And I don’t just mean when you’re dead, but in your own lifetime. What use is praise, expect to make your lifestyle a little more comfortable?

Are you ambitious?

Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say to do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.

Are you upset about the way things are and want to change them?

And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!

Do you just want to make the world a better place?

Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer.

And so, Marcus Aurelius, leader of the Roman Empire when the Roman Empire was Big, advises you in Meditations, a veritable manual on leadership. If you are a leader, then lead. If you are not, then don’t.

Do what nature demands. Get a move on—if you have it in you—and don’t go worrying about whether anyone will give you credit for it. And don’t go expecting Plato’s Republic; be satisfied with even the smallest progress, and treat the outcome of it all as unimportant.

Control your desire and you’ll be fine:

Start praying like this and you’ll see.
Not “some way to sleep with her”—but a way to stop wanting to.
Not “some way to get rid of him”—but a way to stop trying.
Not “some way to save my child”—but a way to lose our fear.
Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens.

Aurelius asks us why we care so much about being a leader. Marcus Aurelius is surprisingly popular with my students. To be sure, they didn’t like the Stoic extreme. But some sort of Stoic-light? They would enjoy that.

Is there a half-way house here? Can you sort of give up the desire to be a leader—can you just sort of want to be a leader and still be a good leader?

If Aurelius is right, the desire to have things as they are not is doomed to lead you to misery.

All of which makes it an interesting question for a leader—if the goal is to accept things as they are, then to what exactly is one leading? How do you reconcile the seemingly tautological statement that “A leader must lead somewhere” with the Stoic belief that there is no point in wishing things were different than they are.

Is it even possible to lead like that? Doesn’t leadership necessarily mean wanting to control things outside of your own desires?

Leadership in The Republic

As a manual on leadership, Plato’s The Republic is a very useful thought experiment.

But, it is a useful guide to leadership?

First off, The Republic a mammothly sprawling book. It is a conversation which wanders all over the place, constantly circling back to the general theme.

But even there, it isn’t entirely clear what the general theme actually is. Justice? Good Government? Education? Moral Character?

In previous readings, I had read the book as an argument about a Good Society. This would put the book in the same category as Locke’s Second Treatise or Hobbes Leviathan or Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty.

So, it was rather interesting to read it this time, thinking about it as a manual on leadership. (This was one of the texts in my course “Leadership and the Liberal Arts.”)

Part of the definition of a Great Book is that you can reread it and learn something new every time. With Plato’s Republic, such a thing is easy. Just pick a new central organizing principle and embark on a journey.

It is a fun book. This is truly one of those books where you just go along for the ride and see where you end up.

About halfway though I started wondering how well the whole thing would work as a stage play. A curious production, but I suspect, if acted well (which would not be easy), it could be great. The acting would be a problem though. It wouldn’t be easy to convey the sense that this is just a rambling conversation. The temptation to make it more directed or philosophical-seeming would be quite large.

What do we learn about leadership in The Republic?

Well, first, Socrates is, as always, in pursuit of Leadership, with a capital L. He wants to discover the Truth (capital T) about Leadership, the Form of Leadership of which all earthly examples are merely pale reflections.

This is, after all, where Plato’s Cave originates. You are all in a cave staring at shadows, and I have gone forth into the light and have come back to tell you all (I shall tell you all) about Leadership, the real thing, not the shadow of the real thing.

You want to know the Truth? To be a Leader, you obviously must be a philosopher, a true lover of wisdom, someone who pursues knowledge and wisdom to the exclusion of all else. The Leader is the one who understands the Truth.

You want Justice? You need a leader who understands Justice, True Justice, not the pale imitation which normal people call justice, but the Form of Justice.

You want, whether you know it or not, The Philosopher King.

There are two immediate implications of Plato’s argument (or should that be Socrates’ argument?—it is never easy to tell) which are rather interesting:

1. There are not different types of leadership. There is only good leadership and bad leadership; good leadership is that which comes closest to the Platonic Ideal of Leadership.

2. True Leaders will undoubtedly fail in a real society because it would take a True Leader to recognize the importance of True Leadership. The masses—all the farmers and soldiers, the people obsessed with honor and material gain—will have no ability to appreciate or even understand the best leaders. All those masses are still stuck in their caves, and they cannot comprehend the Beauty and Perfection of Leadership as it truly is.

Those two points are related. We think there are different types of leaders because we cannot recognize True Leaders.

And so, the best Leaders, those who would be closest to the Platonic Ideal, end up not being Leaders in the world in which we live.

Imagine the Platonic Ideal Leader coming to earth and walking among us. That Leader does not lead because nobody follows. So, is the perfect Leader still a leader if nobody follows?

Is the ability to attract followers a part of the Platonic Ideal of Leadership? Why not?

In some ways it is hard to take the idea of the Philosopher King seriously because, quite frankly, people with a Doctorate in Philosophy are not great material for leadership. (Recall William F Buckley’s quip that he would rather be ruled by the first 200 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard.)

But, Socrates would have an easy time noting that our contemporaries with Ph.D.s (doctorates in philosophy) are not generally lovers of wisdom. They are the sham philosophers, the charlatans, who masquerade as knowledgeable so that they can get paid to do very little in a tenured sinecure.

So, set aside the charlatans. Imagine the true philosopher, the person truly committed to gaining wisdom and knowledge. Would you want that person as the leader of your society or organization?

The short answer is “No.”

But why not? I suspect it is because when we think about leadership, we mean more than simply knowing where all the parts should go. We also imagine a mechanical or practical skill—the ability to get things done—and it is not at all obvious that knowing what would be best thing to do is the same thing as accomplishing the best things.

In Plato’s Republic, a society which could never actually arise on Earth, it makes sense to have the Philosophers as Kings.

But, here on Planet Earth? It’s not enough to have seen the light. You also need to have the ability to inspire the rest of us to want to leave the cave and the ability to lead the expedition.

How to get More People to Read Your Blog

If someone you knew was reading a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, would you commend them or get worried?

Even more troubling: if a college professor assigned the book to a class of undergraduates and they take took the book to heart, would said professor have been doing a noble or vile act?

When I was putting together my course “Leadership and the Liberal Arts,” I Googled things along the lines of “Great Books on Leadership” and browsed through the many book lists which appeared. This book showed up repeatedly.

I’d never read Carnegie’s book before. I always mentally tossed it in the category of “Tedious self-help books.” This is a category which I loathe. The thought of reading endless insipid rambling pep talks causes me to shudder.

I was a bit hesitant to even assign such a book in a college class. After all, I am aiming for Great Books here, not Pathetic Books which lots of people have read.

But, then I convinced myself that having a book in this category might provide some frission to the class and then I figured “Why Not? Maybe it will be entertaining.”

And after all, these people who talk about leadership all the time sure talk about this book a lot. And, Warren Buffet did praise Dale Carnegie and Warren Buffet is really rich and so at least one really rich guy liked this book and that would be enough to recommend it to some people and so why should I have a higher standard for book selection that that?

I also figured that having a book like this on the syllabus would be a nod to the way this class used to be before I took it over and put a bunch of Great Books on the reading list.

It was the first book on the syllabus. The conclusion: it is nowhere near as bad and painful as I thought it would be—which is not praise at all. But, I didn’t mind reading it—which is surprising, and thus can be considered to be praise. And, mirabile dictu, I didn’t even mind rereading it the next time I taught the course.

Dale Carnegie is the quintessential enthusiastic, peppy, can-do type of guy and the book is an endless stream of anecdotes illustrating 30 different Principles which if followed will allow you to win friends (section 2), convince them to think the way you think (section 3), and then become a leader (section 4). To his credit, Carnegie knows how to keep a story quick and to the point, and so the book is a fast read.

The conclusion: if Carnegie is right, then Leadership is Technique. Follow these simple steps and you too will be a leader in no time. Smile. Start with the positive. Think about what the other person wants. Get other people to talk about themselves. Let others save face. Avoid direct confrontation. And so on.

One of my students said the whole book was really just kindergarten advice, which was a perceptive remark.

That comment also immediately started a debate about whether anyone really learns this in kindergarten (obviously not), but nonetheless the student was fundamentally right—even though we don’t actually teach 5 year olds to “Call attention to other people’s mistakes indirectly,” the general impulse of this book is akin to the “Be nice. Play fair.’ advice which we do give to 5 year olds. Sadly, many people forget all about that advice as they get older. So, one way to read this book is as a corrective to the failings of adults.

Read that way the book has good advice, but it is shallow. Very shallow. Carnegie insists in a “stomp your foot when you say it” way that it is not sufficient to feign interest in others, you actually have to be interested in others.

But, the book is also premised on the fact that everyone is selfish, so if you want to win friends and influence people then you need to learn to manipulate that selfishness inherent in others. But, do that in a genuine way. And then report back on how you got what you wanted by manipulating others using this list of 30 tricks of the trade. Then Carnegie can use your anecdotes about manipulating others to show everyone how his principles are really useful and then everyone will want to use them too.

Oh, and by the way, be genuine about all this caring about others. Really, be genuine. But, be sure to smile and tell someone all about what a nice head of hair he has (an actual anecdote in the book), because if you do that, then the person with a nice head of hair will be really happy and after all, you want to make people happy, right?, and then you can insist that you only wanted to make people happy because you are altruistic despite the fact that a few chapters earlier you discovered that nobody else is altruistic and they only do nice things because they get that warm fuzzy feeling from doing seemingly nice things. Except of course if you are Dale Carnegie, in which case you only write books and give seminars for the good you can do for humanity and not for the large royalty checks.

Truth be told, that last paragraph wasn’t really fair to Dale Carnegie and this book. This is not a book which is meant to be taken all that seriously.

It is a book meant to be read in a rather uncritical way and then (hopefully) you will go out and be a little bit nicer and find that being nicer makes other people nicer too.

Honestly, I should just take the book for what it is—a quick read with some kindergarten advice, that, all in all, isn’t a bad reminder that I really ought to smile the next time I get irritated with a sales associate in a store.

Or, I could think of a title for this blog post and use this review as a way of drawing attention to my website and thereby win friends and influence people. Is that noble of me?