What would it take for you to stop whatever you’re doing and follow someone, no matter where they were going?
Must they be great orators? Gifted speakers have a huge advantage in attracting followers (that’s why so many leaders are good talkers… and visa versa) but do you actually need eloquence in a leader? While we’re at it, how important, really, is morality, or for that matter, intelligence? Are they always absolutely essential? If not, what is?
Personally, I have just two demands. I’d sacrifice all the expertise and the charm and the courage and the hair for anyone who could:
a) Be Right, and
b) Sound Sure
Leaders have to deal with complex challenges, so Being Right about the environment or the economy or the future is an on-going effort, not a qualification. But anyone doing their level best to understand what was really happening and to communicate the facts accurately and precisely gets my respect and trust straight away.
On the other hand, society is filled with people who Sound Sure. Priests and politicians, athletes and business people, celebrities, athletes and shock jocks confidently weigh in on all sorts of issues, usually without any real grasp of the subject.
Unfortunately, these two qualities rarely come together in one individual. Scientists are as close to Being Right about their particular field as anyone can get, but you’ll never hear a climatologist proclaim that human activity is cooking the atmosphere, or a biologist announce that evolution is a fact, or an immunologist condemn parents who don’t immunise their kids as idiots. They don’t say these things (no matter how much they might want to) because the history of science teaches them that a sacred ‘truth’ can be destroyed with a single discovery.
And you know what happens when people who know what they’re talking about aren’t talking about it? People with no idea but plenty of opinions step in and fill the silence. As Napoleon said; ‘When the eagles are silent, the parrots jabber.’
Which is where our public debates are right now on all of the big issues, from immunisation to immigration, from criminology to climatology. The people most likely to Be Right aren’t prepared to say for sure, while the folks who Sound Sure probably aren’t right. And here’s the scary part; in any debate between the two, the public is more likely to trust confidence over evidence.
So where will my leader come from? Will someone who knows what they’re talking about step up and speak out, or will one of the people doing all the talking step back from the microphone and brush up on their knowledge?
So long as they can Be Right and Sound Sure, I don’t care.
David
Great article JC and agree wholeheartedly. Also think it is vitally important for leaders to be able to admit when they have got something wrong. No one is right all the time and expecting leaders not to make mistakes is unrealistic and encourages those who are right most of the time, to bluff it even when they are not.
Jason
Exactly. That’s why I tend to admire people who operate within the Scientific Method, particularly Karl Popper’s principle of Falsifiability: having a view of the world is not enough, you must propose how it could be disproved and devote yourself to destroying it. It doesn’t stop you being wrong (as you say, nothing does that) but it does stop you turning a mistake into a career.
Meg
I like this conversation. The truth can be a scary thing for people and the scientists in your 6th paragraph don’t say “everything” out loud because they know this. I personally love it when they do though. I think people like the thought of change and leading the way but get nervous about shouting it from the roof tops as society (media, politicians, bureaucrats, even the company we keep around the kitchen table etc) happily hang you out to dry when your view or research shows that we just cant ask someone else to go first to make the changes. We all have to get up and make it happen. Do the genuine leaders get tired of this? Or, do they realise that many may hear what is being said but few are prepared to follow to make great change.
Jason
Hey Meg, I share your love of learned people speaking out; it’s probably what drew me to Carl Sagan when I was a kid and what attracts me to people like Dawkins today (even though I think he makes more enemies than he really needs to). Your comments make me wonder how our society perceives change; do we think of it as a shift from where we are now to somewhere we should be, a shift that someone else has to instigate and then provide the rest of us with the incentive to follow? To me, change is just as much about how we got here from where we were, through a zillion mindless acts performed by everyone of us, every moment.
Do we realise that all of us have always driven change, just not in a direction that is sustainable? Do leaders struggle to tell us 1) We built this world, 2) it doesn’t work 3) we can and must build a better one? Or am I barking up the wrong tree here? Your thoughts?
Meg
I don’t think you are barking up the wrong tree Jason. I also don’t think people see themselves as complicit in the larger picture. People don’t connect their want of the latest gadget to the impacts on communities who assemble that gadget in other parts of the world. And then our leaders … Well, I think western culture doesn’t allow for this type of thinking from our leaders. Our politicians are too busy playing with politics to be that openly courageous about how we have created the world around us. Power is an amazing aphrodisiac and I think sometimes (well probably more than sometimes) it takes over. Why do so many find it hard to say “we got it wrong” Why is the fight to stay in power so much more important than the fight to save the planet and its people? Poorer countries leaders join the fray to improve the existence of their people and get lost in the power as well I think. If it all disappears and the political powerhouses are left, who are they going to rule over? Who is going to listen to them? They sure as hell will not listen to each other! LOL! Standing at the edge of the cliff they may realise your 3 points!! I think also that people think change should always be in a forward motion to create/invent/design and improve on “everything” because we can. I wonder if we actually stopped and thought about all the worlds new technology would we really need it or realise that we invented it because we can and the inventors head will explode if they don’t get the idea out there :). The one constant in our lives is change. People forget that and then get scared of it but embrace change for change sake with material things. It is absurd to me. Gone a bit off topic .. sorry 🙂
Jason
Meg, you’ve not gone off the topic so much as introduced a few others that relate to it. If I can work backwards, I suspect ‘over-invention’ is what happens when human creativity fails to connect with meaningful challenges; so that, unaware of (or unmoved by) the big issues facing our world, our inventive talents turn to musical underpants and electric seat warmers. Which is why I love TED’s credo of ‘Ideas worth spreading.’ As to your thoughts on political power I’m beginning to think that the notion itself might be an illusion; if you drew up a list of what has really changed the world I’m not sure politics would make it into the Top 10…if anything, it seems less like an agent of transformation and more like an obstacle to it. And to my mind your first comments illustrate the main lesson of globalisation; there’s no such thing as a cheap product or service. If we in the West get our goods at a low price it’s precisely because some other individual, community or ecosystem far, far away has paid the true cost.
Garry Holloway
I guess being ‘right’ is the biggest variable there Jason? Hitler sounded good, and for 15 years he was right in the view of his constituents. And I never saw the movies of hundreds of thousands of people saluting Churchill or Roosevelt? Napoleon was gifted, no doubt, but he lost many times, captured twice etc. Alexander would be my pick, luckily he died at about 33 so there was not enough time for him to be wrong hahahaha.
Jason
Thanks for the comment Garry. ‘Being Right’ is a concept that a lot of people get stuck on, so I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to clarify my meaning. When I say ‘Being Right’ I mean having a true and accurate view of a situation based entirely on evidence and reason. I can’t think of a single thing that Hitler said that satisfied that requirement. The man was mad, and madmen are often surprisingly good at Sounding Sure, which I suspect was the true source of his power. (Even a cursive glance at human history will reveal a staggering list of insane people who seduced an entire nation to follow them into madness.) And I’m sure you’re not suggesting that just because a lot of people believed him, Hitler was right. About anything. He just Sounded Sure in his insanity and people bought it. As for Churchill and Roosevelt, the few recordings and speeches of theirs that I know seem to describe the threat of European fascism with a fair degree of accuracy. Even Churchill’s most dramatic speeches, which sound like gross exaggerations of the truth, turn out to be pretty much on the money, which makes me think he probably ticks both my boxes. Not sure about Napoleon or Alexander, I don’t know enough about their world views. Maybe you can fill me in?