What makes a leader?

Leadership is an elusive quality, associated, at times, with different, even contradictory qualities. In a patriarchal context, people often seem to attribute personal traits such as conspicuous “strength”, authoritativeness and decisiveness (to the point of peremptoriness) to a leader — qualities that could easily be perverted into dictatorship, not only by the leaders in question, but also by those led or governed who encourage such a transmutation.

It is no accident that Theodor Adorno conceived of the “authoritarian personality” primarily as that kind of person who requires or craves a “master” of sorts — in other words, someone who cannot, or is not prepared to, think for him- or herself, and needs the “leader” to do so for him or her.

By contrast, a different kind of authority operates in a situation where people are prepared to think for themselves — the kind that Immanuel Kant had in mind when, in his famous essay What Is Enlightenment?, he suggested that it consists in having the courage to think for oneself (sapere aude). From this it follows that the only legitimate kind of authority is that which is founded on superior knowledge, and not merely that which supposedly adheres to a certain “position”, whether it is that of a CEO, of a minister, a vice-chancellor and so on. There are many instances of people in such positions of putative authority who delegitimise their own authority by showing themselves as lacking the knowledge or insight that is presupposed and required by the position in question. This has important consequences for leadership.

Perhaps a good way to illustrate what I have in mind is by way of examples, one historical and the other fictional. The recent film 300 reconstructs the justly famous battle of Thermopylae (“Hot Gates”), a narrow mountain pass defended by 300 Spartans and their allies (altogether about 4 000) under the leadership of their king, Leonidas, against the conquering army of more than a million soldiers of the Persian ruler Xerxes in 480 BC. Regardless of what recommends the film as novel cinematic enterprise, what it does not bring out sufficiently is what made Leonidas such a compelling leader.

From the ancient Greek and later historians one can gather that, in contrast to the emperor Xerxes, who ruled as an illustrious “leader” so elevated beyond his subjects’ reach that few could approach him, surrounded as he was by various “gatekeepers” — and even then on pain of death, should they incur the emperor’s displeasure — Leonidas, the Spartan king, maintained no distance between himself and his subjects, engaging in strenuous military exercises with them, working alongside of them while they were building a barricade, exchanging jokes with them, being called by name when they addressed him.

In short, Leonidas, while being recognised as undisputed leader by his people, was one of them at the same time, and served them without any distance separating them. And yet his authority was not questioned, because he clearly displayed all the knowledge or techné, all the virtue (arete) and courage (andreia) that infused his words and actions with the necessary authority. He was the supreme leader who, paradoxically — and here lies a clue to the secret of a true leader, I believe — was simultaneously one of, and different from, the people who were his “subjects”.

How many “leaders” can rise to this difficult position? I have a friend who was appointed the vice-chancellor of a university, and who confided in me that he intended moving the office of the vice-chancellor from the top floor of the building to the ground floor, in the interest of maintaining open lines of communication with academic and other staff members. A laudable intention, but one which he did not implement, with the consequence that during his term of office staff became increasingly alienated from him. He should have heeded Leonidas’s example.

Fiction also provides clues concerning the anatomy of true leadership. In Richard Adams’s wonderful allegorical novel Watership Down — the story of a band of rabbits that leaves a doomed warren in search of a suitable place to start a new one — Hazel, the rabbit that eventually emerges as the motley group’s leader, is not the strongest among them, nor the cleverest, nor the fastest, but the one who reveals his leadership qualities in every successive, variously threatening situation, by his own unique ability to call upon and coordinate the diverse talents and strengths of the other members of the group while still remaining one of them.

When sheer, brute strength is required, it is Bigwig, the undisputed fighting champion among them, whom Hazel consults and enlists to “save” the group; when wisdom and foresight is needed, it is Fiver, the clairvoyant rabbit, whose counsel he seeks. And this varies from situation to situation, so that in the end even Bigwig, who was by far Hazel’s senior in the hierarchy of authority in the old warren, recognises Hazel as the undisputed, authoritative leader in the sense of someone who “knows” how to lead, and in so doing, serves the best interests of the people.

In social reality, as in nature, everything is not always as it seems — what seems to be a stick sometimes turns out to be an insect; someone who appears to be a leader sometimes turns out to be a self-serving autocrat. Perhaps we should heed the lessons of history and of fiction when assessing the leadership qualities of those who aspire to positions of leadership and authority.