I have a little surprising material to add to the vast body of knowledge and nonsense about leadership.
Why should I know anything about leadership? That should be your first question.
It
has been my misfortune to be chosen as the president or chairman of
every group I have ever been a member of, with no effort on my part,
since I was 15. While at the University of Chicago, in 1958 I organized
the first student demonstration against merging the college senate into
the University governing body. As a result I was elected president of three groups of which I was not a member: the Young Communists, Young
Socialists and SDS all in my absence. From there on it never stopped.
I had been at S.F. State College for one week when I was chosen as
campus president.
It appeared to me, early on, that whatever
leadership is, I had plenty of it and other people could recognize it
in me. I was even made the youngest Vice President in American banking
in 1968 by the Bank of California management and subsequently offered the CEO job at two large banks.
After twenty years
of this incessant elevation to responsibility that I never chose, I put
on all white clothes (taken as a sign of slight derangement by
everyone) and I escaped promotion to leader from that day till this.
Now, my thoughts on leadership. Leadership is a quality in a person that directs a group to focus on him as the convener of the group. The good leader is a thoughtful unbiased listener who accepts the responsibility to consider the needs of the group, both the immediate needs for comity and longer term needs for survival. The leader having listened and weighed the group concerns, expresses them back to the group in a form that is acceptable and capable of creating the commonly desired movement.
Not much else, from my experience.