Where have all the leaders gone?

Mark Greathouse

(10/2021) Wander back to 1962 when the folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary released "Where Have All the Flowers Gone." It was a protest of the Viet Nam War. Permit me to take liberties with the lyrics and contribute a stanza on the important topic of leadership in our nation. "Where have all the leaders gone, long time passing? Where have all the leaders gone, long time ago? Where have all the leaders gone? Gone to politicians everyone. Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?" Were I to follow that knockoff stanza, it would lament today’s leadership having metaphorically, "Gone to graveyards everyone."

We have a decided lack of leadership in our nation today. History’s landscape offers a rich panoply of accomplished leaders. From biblical leaders like Moses, David, and Solomon to the likes of Alexander, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan and to the more recent George Washington, Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan, the successes and foibles of countless leaders have often become the stuff of legends.

So, what is leadership? Leadership is the process of influencing individuals and groups to set and achieve goals. Leaders are not born. Leadership is a learned skill set, and we’ve mostly made a mess of teaching those skills.

Why is leadership so important, especially for today? The answer may lie in the seeming absence of leadership. Our culture has been inexorably moving from truth to trend, pursuit of values to pursuit of wealth, and from excellence to expedience. In an era when success hinges on innovation and adaptability for optimum outcomes, there’s a dearth of leadership talent. There’s plenty of "spray-on charisma" masquerading as leadership, but true leadership is lacking.

Recall the scene in the film "Patton" where the General addresses his troops. Do you recall the key quote, "Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory." Patton was a student of warfare, but it was the qualities of leadership that he learned and exhibited that drove men to follow the him.

What will return our nation to its well-earned lead role on the world stage is servant leaders. Servant leaders embody a paradoxical blend of competence, confidence, and humility. None of our current national-level politicians could remotely be said to have those characteristics. Leaders are a special breed. There are distinct differences between leading and managing. Leaders are channels for change, whereas managers are deliverers of order and process. In addition to providing inspirational vision and strategic thinking, leaders communicate in such a way as to provide a resource conduit. Leaders are motivators.

Leadership can be characterized as having a visionary mindset. Jonathon Swift noted in 1726, "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." Management scientists have identified more than 600 terms associated with desirable leadership characteristics. Terms like visionary, confident, optimist, listener, inspiring, and hundreds more combine in various patterns to describe the ultimate leader. On the flip side, there are many undesirable leadership traits such as braggart, narcissist, ego-centric, tunnel-visioned, and mendacious.

Okay, so what? Why servant leadership? Well, it works! The Chinese sage Lao Tzu in 604-531 BC remarked, "The sage never strives himself for the great; and thereby the great is achieved." Some may fear that such a person might be seen as weak. Weak? I contend that it takes far greater strength to be a servant leader.

We may intuitively understand why servant leadership is a good thing. Researcher Jim Collins in the October 2013 "Inc." magazine, noted that as a result of his extensive research coupled with a real-life experience conducting leadership seminars at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, success, growth, and service were key to leadership. He found that building a culture an engaged leader required spending time in service to a cause or purpose entailing passionate dedication and willing suffering and sacrifice; the need to maintain an environment of huge – even audacious – challenges to push people hard and cause growth; and striving for communal success reinforcing the idea that we succeed only by helping each other.

So where are these qualities of servant leadership among the politicians supposedly leading our nation. Developing leaders in a narcissistic culture is daunting. Leaders tend to be bred from followers, as you must learn to follow and serve before you can hope to lead. Thus, to develop leaders, an environment needs to be created whereby opportunities to both follow and lead are available. The idea of servant leadership really must be embedded in the nation’s vision, mission, and core values; an embedding driven by the electorate.

Servant leaders build communities of followers. They foster communities of relationships, using characteristics like respect, dignity, trust, and worth to build a loyalty that serves as the glue to bind the communities. Research shows that loyalty is freely given by voters in direct proportion to the perception of the degree to which leaders care about them.

The relationships that build communities are the outcomes of the best beliefs in optimal outcomes through relational synergy. Sustaining communities of relationships requires a systematic approach to ensure consistency. Effective servant leaders are adept at connecting human feelings and hard systems focused toward common goals. Systems are logical, self-consistent, unified, interacting, interconnected parts arranged in a harmonious, mutually supportive, hierarchical order with all parts related to the whole. The leader interconnects the human side of the relationship equation in a methodical fashion toward constant improvement. Without a system to support leadership, the nation is surely destined to fail. Famed poet Anne Bradstreet in 1664 advised, "Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish."

Most of us would equate power with authority, and rightly so. History, however, is littered with tales of the powerful who were not fit to lead. In the case of the servant leader, power is not so much about might as it is developing and sharing a sense of purpose or meaning that creates value measured in significance toward uniting people behind that purpose. In today’s often divisive political/cultural climate of canceling, doxing, narcing, boycotting, etc., the task seems intimidating.

Real leadership is the power that makes others powerful. In delegating that power, a trust is bestowed, and followers become the custodians of that trust. The true servant leader has the authority that empowers everyone in the organization as united within a core set of beliefs, values, and purposes.

Leadership is bestowed by the consent of those who are governed. No amount of vested authority can substitute for the trust that followers place in their leader who has, in turn, empowered those followers. You can bark orders and issue mandates all day long, but that won’t make you a leader. It takes a mindset coupled with a skill set that develops over time. It takes a person of strong moral character to be an effective servant leader. Thus, I repeat, "Where have all the leaders gone, long time passing?"

Read past edition of the Tumbleweeds

Read other articles by Mark Greathouse