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leadership
By accident or purpose, you're in charge of others. Good leadership is a combination of vision, stewardship, action , and wisdom. You'd better assess the responsibility and risk that that entails, otherwise people get hurt or resources get lost. This guide is a one-page guide of highly-distilled, management experience. If there were a better guide, there would have been better leaders by now.
There are two and only two enemies of a leader:
Grandstanding: Hey you won! But no one cared about that. What they cared about was that you got things done that had tangible benefits to the community's values.
Hidden blow of this enemy? Data overload. If you don't know how to delegate, you will be swamped with minutae. Advice: Try one of the many books about management and delegation or stop trying to lead and be a student for awhile.
Entrenchment: You've worn a track going around with routine ways of handling things. Now you're dug yourself so far in that you can't see over the rut you've made. While the former enemy entices you with ego, this enemy entices you with comforts.
Hidden blow here? Misplaced trust. You've got tons of advisors, swamping you with intelligence and making you feel important but, in the end, no actionable knowledge. Advice: Start small. Try being a mayor or a public administrator. Learn where all the ropes are and how to handle and organize data flows.
Those who get defeated by the first enemy succumb to power and eventually get the boot, perhaps after a very high personal cost (cf. Hitler). Those who get defeated by the second, get shuffled to the sideline never knowing that the limelight has left them in the dark (Roosevelt after WWII).
Don't be the person that makes everyone give up on their organization. Fortunately, there are allies. Read on...
STUB...
There are two allies to help you understand the enemy and perfect yourself. That puts you at even odds with the universe itself.
- Tree of Knowledge: Your brain forms and assembles knowledge along with the collective soul, to avoid repeating past mistakes.
- Failure: That's right. A leader by definition breaches the Known and explores new territory. If it had already been done you wouldn't need to lead. Without the willingness to fail, opportunities waste away from atrophy.
REWRITING...
There are four masteries to perfect yourself. A good leader doesn't shy away from challenges, but dives into them. The crucibles below are two contradictory forces in tension. You have to choose when to utilize each, allow yourself to fail and learn as you go. If you don't allow yourself fail, you won't leave the island of the Known. You mustn't be limited to preconceived rules from reason alone.
- The Decision-Maker: Being Decisive vs. Keeping Attentive
- Perfect-Delegator: Pushing the River vs. Going with the Flow
- Mastery-of-Data: Elite Data Maven vs. Avoiding Extraneous Noise
- Purity-of-Purpose: Personal Accomplishments vs. Making Community Success
Stay present with these, embody the label on the left, and your community will be guided to success in no time at all.
True leaders have a foundation to stand on. It is not easy to come by such a foundation -- either you need Truth (capital "T") or have a long basis of experience to earn community Respect (capital "R" -- not respect out of fear). A good leader must stay constantly vigilant towards their arena of governance and delegate tasks to maintain that awareness.
When you defeat the first enemy, you become a person-of-action that people are willing to put their full faith into because you're no longer compensating for a lack of ideas.
When you defeat the second, you become a respected authority for the community, knowing that life is too precious and fleeting to waste on comforts and ego.
Along the path, you must master reason (rather than being merely logically consistent or self-righteous), decisiveness (rather than being negligent or passive), integrity (rather than being obsequious or friendly), and power (rather than being vain or weak-willed).
Finally, at the end of this path, when working for virtues like Truth, Justice, Beauty, Harmony, you will find endless possibilities await to make a better world.
See also:
Category: Justice League