I recently caught up with an article by Joel Stein on the
Harvard Business Review website entitled, “Boringness: The Secret to Great Leadership.” His title for the article is wrong, though a good deal of the message inside is
right. He notes that the leaders he observed didn’t obsess over the level of
their charisma or how tough they looked. Instead, the leaders demonstrated humility,
maintained focus, were fair and had good listening skills. To me, that means
these individuals are earnest and authentic but are by no means boring. I don’t
understand why some people automatically assume mutual exclusivity.
I reflect on this in greater detail in my own book,
Camelot, Inc. In the chapter “Dutiful versus Inspired Thinking,” I reject the false
choice of either/or. One can be tough and fair as well as serious and
interesting. My reaction to the title of Mr. Stein’s HBR article was similar to
the one I had when reading a particular line in T.H. White’s The Once and
Future King. It was said of an aging King Arthur that he “had always been a dutiful
thinker, never an inspired one.” In Camelot, Inc., I wrote:
“What
was meant by this? Was this an insult? Is there an implication that dutiful
thinking is inferior to creative thinking? A dutiful thinker is a habitual
thinker, one who is always observing, searching for solutions, and attempting
to anticipate the future.
Peter
Drucker, the iconic management and leadership expert, wrote in the concluding
chapter of his breakthrough book, The Effective Executive, “What is being
developed here, in other words, is leadership—not the leadership of brilliance
and genius, to be sure, but the much more modest yet more enduring leadership
of dedication, determination, and serious purpose.”
One
who perseveres and chips away at a problem until it’s reduced to a manageable
nugget deserves great credit. Carl von Clausewitz, the 19th-century Prussian
general and father of modern military strategy, wrote in his epic On War that
“if we were to ask what sort of intellect is most closely associated with
military genius, observation and experience inform us that it is the analytical
rather than the creative mind, the more all-encompassing than the narrowly
focused mind, the cooler rather than the hot-tempered mind that we should more
readily entrust in war with the well-being of our brothers and children, and
the honor and safety of our country.””
I’m
for a balanced approach to leadership – a one-dimensional personality is not
the best recipe for influencing others. We should all be serious in our purpose
but without an ability to generate any sparks of interest, no one will pay
attention, no one will rally. In the end, there will be no one to lead.
Between blog posts, I invite you to follow me on Twitter @pauloestreicher.
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