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The leadership guru, John C. Maxwell, defined leadership as nothing more or less than your ability to influence people. But this is just half of the story. Without the other half, it becomes outright foolishness. The second half is called judgment. To be able to influence people and lead them to a wise direction are two ways that a leader must be able to do. This becomes most clear when one considers bureaucracies - power, but no judgement. True leaders evolve. False leaders fail in an evolutionary environment. This is why leaders need to come from the coal face, not a sheltered workshop.
If you think you are a leader, but no one is following you, then really, you're just a guy taking a walk. This phrase also came from Maxwell. According to him, without influence, one cannot be considered a leader. He also identified the three levels of leadership; legalised, charismatic, and legendary. When thinking of most government departments, keep this good perspective. We do what they say because we get in trouble if we don't. And that is the basest level of leader.
The ability to get people to follow you to hell is not good leadership. It is getting them to follow you to hell and back that is most profound. This is because good judgement is just as fundamental to leadership as influence. If you have a plan to win and has reasonable chance of doing so, you are a good leader. Churchill would still have been a great leader if Britain had narrowly lost WWII to the Nazis. But General Custer was never a good leader. So where do we find leaders with judgement?
Learning from mistakes and growing from experience are the two most important things for an individual leader. Experience refines judgment. This is the first factor to consider. There are a lot of theories about how the world runs. A leader gets a chance to test these theories against the real world with experience. Those leaders who achieve on-going success are those who have understood the nature of the world. This is the first contrast to bureaucrats, who typically run on some type of socialist ideology and don't seem to notice when it doesn't work. You will know if you were right or just lucky the first time until you have failed. A feedback system is needed.
Secondly, leaders have to be allowed to fail, and only those who succeed get to progress to the next level. Life, and in particular leadership, is not a game where everyone gets to win. In small business, for example, would-be entrepreneurs launch companies all the time. Most don't succeed. But the ones who do can call themselves leaders - they lead people to success. Influence and Judgement. Military leaders are often similar. To win battles on a regular basis requires influence, and judgement. But the important thing here for society is that only the best leaders get to go on to the next level.
For us who compete in the real world as a sheltered workshop, many bureaucrats operate. They seem to be at the school where everybody gets points for trying, and there are no winners or losers. Unfortunately, they are the ones who make most of the decisions that affect your everyday life. Promotion within bureaucracies is based on politics - the ability to play the game. If we base on this, favour is on the side of people who are good at influence, but less at judgment. The feedback mechanism is not so practiced in bureaucracy. The decision-makers never feel the pain of their incompetence.
There are two things involving evolutionary leadership. The first is the contact between the leader and the real world, whereby the individual leader can learn from mistakes and evolve as a leader. Secondly, it is about an evolutionary environment, where only the successful survive.
There needs to be a restructure of government decision making processes in order for the Anglo-American Empire to recover from its current spiral into mediocrity. Evolutionary leadership needs to be exercised by government decision makers. The current sheltered workshop bureaucracy only encourages game players, not leaders.
If you think you are a leader, but no one is following you, then really, you're just a guy taking a walk. This phrase also came from Maxwell. According to him, without influence, one cannot be considered a leader. He also identified the three levels of leadership; legalised, charismatic, and legendary. When thinking of most government departments, keep this good perspective. We do what they say because we get in trouble if we don't. And that is the basest level of leader.
The ability to get people to follow you to hell is not good leadership. It is getting them to follow you to hell and back that is most profound. This is because good judgement is just as fundamental to leadership as influence. If you have a plan to win and has reasonable chance of doing so, you are a good leader. Churchill would still have been a great leader if Britain had narrowly lost WWII to the Nazis. But General Custer was never a good leader. So where do we find leaders with judgement?
Learning from mistakes and growing from experience are the two most important things for an individual leader. Experience refines judgment. This is the first factor to consider. There are a lot of theories about how the world runs. A leader gets a chance to test these theories against the real world with experience. Those leaders who achieve on-going success are those who have understood the nature of the world. This is the first contrast to bureaucrats, who typically run on some type of socialist ideology and don't seem to notice when it doesn't work. You will know if you were right or just lucky the first time until you have failed. A feedback system is needed.
Secondly, leaders have to be allowed to fail, and only those who succeed get to progress to the next level. Life, and in particular leadership, is not a game where everyone gets to win. In small business, for example, would-be entrepreneurs launch companies all the time. Most don't succeed. But the ones who do can call themselves leaders - they lead people to success. Influence and Judgement. Military leaders are often similar. To win battles on a regular basis requires influence, and judgement. But the important thing here for society is that only the best leaders get to go on to the next level.
For us who compete in the real world as a sheltered workshop, many bureaucrats operate. They seem to be at the school where everybody gets points for trying, and there are no winners or losers. Unfortunately, they are the ones who make most of the decisions that affect your everyday life. Promotion within bureaucracies is based on politics - the ability to play the game. If we base on this, favour is on the side of people who are good at influence, but less at judgment. The feedback mechanism is not so practiced in bureaucracy. The decision-makers never feel the pain of their incompetence.
There are two things involving evolutionary leadership. The first is the contact between the leader and the real world, whereby the individual leader can learn from mistakes and evolve as a leader. Secondly, it is about an evolutionary environment, where only the successful survive.
There needs to be a restructure of government decision making processes in order for the Anglo-American Empire to recover from its current spiral into mediocrity. Evolutionary leadership needs to be exercised by government decision makers. The current sheltered workshop bureaucracy only encourages game players, not leaders.
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To help you better, there is more information about politics, morality and hunting, in tomgrafton.com.. This article, Leadership: Evolutionary Vs Bureaucratic is available for free reprint.
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