Where has all the leadership gone?
Leadership is a funny thing. We want to break it up into lots of small parts and promised ourselves that if we do more of something, or if someone else does more of something, then we will have more leadership.
When I put the analytical process in those terms, it sounds ridiculous. Leadership isn’t something that is made up of lots of things. But sometimes it is there and sometimes it isn’t. And when it isn’t, we not only miss it, we get angry. Why isn’t there leadership?
The monkey business illusion
Well maybe we are looking for leadership in all the wrong places. The monkey business illusi0n explains the point.
Oh, yes, I know you’ve seen this. But not this version, watch it.
We see what we want to see. When we see no leadership, maybe, just maybe, we didn’t see it.
Maybe we spent our time looking at non-leadership so we screened out leadership?
Why do we feel there is no leadership?
Why do we see non-leadership instead of leadership?
Simply because that’s what we were looking for.
When we start by looking for leadership and honouring it when we see it, then it is there. When we ignore it, it’s not. It’s as simple as that.
When we do a test of leadership and we say leadership wasn’t there, we are jumping our logical tracks. We can say we didn’t see leadership; that’s all.
That’s why democracy is important. It is not that the voters recognize leaders. It is what they recognize is leadership.
Leadership exists when we say it does.
Find it. Honor it.
Sometimes it is not the designated leaders who lead. It is important to identify this ‘non-leader’ and follow for best results.
Agreed Lubna. When we feel that there is no leadership, maybe we are looking in the wrong places.
Nice way to use the lessons from this experiment in the context of leadersship. So true. You might me interested in: http://balancedaction.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/monkey-business-did-you-ever-get-soaked-while-trying-to-grab-a-banana/