[March 30, 2017] There are many long-held ideas about why individuals behave a certain way under specific circumstances. Those ideas are the keys to understanding humans and variations in our behaviors called culture (a makeup of many individual actions). Yet, it is the greatness of any society that can only be achieved through the exercise of good and moral leadership.
Philosophers have written about human nature for millennia. Their writings on those most basic questions may forever remain unanswered; however, what we do know is that one thing can and does make a difference. The one thing that is predictable and that is that leadership comes forth from the most unforeseen places.
“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.” – John Buchan, Scottish novelist and historian
Senior leaders seem to instinctively know (it’s not really instinctive but it’s so much of their intellectual make-up that it only appears so) that their main job is to bring out the best in other people. Optimistically, many of those same leaders believe that each individual is capable of greatness; given just the right circumstance for it to happen.
When senior leaders talk among themselves, inevitably the topic comes back to how to encourage (“elicit” is perhaps a better word) excellence in the work of their subordinates. This is based, of course, on the idea above by John Buchan when he tells us about the natural state of humankind as being fundamentally good.
Buchan, like others historians, has made this observation from his study of humans acting under the most difficult circumstances (like war, disaster, famine, and disease). The study of human psychology is also undertaken in unusual situations where normal patterns are disrupted and where psychologists observe people reconstructing normalcy.
Growing up in the Bible Belt of the United States, I find his comments to be in agreement with what any Christian would tell us. Christianity, as I was taught, is based on the idea that we should love one another because God made us in His image (He is good, therefore we were created good). Free will, of course, is part of being human and that can explain why evil exists and bad things happen.
Leaders, therefore, have the essential duty of pulling greatness out of us. That is why, I believe, that I’ve done so well in my life; others helped me find the greatness in myself that everyone else also has hidden there.
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