Remember what leadership used to look like? No, I don’t mean in the old days. The good old days when we were young, or when America supposedly was great, as in “Make America Great Again.” I don’t even mean when the United States of America was a fledgling. I mean long before that, before there even was such a thing as a nation state. I mean do you remember what leadership used to look like centuries ago – millennia ago?
You don’t? OK, some reminders.
- Leadership used to be tribal. People lived mostly in groups that had little or nothing to do with other groups. Other groups that were assumed usually to be competitors if not actually enemies.
- Leadership used to be the province of single individuals who were the strongest and most assertive, if not even the most aggressive. They demanded total loyalty; they brooked no dissent.
- Leadership used to be limited to males. Females were excluded from the top ranks.
- Leadership used not to be shared. Ideas such as democratic leadership or distributed leadership or participatory leadership did not exist.
- Leadership used to be permanent, indefinite. The only way a leader would surrender his post was if he was weak, ill. Or by force – if those lower ranked than he would push him out, forcibly, and replace him with someone else.
- Leadership used to be instinctual, intuitive. There were no people to whom leaders could turn for information and expertise, and there was no body of knowledge such as medicine.
More recently, as the centuries, the millennia passed, humankind became more sophisticated. For example, we evolved from having single leaders who were the strongest and most assertive, if not even the most aggressive, to having single leaders whose rank, often inherited, bestowed privilege. Such as kings (and occasionally queens), tsars, emperors, khans, chiefs, sultans, pharaohs, and sheiks.
Even more recently were the ideas of the Enlightenment – especially the idea that power should never be the province of any single individual with an automatic right to rule. But that, instead, it should be shared. In time what came to be known as liberal democracy had implications that overturned nearly everything about leadership that previously was convention.
- Leadership became less tribal, one group less walled off from other groups. Moreover, groups regularly interacted with other groups, as did individuals who often moved freely from one group to another.
- Leadership became less likely to be bestowed only on those whose main qualification was thier strength, or their genes. It was more likely to be bestowed on those with experience and expertise.
- Leadership was no longer limited only to males. Sometimes it happened – not often but sometimes – that women rose to the top.
- Leadership came to be shared. In fact, divisions of power such as checks and balances became mainstays of democratic leadership.
- Leadership in democratic systems was not a privilege that was permanent. It was intended to be limited, turnover at the top assumed without question.
- Leadership became less reliant on instinct and intuition and more on hard information – and hard science.
Now though we are about to get a rare treat. We are about to experience the pleasures of nostalgia. Nostalgia not just for the past or even for the distant past. But for the very distant past.
- We Americans will be more walled off than we used to be. Not just from our enemies but from our friends.
- We Americans will be led by a president who is a strongman.
- We Americans will lead by a man who regularly surrounds himself with other men.
- We Americans will be given a much-needed rest by a president who prefers to control everyone and everything. Our passivity will be preferred.
- We Americans might not have to think about who will succeed our next president. To ensure he will forever escape the law, could be our next president will arrange to succeed himself.
- We Americans need not worry any longer about our health and wellbeing. We are in the able hands of men like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Oz who will wish away everything from cancer to cavities.
Nothing like a trip down memory lane – perfect for Thanksgiving!