If “good leader” is in the sense of “somebody who leads others to good outcomes” rather than in the sense of “somebody who is good at leading others”, it does make sense that some who are natural leaders and hence good at leading people don’t actually lead people to the best outcomes or even good outcomes.
History is full of people who naturally inspired others to follow them and then used that for their own personal advantage, ultimatelly screwing their followers.
Just because you’re good at getting people to follow you doesn’t mean you’re good at finding the right path or that you have good intentions towards others.
Exactly this.
I disagree. You hear stories about bad managers and it’s mostly because they are dealing with some past traumas along with being put into a position of influence with no training. Every bad manager I have had turned out to be a fairly lousy person in general
Every good manager I have met is someone who managed to work through their life’s bullshit and move on from it. They then take the time and effort to learn to manage well.
a natural leader is someone who the quality leadership comes naturally
I disagree in order to be a natural leader you have to be good at leadership.
I think what you are really trying to articulate is that working for a leader can really fucking suck.
Leaders are great at executing change, they are great at challenging norms and successfully destroying things. Leaders tend to ignore the day to day, managers are who handles the day to day.
being a leader sucks.
i have had mulitple leadership roles in my life. i grew to hate everyone was so happy when i went back to being a grunt.
it’s a shitty thankless job and everyone blames you for their mistakes and you’re allowed to make none of your own.
hence why most people who end up leaders are the ones who are skilled at avoiding accountability and blaming others, purposefully inverting the leadership role.
i typically only became a leader because nobody else was willing to stand up. and the second you do stand up… everyone else starts resenting you and trying to tear you down.
You had a leadership role or a management role?
This is a strange take. A natural leader is a leader without a title. They have they have the qualities needed to be a good leader. People gravitate to them because they have all the prerequisites and skills of leadership.
They lead people because of the relationship they have built without having to resort to institutional authority. This makes natural leaders better than a boss who is given a title sometimes without the attributes or even the skills of leadership.
Your take seems to be someone who is born a leader doesn’t necessarily have the skills. Like they are charismatic but don’t have good listening skills. These people are not natural leaders though. Natural leaders by definition posses the attributes and skills of leadership.
This is not saying every natural leaders has all the skills or attributes of leadership as that would be a ridiculous bar to expect. It really just feels like you could just say leadership is often confused with charisma.
The name I have heard for this concept is “leadership without authority”.
Oh, I like that!
I think it makes sense that some people who “posses the attributes and skills of leadership” would none the less lead others to bad outcomes.
If in the original post you read “good leader” in the sense of “somebody who leads others to good outcomes” rather than in the sense of “somebody who is good at leading others”, then it does make sense in that some natural leaders whilst being good at leading people don’t actually lead those people to good outcomes.
Muad’dib was a natural leader. People tended to see him as a leader even when he had nothing. There is something to the notion of “he said he’s not the messiah. That’s exactly what the messiah would say!”
Maud’dib also exploited the native peoples for his own benefit. The series past the first book is about how awful the result of that was.
To bring this into real life, where you end up leading people is important.
Your last sentence should’ve been what OP posted, you’re right. 👍
It’s also like being cool. It’s only true if other people say it about you and when you say it about yourself, the likelihood it’s true decreases exponentially.
True that
I feel like almost every really good leader is someone who happens to have that “natural leader” quality, but also asks people for input constantly and is aware of their lack of judgement.
A little semi related aside: There is a fascinating story in “Most Secret War” of the author’s first meeting where Winston Churchill was running the meeting. One, Churchill came in in working clothes, the only one not wearing a suit, and everyone thought for a second that he was the janitor or something entering the wrong room when he walked in. He just didn’t carry himself like “the boss.” Once they all realized everyone stood up and he sort of waved it off and took his seat like nothing special. He had sort of anti charisma.
Once he started running the meeting, Jones said that Churchill had an almost supernatural ability to spot when Jones at least had something he needed to say. Somebody would say something that was wrong, Jones would carefully keep his face neutral because he was just some random low-level peon at this meeting and didn’t want to get in trouble, and the next thing that happened Churchill would say, “Jones, what do you think of that?” Basically he was at a grandmaster level of digging to get to the bottom of what was actually happening so everyone could make good decisions.
I don’t really know that much about any famous leaders through history, but it was just fuckin’ fascinating as a window onto how these decisions and plans actually get made, to some small extent.
My uncle was a sheep farmer and I can confirm, some leaders are just leaders because the ones following are very dumb
Very true. They just have good social skills and or high charisma. You ever notice people love bad leaders though? Just look at any famous or notorious leader
because they love the social skills and charisma. and don’t forget the looks/image.
they don’t care about the quality of the leadership. most folks would gladly follow a charming person to their own doom.
People don’t love bad leaders, they love abusive leaders. Like the more pain they suffer for a leader, the more they need to love that leader for their suffering to make sense to themselves. Abusive leaders exploit that loophole of human psychology. It’s why cults form all the time and why people in cults are often forced to go door to door just to face the rejection that non-cultists give them. The rejection from outsiders makes them cling to the cult harder.
Thank you. I grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, and that is the actual reason for door-to-door work. That and forcing you to spend a lot of time in order to build up one hell of a sunk cost fallacy for leaving. The actual rate of new people coming in from that is almost zero.
Bad leaders are ba, people love them. Lol abuse is bad, geez
Bad can mean evil or it can mean incompetent. People don’t love incompetent leaders, but they do love evil ones. If a leader isn’t evil but they are seen as incompetent, people often hate them.
