I know a couple people who don't like Catholicism. It extends in some cases to their not liking Catholics either. That makes me sad and frustrated. Mostly because this comes from people who place a very high premium on loving other people. Incidentally many Catholics I've met also like to love people.
But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Today I want to talk about leadership. "Leadership" happens to be my least favorite word, topic and concept of all time. That is an exaggeration, I definitely hate at least a couple of things more than leadership - like Futurama, or socks with no partners, or people who won't shut up about coffee, or east coast writers struggling publicly to navigate the hierarchy of societal offenses, which changes every day in both content and severity. That escalated quickly but if you're still with me we're discussing "leadership."
First of all leadership is rarely discussed in the same conversation as women. When it is, it's usually being discussed by women. If it's being discussed by a man, and women are present and are also being addressed, the man is very, very aware and very, very, very proud of himself (and will probably mention this a couple of times). This is annoying, but by far not the most annoying thing about leadership.
Leadership is a bullshit topic. This is something people talk about to avoid talking about concrete things, because it's easier. It's like that kid in my high school who always wrote real flowery poems and shared them with our English class and everyone fawned over them, except I, being a giant bully, always wanted to point out that the poems never actually SAID anything. Anyway - like, let's say you go to the CEO of a company and you say "Sir, you are facing a large budget shortfall. What will you do?" And the CEO thinks for a moment, strokes his beard, tells his female secretary to hold all his calls and wear a nicer dress tomorrow, then it dawns on him: HE NEEDS BETTER LEADERSHIP. And so he spends the next 9 months writing a book about leadership, and what it means to lead from up front and lead from behind and lead from upside down and instill confidence, and then by the time he's done his company has finally gone under! At least his secretary looked nice.
Leadership is also a concept into which anyone can inject almost any meaning, and it will be accepted. You could easily hear two people at the same time say "Leadership means taking charge" and "Leadership means delegating to others" and in both cases their audiences will likely nod, knowingly. Because they're in the leadership club! And they're dudes, presumably.
In addition, leadership gives everyone talking about it a great, great inflation of their ego. After all, if they're talking about leadership, they must be a great leader! No one would talk about leadership if they weren't a leader. And everyone who is listening thinks, I know a person who talks about leadership, and I'm listening! I must be a leader. All of these conclusions really mean, of course: I am smart, but not just smart, I am smart-er, and everyone should listen to me.
This is just what we've always wanted anyway, right? And that's what the bullshit concept of leadership gives us.
My theory is this: just do stuff. Like, accomplish things. Worry about the rest after that, but my guess is you won't have much to worry about.
I just wrote my leadership book!!! That'll be $99 but I'll waive the fee if you organize an international conference around this blog post. International conferences about leadership are just... I can't talk about it, I have heartburn.
Have a great weekend, man leaders! Don't worry about doing anything. You're a leader.
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