The Politics of Leadership

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It may be helpful to return to basics in understanding what should be meant by the use of the term “political.” As Peter Corning put it in his powerful analysis, The Synergism Hypothesis: A Theory of Progressive Evolution: “…political systems include the subset of all imaginable cybernetic systems that are social organizations of some sort. Thus politics is not at heart a separate and specialized sphere of social life; it is an aspect or dimension of all organized social life” (Corning 1984, 6). Or, again from Corning, “…politics is not an epiphenomenon, not a distillate of economic activities, or of the class struggle, or of the machinations of ambitious leaders. Politics is a natural and necessary process of social life, a process that occurs when two or more individuals come together to work out a shared problem or to coordinate their efforts toward some shared goal, such as raising children or making war” (Corning 1984, 7).

In another sense, if leadership is considered the result of the personal properties of an individual actuated in a situation, then the leadership process is dependent on those properties and is apt to produce a skewed pattern of investigation which seeks to identify the most desirable traits and characteristics according to criteria of desired outcomes. Approached as a generic process independent of such presumptions, leadership can be understood to be a political phenomenon which, like any other political cum social process, has no necessarily desirable outcome but has significant influence on the kind and nature of the outcomes that do eventuate. That leadership is a relational phenomenon is a common observation, but seeing that phenomenon as having identifiable processes and effects that occur in all cases should allow a greater degree of separation between subjective desire and objective observation. After all, we should be able to identify what processes are characteristic of leadership in all cases and treat that as an issue distinct from what may be the preferred leadership process in a given instance. Bachrach, P., and A. Botwink. 1992. Power and Empowerment: A Radical Theory of Participatory Democracy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. House, R., and R. Aditya. 1997. The Social Scientific Study of Leadership: Quo Vadis? Journal of Management 23:409u73.The definition of leadership is simple: It’s the practice of positive influence. But this presents another question—what is influence? Combining definitions from Oxford Languages and Merriam-Webster, influence is “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something,” but without using “apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command.” House and Aditya have made a substantial case for both the achievements and the difficulties of leadership studies and noted that one of the major problems is that the “current study of leadership … continues to focus excessively on superior-subordinate relationships to the exclusion of several functions that leaders perform and to the exclusion of organizational and environmental variables that are crucial to effective leadership performance” (House and Aditya 1997, 465). They also assert that there are generic leadership functions which “represent broad classes of specific leader behaviors” (House and Aditya 1997, 449). The idea is that a generic function can be enacted by diverse behaviors in different settings, e.g., group maintenance may be seen as such a generic function which is performed by leaders in most, if not all, settings. The notion of generic functions is useful if not applied too selectively. After all, the same role may be served in different cultures by different behavior. The variety of behavior that serves the political nature of leadership will not deny the fact that a fundamental function (it may best be called a metafunction) of all leadership, regardless of setting, is to be political. Once this step is taken, it may become more possible to identify the behaviors which serve that metafunction. This paper seeks to make an effective contribution to how we think about democratic political leadership and also to share personal insight as a politician so that other politicians and leaders can use it as a reference and think about how much they are taking care of themselves. Doing so can contribute to finding solutions for the legitimacy crisis that our democracies are experiencing due to a disconnect with social expectations and demands. This paradigm shift is already occurring in other fields of society, and taking it to the political arena will make the task of those in charge of solving the great problems we face more effective.

In general, the formation of a politician is rational, and he tends to omit his personhood as his career progresses. This omission takes him away from a more comprehensive look at himself, generating potential mental, physical, and emotional health problems that end up amplifying self-reliance and the difficulty of making emotional connections. If we do not prepare and support our leaders, we cannot expect to have good results. One must wonder why there is so much investment, technology, and science devoted to training and caring for people who are dedicated to other tasks that have much less impact on our society, but we do not do the same with the people who take on the task of political leadership.

In moments of euphoria when they had been doing well in their circumstances, their self-sufficiency increased; in moments of decline and crisis, depression and paralysis were enhanced. But this is not an individual problem; it is more structural in nature. Often, this goes unnoticed because the problem of leadership is not usually looked at from a broader perspective, amplifying the feeling that it is something that only affects one’s own country. Civil society organizations, academic institutions, foundations, and think tanks that work to support political training have a specific approach, which is important in that it provides tools, but it cannot replace day-to-day or long-term strategies. We should also think of a more collective and group dimension to leadership, understanding that we should not expect a single person to effectively manage so much complexity. We should look at the models of groups, teams, and orchestras, where there is someone who leads more like a coordinator of a team of peers, not as a messianic leader. This leadership model can lead us to a breakthrough in thinking of ways for the electoral political supply to rest not on a single person, but rather on teams that put shared work as a value before society.

What is a good leader? Strong leadership is not dictating authority, managing, or guiding individuals in exactly the same way. Instead, it is realizing how to positively influence each person on the team toward achieving the company’s collective vision. But how do business owners grow their influence among customers, clients, and employees? Strategize I also looked for experiences in the business world, where there are many biographies and a large amount of content dedicated to rethinking how human capital is organized and how it is developed. It is clearly seen there how the old vertical and pyramidal corporate model is being overcome by a more horizontal and collaborative leadership. Today’s most dynamic companies invest time and resources thinking about these issues, something very difficult to find in the world of politics. Another Pandemic: A Crisis of Leadership and Representation Technology today has made it more accessible than ever to have permanent measuring instruments that keep us in touch with our physical performance. Even so, it is interesting to think that it is not only about leaders doing physical activity occasionally, but also about understanding that they must be in their best shape for what is an activity of enormous physical exhaustion. Relying on professionals for support in this process is also key, because as with the mental and emotional elements, self-sufficiency can lead us to want to solve it ourselves. Understanding the world of sports provides insight into what it takes to perform at the highest levels, even in other fields. Looking at the political experience from the person’s perspective—the individual’s perspective—and not just from the ideological, intellectual, or institutional perspective allowed me to see that there were many tools available that were not being leveraged and that could be very useful. I also saw that there were new realities that required new approaches. According to Alberto Lederman, an Argentine business management expert: “All leaders have some trauma. I don’t know one that doesn’t. My theory, in short, is that lust for power is a trauma response. Because, just as not everyone needs to get high, not everyone is interested in power. You must have a biographical trauma to do certain things. You must have motive, compelling reasons to aspire to power, to want to make history, to seek prominence. If there is no conflict, there are no demands for redress.”

As mentioned in the leadership definition, being a leader is practicing the art of influence. CEOs don’t gain followers because they’re at the top of the organizational food chain. Customers’ and employees’ respect, admiration, and loyalty are earned based on how well a person serves them. Clearly, leadership must be understood to involve more than the exercise of formal authority. It must also be understood as a critical element in the process by which authority is both created and sustained (Weaver 1991, 161). The “office holder” may not be the locus of leadership in a social structure. A concern with leadership qua power and authority in formal organizations effectively diverts attention from the structures and processes of informal power and authority and, therefore, leadership within those organizations or in other social structures (Weaver 1991, 162). Leadership must involve more than performing an office; it must define and be defined “by virtue of intricate reciprocities of behavior and perceptions” (Weaver 1991, 162). 1 will repeat here a position that I have made before that “leadership is a generically political role that has something important to do with initiative in the definition, articulation, and/or authoritative allocation of values in any social construct” (Weaver 1991,162) . An old, apocryphal riddle asks “What is the difference between a politician and a statesman?” and is answered with the observation that “a statesman is a politician with whom one agrees.” So too, with most students of leadership, “a nonleader is anyone who acts the same as a leader except that we disagree with her or him in some significant way.” The following are nine dimensions that should be included in a political leader’s toolbox. Not intended to be exhaustive academic research on each topic, the objectives of this section are: (1) that it serves as a foundation on which to build a syllabus, whose objective is to create awareness and provide concrete tools that can become habits; (2) that it provides a self-examination reference tool for those in a leadership role to use; and (3) that it becomes the basis of a permanent initiative, thinking about the design of support teams that can support the leaders at each stage of their career. This article takes an approach to the concept of leadership which is both heuristic and theoretic. The attempt is to identify the fundamental, generic qualities of leadership as a political process embedded within social processes. I take the elementary question of what is leadership to be a necessary predicate to any effective answer to derivative questions such as how to lead or what forms of leadership are most valuable and thus choose to concentrate on the former. Great care must be taken in this enterprise, to be sure, since attempts to comprehend leadership often run afoul of subjective biases, confused thinking, and inaccurate assumptions. One dimension has to do with looking at other realities; seeing what is happening in other countries; ideally traveling, but if not, at least consuming content that shows us we can find solutions to problems that we think are exclusively our own, but that exist everywhere; and reading about global perspectives. These are all ways of broadening our strictly local perspective.