Transcending Titles: Becoming the Leader People Want to Follow

In First Democracy, Paul Woodruff describes the Athenian democracy; a society where representatives were chosen by lottery rather than election and every man had the same right to speak in the legislative Assembly. This practice must have made the first days of the new Assembly somewhat chaotic, since a leadership figure during the last session may not even be a part of the Assembly this time around, no matter what his prominence or popularity was. In such situations rhetors could “exert special influence without holding public office, simply in virtue of their speaking abilities” (33). This may also be the case in the evolving world where Woodruff hopes the Internet will “grow to give the citizens of modern states a rough equivalent of the rights of ancient Athenians to speak and be heard” (68). How then must a person communicate in the modern world to be able to lead a group of people in a certain direction?

In A Rhetoric of Motives Kenneth Burke writes, “A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B. Or he may identify himself with B even if their interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are or is persuaded to believe so” (544). The act of identification is not physical, since A and B remain separate entities with separate experiences, rather this is a symbolic act. As Burke points out, A has to be persuaded that he has joined interests with B in order for identification to occur. This implies that in order to get people to follow him, a leader has to communicate a common interest with his audience, and thereby create an artificial unity from diversity. Woodruff explains how Cleocritus was able to unite followers of the tyrants and the democrats by appealing to their common interests and culture as Athenians (83). In a more diverse group of people a leader may appeal to ‘basic humanity’ like Obama, Cameron, and Sarkozy did in their internationally published opinion editorial about Libya. However, identification does not always rely upon pre-existing ties of fellowship. Effective leaders are able to create common interests where none may naturally exist. One way to do this is by articulating a vision which, although not initially of interest to the audience, is made interesting by the way it is described and linked with pre-existing interests. In Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games Mitt Romney describes the task of leadership as “creating a vision of higher purpose and . . . offering challenges beyond normal expectations” (xix). He writes this about his leadership in the 2002 Olympics, “Our task was to identify a defining vision, communicate that in a compelling way, and provide the kind of focus that reinforces that vision as a living, breathing thing, not just lip service. And if we were to succeed, it would be because of the commitment to that vision by the entire team, and by the community” (xix). It is interesting to note that without that shared vision highly qualified people will not follow you, even in a corporate setting (59-60). As Romney writes, “Leaders establish vision and values that motivate and create unity of purpose” (20), again it is the ‘vision’ or common interest that creates a group.   

                

Romney’s language describing the unifying vision as a “higher purpose” sounds similar to the kind of leadership we encounter in Plato’s Phaedrus where leadership is not simply exploiting base interests to gain power over people, “dispensing miserly benefits of a mortal kind” (38), but rather a transcending process which brings both leader and follower closer to the gods. This transcendence is at once altruistic and egoistic. One gets personal benefit not by satisfying base passions (the black horse) but by summoning one’s abilities to reach a new, higher level. As Socrates says, “they become winged and light, and have won one of their three submissions in these, the true Olympic games, and neither human sanity nor divine madness has any greater good to offer a man than this” (37-38). It seems the human mind possesses a special potentiality to be fascinated and persuaded by such transcending, perhaps partially because of the great desire we have to experience the sense of purpose and unity such transcending can bring. We are united in something greater than ourselves.

See how composer Eric Whitacre leads a virtual choir of 2000 singers from 58 countries all over the world by unifying them in the transcendent purpose of making beautiful music. These singers have never met Whitacre or each other, yet they are united in a common purpose. He wrote the music and articulated the vision, and they all contributed their parts on individual Youtube videos which together became something transcendent.

Leadership in a Network World

In Thinking about Leadership Nannerl Keohane mentions “how groups of human individuals engage in spontaneous activities . . . without anything we would recognize as leadership, through the rapidly expanding capacities of social networking technology” and asks if such behaviour resembles “swarming insects” more than “a purposefully motivated group with a designated leader” (231). However, if the definition of leadership is to be able to move a group of individuals to accomplish certain goals, then the situations she mentions do require and indeed exhibit leadership, although it is different leadership than we may be used to. There are usually clear reasons for why one Twitter-user has over a million followers and another has barely any, and why one has their posts retweeted hundreds of times while the other hardly ever gets one retweet. Rather than leadership which depends upon formal hierarchical structures, this is leadership that depends upon catching attention and creating interest.

Douglas Hesse describes this form of leadership in “The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies”, calling it “an Elbovian parlour where writers gain the floor by creating interest, through the arts of discourse” (41). In the traditional Burkean parlour, the author would be listening to the discussion and its participants for a while and getting familiar with the dialogue, before deciding to “put in her oar” and become a full participant in the conversation. The new one envisioned by Douglas Hesse is one where the author takes the stage through sheer force of aesthetic form, and thereby is able to shift the dialogue or create new fora of discourse around herself. In other words, she becomes a leader for new groups that she has created. In “The Economics of Attention” Richard A Lanham makes the claim that leadership which depends more on rhetoric than institutional authority is the hallmark of the information age where the scarce commodity that moves society is not land, labour, or capital, but attention. It is not surprising that the largest emerging companies in this new economy (like Apple, Google, and Facebook) are those who have been able to catch and keep human attention. This clearly gives the humanities and rhetoric in particular, a clear advantage. According to Lanham “Rhetoric argued that, since attention constituted the central social power, the orator who allocated it must be the central figure in the polity, and his training the fundamental training for civic life.” If you can catch and keep attention online you have influence, power, and can easily transform that attention to economic gain.

                 

This ability to create new groups and structures by aesthetic form and persuasion is not limited to the Internet or the advertisement industry. W.L. Gore Associates, inventors of product lines like GoreTex, have made it a characteristic feature of their company to discourage leadership by position. Rather, leaders emerge somewhat spontaneously and become leaders by attracting “followers”. Terri Kelly the CEO of Gore claims that the employees are encouraged to seek out the projects they would like to do and the people they would like to work with. People acquire influence and leadership in the company partially by their character and their ability to present a convincing project and making people excited about that project. They may not be the ones who had thought of the project first, but they are the ones who were able to formulate their vision for it and make others interested.

Here is a lecture about that leadership stucture, and you better pay attention. According to Gary Hamel from the London School of Economics this is company structure of the future.