Leaders are powerful people, and they can choose to use that power for good or evil, selfishly for personal gain, or generously for the benefit of society. They are powerful because they are force multipliers. They have the innate ability to identify collective insecurity in a population, magnify that insecurity so everyone can see it and identify with it, and then satisfy that insecurity with the promises of a solution that only that leader can provide.
Individuals must have five attributes to be successful leaders. Let’s call them Leadership Attributes: Vision, Voice, Courage, Charisma, and Gravitas.
Vision
Leaders have a compelling vision for where they want to take their constituents – their people. Critically, that vision must be made their own in order for it to be credible.
Voice
Leaders have a powerful voice to articulate, project, and bring their vision into focus. This means the ability to connect and communicate effectively with audiences of all shapes and sizes, to inspire and motivate.
Courage
Leaders possess courage to boldly promote their vision in the face of skepticism, criticism and personal attacks
Charisma
Leaders have charisma. It is easy to spot but difficult to define. We know it when we see it, and it cannot be faked
Gravitas
Unlike charisma, which is exuded and shared with an audience, gravitas is possessed and retained. It cannot be shared; it must reside with its possessor. Gravitas is manifested in wisdom, judgement and certitude, based on experience. Gravitas is even more rare than charisma, and often comes with time on earth, and on the field – in the fray, where the possessor knows that victory and defeat each have their rewards.
The degree to which a leader displays Leadership Attributes will determine the leader’s impact and longevity – how good they will be, and how long they will last.
This brings us to the notion of power. I mentioned earlier that leaders are powerful people, and I described why. It is important to understand the difference between power and force, and how important it is for a leader to project power, and not force. Power is persuasive because it is inspirational. It causes people to want to behave in a certain way because they are willingly motivated to do so. Power ultimately obviates the need for force, because it trades on freedom of choice, not the depravation of that freedom. People react badly when they are deprived of options, and forced to do things against their will, and leadership or systems that are based on force, are destined to fail.
Similarly, candidates who merely project competence, rather than power, cannot be leaders, because they do not motivate people to follow them. They are not inspiring enough to cause people to want to behave a certain way. They may be respected, and appreciated in an organization or system, but not as leaders.
Finally, there is always a tension between leadership and representation. Not all representatives can be leaders. We see this all the time when legislators, who have been good representatives, seek to become leaders. They often lack vision and courage. As representatives, they can get away without those Leadership Attributes, but not as leaders. All leaders are, however, representatives, but not of a people, rather of a direction, a way forward. They are guides and earthly manifestations of a calling, a vision for the future that is better than the status quo, or the past.
Once we have determined if a candidate has the Leadership Attributes, we need to determine whether they have a set of core values that match our own. Do they share our view of the world and what it should look like? Are they showing us the way to a better world that is consistent with our way of life and how we want to live?
Having identified a leader, we need to understand the leader’s vision and determine how good it really is, how well it jibes with our needs and desires. I have taken the liberty of suggesting what a compelling vision might look like for America today, as what I call the Accessible American Dream.