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The mythos of leadership

aeon.co

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Re: The mythos of leadership

#11

Post by marmaduke »

mikpanko wrote: post #7

Highly recommend Jeffrey Pfeffer’s books about power and leadership. He has developed a great mental model about how leadership works in the real world, which explains the pitfalls of common ways to think about it. Humans want to believe in a just world and those in power are happy to provide narratives to that end. Meanwhile they are not correlated with how power is actually gained in the real world.

Just read some summary of his points elsewhere and had a hard time taking it seriously. For instance,

> rule seven—which is basically that once you have power, money, and success, people will forget and forgive how you got there—is such an important rule is that it frees you to do everything else. This rule says that at the end, if you are successful, success excuses almost everything.

Re: The mythos of leadership

#12

Post by boredemployee »

marmaduke wrote: post #11
mikpanko wrote: post #7

Highly recommend Jeffrey Pfeffer’s books about power and leadership. He has developed a great mental model about how leadership works in the real world, which explains the pitfalls of common ways to think about it. Humans want to believe in a just world and those in power are happy to provide narratives to that end. Meanwhile they are not correlated with how power is actually gained in the real world.

Just read some summary of his points elsewhere and had a hard time taking it seriously. For instance, > rule seven—which is basically that once you have power, money, and success, people will forget and forgive how you got there—is such an important rule is that it frees you to do everything else. This rule says that at the end, if you are successful, success excuses almost everything.

Saw the release date of said books and I was just about to ask if it applies to 21 century ideas. Thanks for answering it.

Re: The mythos of leadership

#13

Post by Throw73747 »

avgcorrection wrote: post #6

> Such books are celebrations of individualism. Their primary effect is to promote an individualist perspective on the world. Can we please stop reading history and stories as things that people in the past slavishly believed to the letter like unthinking machines? Of course stories about leaders glorify them. That’s just the victors writing history. Of course leaders and their sycophants mostly bragged and embellish…

> Can we please stop reading history and stories as things that people in the past slavishly believed to the letter like unthinking machines? Of course stories about leaders glorify them.

People back them did not had so many information. All negative information about the king or leader was (self) censored.

Look at cult Steve Jobs had in his lifetime, he was far from perfect, but nobody cared. Or some political leaders, despite all the corruption, drugs...

Re: The mythos of leadership

#14

Post by farleykr »

This article gets a few things right but the author doesn't seem to understand the full purpose of characters like David in the Bible. You don't even have to believe they were real people or be religious, much less Christian, to see and understand their purpose.

Right in the beginning in the Eden narrative there's a prophecy about one who will ultimately defeat the snake. Characters like David are portrayed as anointed by God yet flawed because they are supposed to build anticipation for a true Messiah or Christ who will not make mistakes or sin and really, truly offer redemption for mankind and a return to union with God. As you read the Bible you watch each leader rise while hoping they will be the one to defeat the snake and then you return to anticipating the true king when they fall.

This is one of the reasons Jesus was consistently referred to as the "Son of David."

Jesus is presented as the true and greater version of every flawed leader of God's people who came before him, especially the big names like Noah, Moses and David.

What's interesting to me is that you don't even have to agree with the claims of the Bible to see how the characters function in the story. But as I've learned more and more about the Bible, it seems that most people make arguments about the claims of the Bible or its purpose as a religious text without understanding how it actually functions as a group of different stories and types of literature.

For anyone interested, Robert Altar's works about Biblical narrative and other literary styles delve deep into these subjects.

Re: The mythos of leadership

#15

Post by avgcorrection »

Throw73747 wrote: post #13
avgcorrection wrote: post #6

> Such books are celebrations of individualism. Their primary effect is to promote an individualist perspective on the world. Can we please stop reading history and stories as things that people in the past slavishly believed to the letter like unthinking machines? Of course stories about leaders glorify them. That’s just the victors writing history. Of course leaders and their sycophants mostly bragged and embellish…

> Can we please stop reading history and stories as things that people in the past slavishly believed to the letter like unthinking machines? Of course stories about leaders glorify them. People back them did not had so many information. All negative information about the king or leader was (self) censored. Look at cult Steve Jobs had in his lifetime, he was far from perfect, but nobody cared. Or some political leade…

You don’t need to have so many information in order to think for yourself. You can choose to believe it or not.

I could make a manifesto about being the greatest person to have ever lived. People are not going to believe it just because there doesn’t exist a counter-manifesto about me.

Re: The mythos of leadership

#16

Post by ZephyrBlu »

marmaduke wrote: post #11
mikpanko wrote: post #7

Highly recommend Jeffrey Pfeffer’s books about power and leadership. He has developed a great mental model about how leadership works in the real world, which explains the pitfalls of common ways to think about it. Humans want to believe in a just world and those in power are happy to provide narratives to that end. Meanwhile they are not correlated with how power is actually gained in the real world.

Just read some summary of his points elsewhere and had a hard time taking it seriously. For instance, > rule seven—which is basically that once you have power, money, and success, people will forget and forgive how you got there—is such an important rule is that it frees you to do everything else. This rule says that at the end, if you are successful, success excuses almost everything.

This is an accurate theory of mind for the vast majority of people.

Re: The mythos of leadership

#17

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

robertlagrant wrote: post #10
hartator wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yep. Everyone praises the "great men," as the article mentions, and Western culture is heavily individualistic, so it stands to reason that we should deify the most visible leaders of things. Sure, having kings, emperors, or prophets like the good old days was so much less individualistic.

Yes, it was. Individualism is the last thing you want if you want people to act as though their lives are worth less than the king's / emperor's / state. You don't want people valuing themselves and having legal and economic standing, free to make agreements between themselves. You want them to do what you want them to do.

you may as well claim everyone in the US believes their lives are less important than the presidents.

In truth, the president very rarely has any major effect on the lives of Americans, therefore they don't really care one way or the other.

Or to put it another way, that food needed to be harvested regardless of who was king, as long as said king didn't interfere with the food harvesting, people might have opinions but ultimately didn't care.

Re: The mythos of leadership

#18

Post by tcgv »

avgcorrection wrote: post #15
Throw73747 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we please stop reading history and stories as things that people in the past slavishly believed to the letter like unthinking machines? Of course stories about leaders glorify them. People back them did not had so many information. All negative information about the king or leader was (self) censored. Look at cult Steve Jobs had in his lifetime, he was far from perfect, but nobody cared. Or some political leade…

You don’t need to have so many information in order to think for yourself. You can choose to believe it or not. I could make a manifesto about being the greatest person to have ever lived. People are not going to believe it just because there doesn’t exist a counter-manifesto about me.

We live in an era defined by information and science. It may seem natural for us to adopt a skeptical stance and question long-standing myths, as we've been encouraged to do so—it's ingrained in our education system and our culture. That certainly wasn't the norm in the medieval times when people lived a restrained rural life without access to education and under totalitarian regimes.

Re: The mythos of leadership

#19

Post by karaterobot »

Throw73747 wrote: post #13
avgcorrection wrote: post #6

> Such books are celebrations of individualism. Their primary effect is to promote an individualist perspective on the world. Can we please stop reading history and stories as things that people in the past slavishly believed to the letter like unthinking machines? Of course stories about leaders glorify them. That’s just the victors writing history. Of course leaders and their sycophants mostly bragged and embellish…

> Can we please stop reading history and stories as things that people in the past slavishly believed to the letter like unthinking machines? Of course stories about leaders glorify them. People back them did not had so many information. All negative information about the king or leader was (self) censored. Look at cult Steve Jobs had in his lifetime, he was far from perfect, but nobody cared. Or some political leade…

I think the contrary is more likely to be true: that people from that era had a vivid inner life and curiosity about the universe. They talked about things with each other. It's hard to censor thoughts, or discussions between people. A good book about this is The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg, focusing on the trial of a single peasant in the 16th century.

Re: The mythos of leadership

#20

Post by kiba »

avgcorrection wrote: post #15
Throw73747 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we please stop reading history and stories as things that people in the past slavishly believed to the letter like unthinking machines? Of course stories about leaders glorify them. People back them did not had so many information. All negative information about the king or leader was (self) censored. Look at cult Steve Jobs had in his lifetime, he was far from perfect, but nobody cared. Or some political leade…

You don’t need to have so many information in order to think for yourself. You can choose to believe it or not. I could make a manifesto about being the greatest person to have ever lived. People are not going to believe it just because there doesn’t exist a counter-manifesto about me.

Thinking for yourself required knowledge and actual study, not just something people can do on a moment's notice.

For example, thinking about the movie 300(2006) required some knowledge of how aristocratic Sparta actually works. It's basically a fascist movie glorifying the brutality of Spartan warriors with no question on its actual efficacy as a fighting force(unremarkable). I recommend this essay on why Sparta sucks.[1]

1. https://aeon.co/essays/who-are-the-leaders-in-our-heads-and-...

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