The Truth About Leadership: What leadership is, what it's not, and what fake leaders look like
You scroll down the vomit-inducing toxic positivity of LinkedIn in hopes of finding the perfect inspirational post to get you through your difficult day. The endless regurgitated “motivation” quotes feel like a Groundhog Day nightmare. On top of that, you are compelled to feel guilty for not appreciating this deluded toxic positivity, even though you know it’s pretentious. You wonder what’s wrong with you for being negative when everyone appears to be so upbeat and (supposedly) grateful.
Not only do you feel down for life not turning the way you worked for, but you have to shame yourself for “being negative” on top of everything. And post after post from profiles with fake smiles and edited photos presume to have the authority to tell you what “positivity” and “leadership” are, just because they enjoy the circumstantial professional power to mess with people’s livelihood.
Toxic motivators love to tell you what leadership is. It’s how they condescend you, the humble follower. It’s how they tell you to fall in line. in obedient submission.
You come across a social media post about “leadership” from your line manager who is anything but a “leader”. You can’t help but feel that these posts insult your intelligence, and you wonder whether that’s intentional:
“A leader takes care of his people.” No kidding…
“Titles don’t make leaders. Actions do!” Wow! What a life-altering insight!
“A leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” Take it easy there, Adolph…
“Be the leader you would follow.” OK.
“Leaders prioritise people.” Aha…
The positivity-obsessed social media of 2023 get people compulsively posting nonsense that provide nothing but manipulative empty hope that ends up being disappointing, misleading and demotivating. Not only that, but some of the self-appointed “motivation experts” out there presume to tell the world what “leadership” is, this way implying that they are better leaders than you could ever hope to be. If you read between the lines (or lies), the implied message is that, where they lead, you should follow.
“Leadership is prioritizing people!” “Leaders don’t micromanage!” “Leadership is compassion”… and other vapid vague truisms give little insight about what leadership truly is. And because every employee with the slightest perceived authority believes himself to be a leader of Napoleonic stature, certain false asymmetrical assumptions emerge that make it harder and harder to communicate.
How can you accurately connect with someone who presumes to be “a leader”, but is alone in his delusion?
It’s easy pretending to know what a leader is when employees desperately cling on to their shitty job during times of permanent unemployment. It’s easy to make people obey you when they are at the end of their rope, enough to take your bullshit day in day out just to meet their society’s expectations, and their families’ needs. It’s easy to pretend to be a leader when people have no choice but to submit to your institutional power, especially when not following you means losing more than the betrayed dignity they sold out to you.
You want to know what leadership really is?
Let me tell you a bit about my story first…
I was forced into a proper leadership position at the age of 18. As an army trainee officer, I had to lead soldiers my age or even in their 30s and 40s. I saw all types of “leadership” approaches, or better described, “human flocking” methods. Threats, intimidation, blackmail, shaming, guilt-tripping, abuse; these were the most obvious forms of human flocking.
The more subtle “human flocking” tactic is Stockholm-Syndrome conditioning, a delicate application of severe abuse and humiliation followed immediately by small insignificant acts of kindness.
This brainwash procedure works wonders because abuse and humiliation are traumatic to people, and so our subconscious takes our abuse and humiliation as if they were earned. We deep-down feel that we deserved the pain inflicted upon us by our abusers. The true trauma from abuse is the subconscious conclusion of self-loathing, not so much the pain from the actual abuse. After we are abused, out innocent gullible subconscious concludes that we deserve the hate, humiliation and punishment we received. If we internalize it, this becomes our self-image, our tragic identity.
Only by gaining the approval of our abusers can we hope to heal our trauma, since, in our minds, they get to control what we think we deserve. They made us hate ourselves, so they are the only ones who can unmake this. When our abusers are kind to us between their acts of abuse, we gain flickers of hope that we might get their deliberately withheld approval, and we’ll therefore conclude that their past abuse was meaningless. If our haters love us, then we’ll conclude that we weren’t deserving of hate after all. So, we must do anything to please our abusers, so that they perhaps like us. And maybe, we will finally like ourselves again.
This is the mentality of the traumatised demoralized victim of systematic abuse: they hate themselves because of their tolerance of abuse, yet only their abusers’ approval can free them from this self-loathing. So, they “love” their abusers in a twisted obsession to gain their approval, because only the abusers can help the abused love themselves again. This is Stockholm Syndrome, and it’s f*cked up.
The hope of healing the trauma that abusers inflicted on us compels us to appease them more than anyone else. We neglect pleasing the people who have always been kind to us in favour of the people who have always been unkind to us. We don’t appreciate the given. We betray the ones who have always been kind to us, because we prefer to please the ones who were unkind to us. We go after the undeserved challenge. We desperately feel the need to gain the approval of our abusers to tell ourselves that we didn’t deserve their disrespect. This Stockholm-Syndrome conditioning is what many self-announced “leaders” do, either consciously or unconsciously. And this is how they gain huge cult-like followings of broken people. The military is one of them.
I’ve also held a few “leadership” positions in my professional life. Just like in the army, such positions weren’t a challenge for me at all. How difficult is it to direct and command people who are desperate to keep their job when their job is entirely in your hands? When the implied threat of punishment hangs like a sword of Damocles hanging over their head, there is no difficulty in managing people. But make no mistake: true leadership is not blackmail. Obedient slaves reluctantly follow you, not because you inspire them, but because they feel they have no better option. And they will turn on you the second this dynamic shifts.
What I held weren’t “leadership” positions; they were “boss” positions. My management jobs were nothing better than a dictator ruling through threat, force, intimidation and bribing. Nobody wanted to follow me; they just needed to follow me. Nobody found any meaning in their obedience to me. They only did it for the money, and so did I. We obeyed our “superiors” for the need of money, not for the want of meaning.
Neediness is weak, while wanting is aspirational.
I quickly realised that rulers, bosses and managers weren’t true leaders. A leader is something way bigger than that.
A leader has virtue, principle, and an ideal bigger than him and the sum of his team. A leader inspires, motivates, nurtures, encourages and empowers. A leader drives his people to excel in meaningful ways, beyond just earning a pay check.
But no one can be a true leader if the relationship with his people is based on implied threats: The relationship between a follower and his boss is this: “You either follow, or you face consequences. You either obey, or you lose your much-needed sustenance.”
In contrast, the relationships between a team member and his leader is this: “You are free not to follow, without any punishment. You are OK with yourself even if you are not part of our vision. Yet you freely choose to walk with us, only if it serves you in meaningful ways.”
So leadership is based on totally voluntary relationships free from coercion, desperation, and institutional/circumstantial power structures enforced through implied threats of violence.
The other characteristic of a leader is selflessness. A boss position is one of privilege and luxury, and it is a coveted one. A leadership position is that of self-sacrifice and toil. Leadership does not benefit the leader, but rather, an ideal and idea bigger than him and everyone who choose to walk with him. Leaders reluctantly go through the pain of leading for a greater ideal, not for personal gain. Leaders freely choose to make personal sacrifices for the good of an ideal greater than themselves.
If leaders are selfless, then they value the people who choose to walk with them more than they value themselves. This means that a leader takes full responsibility for his people, and takes none of the credit. He takes the hits but none of the rewards. If a team member makes a mistake, a leader understands that it was his fault 100%, for either not instructing better or not foreseeing the mistake. A leader is fully accountable for his team’s mistakes, and this is a non-negotiable. If the team succeeds, he acknowledges that he did none of the work, so the full credit belongs to the people who chose to walk with him (not “follow” him like flocked sheep).
In a nutshell:
A leader attracts people in fully voluntary relationships free from desperation, threats, coercion, neediness or implied pressure.
A leader is fully accountable for his team. He takes full responsibility for their mistakes, and he takes none of the credit.
A leader inspires and empowers people to works towards ideals that are greater than the sum of their team. Sure, people need money to live comfortable and to feel valued, but freely chosen ideals greater than oneself are what make us live rather than just survive.
Leadership is not bossing people around, limiting their control over their world, and coercing them to do things against their will. Leadership is the exact opposite of that. Leadership is empowering people. It is granting them more control over their lives than they originally had. It is giving them more choices than they thought they had. It is inspiring, encouraging, empowering. It is reminding them that their life can have meaning and purpose. It is opening people’s eyes to the notion that we can conceptualize ideas and ideals greater than our own lives. Is it showing people that they have more options, more accountability, and therefore, more power over their lives.
Lastly,
A leader is reluctant in leadership. A leader hates leading. If he enjoys it, he is no leader; he’s just a boss, a manager, and a sheepherder. And there is no glory in herding helpless sheep and broken people who reluctantly follow until the opportunity arises to betray you. A leader self-sacrifices in a leadership position for the good of the whole, and for shared ideals. And he does this voluntarily, as his team members also follow him voluntarily.
A true leader is a reluctant leader.
Don't let toxic motivators tell you how to lead. Their megalomania is their drive behind their thirst for positions of power. But these people are tyrants, not leaders. There is no honour or meaning in “leading” through force, emotional blackmail, and implied threats.
The one-eyed king guiding the blind is not a leader.
Then the question arises: Can people become brainwashed to follow you while believing they are doing it voluntarily?
Yes, they can.
Manipulators appear as benevolent leaders, when in fact they are the worst kind of tyrant. But all they get is manipulable gullible desperate people who possess no self-ownership of their will. There is no value in this, other than the utility of useful idiots.
History is full of people who allow themselves to be manipulated in exchange for some desperately needed hope, identity, purpose. If people allow themselves to be manipulated into following, does that make it a voluntary choice? I don’t know, because people deep-down choose to be manipulated to sooth their insecurities. Manipulators subtly poke your insecurities, and then offer you a way out; their way. So, you could say that victims of manipulation are voluntarily submitting to their manipulators. But make no mistake: manipulators are no leaders, because they wouldn’t be able to inspire people without insecurities, weaknesses, or trauma.
If you find yourself eagerly following someone (an ideologue, a self-appointed “thought leader”, a content creator, an influencer), ask yourself what they give you. Is it hope? Is it identity? Is it a sense of vanity? Is it freedom from the guilt or fear that they subtly remind you of?
Do you follow them for some ideal? Or do you follow them for fleeting feel-good moments to fill an emptiness inside you? Do they make you feel empowered, or do you feel weaker with or without them?
Challenge yourself, and question why you follow…
Leadership is:
Voluntary relationships
Full accountability for team members, zero credit
Empowerment of people
Self-sacrifice
If you follow someone who doesn’t exhibit all 4 of the above traits, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your cherished beliefs. If you head a team but your relationship with your people does not fulfil all 4 of the above traits, perhaps your position is not one of true leadership.
Indeed, if your team is an involuntary one, such as in a professional role, you can still be a leader. You can motivate your people to voluntarily go over and above for an ideal greater than a pay check or a performance review. The “over and above” part of their input (and yours) is the leadership part of your job.
Take part; don’t follow.
Lead, don’t dictate.
If you want to find out whether you are being manipulated by demagogues and deceivers, check out my book on the subject; but only if you are ready to challenge yourself, your beliefs, and your choices:
How to Manipulate Anyone: 27 ways you are being manipulated right now
