Why Exceptional Leaders Are So Rare and What You Can Do About It
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and damned difficult to get out of it.
Julius Caesar Reveals The Terrible Secret of Leadership
The problem with leading is that even if you do it exceedingly well, you might still get stabbed to death by all your friends and colleagues. Just ask Julius Caesar.
23 shanks to the body by the esteemed and honorable senators of Rome, delivered to the man who had finally brought peace to the republic. The great man who the senate showered with triumphs and treasure and made "Dictator for Life” now lay in a pool of his own blood on the floor of the very chamber where they’d done all that showering days before.
Oh sure, you think he wanted to become a tyrant-king. As if this isn’t the same claim leveled at everyone who’s ever held power over others.
Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Either way, the outcome is the same: collective murder on sacred ground.
Why We Hate Our Bosses: They’re Not Like Us
To be a leader is by definition to be the exception.
We hate to be told what to do, but because we are often faced with situations where we don’t know what to do, we have no choice but to follow orders.
Someone has to take the reins (or at least look like the figurehead who’s driving). The person who steps up is clearly not like the rest of us who didn’t, and there the problem starts.
Whether you succeed or fail spectacularly doesn’t matter: strive to be exceptional and you’re asking for an entire community’s worth of trouble.
When things go well, you’re envied. When they go badly, you’re blamed.
And if you do nothing, you’ll still be the fall guy.
Seems like no matter what, Caesar was doomed.
But what about the senators-turned-assassins in the name of liberty?
What if I told you that they had no more choice over their actions than the dictator destined for death?
What if I told you they were all merely acting on a pre-human instinct for collective murder that is part of a very, very old tradition?
Rene Girard On Where Kings Come From
Half a century ago, philosopher Rene Girard noticed something quite horrific about the way our oldest myths and rituals were structured. Examples abound, but nearly all the early ones involve the murder of a member of the group.
Romulus kills his twin brother Remus and then builds Rome around where he buries his dead bro.
Cain kills his brother Abel and then wanders the land before founding an empire.
The founding gods of the Ojibway tribe drive one of their number into the ocean, causing him to ‘ascend back up to the heavens’.
In ritual practice, someone seen as different is chosen by the tribe–one with a physical defect, an outsider, or even an animal–and showered with gifts.
The fancy foods, fine clothes, and free sex help transform the being, in the eyes of the group, into a god or sacred king.
The sacred monarch is next paraded in front of the group, who blame him or her for all of their troubles and misfortunes.
Then everyone participates in his or her murder.
By transferring all of their rage and resentment onto the victim and then killing them, the group purges itself of built-up negativity and can finally move beyond old enmities and break out of vicious revenge cycles.
The murder gets covered up and the victim ‘becomes a god’ or gets a myth made about them in which they are the hero.
Like magic, everybody suddenly feels better.
This is why we used to sacrifice. And it’s why we continue to scapegoat our leaders.
Given that this is the reality of what leaders are for, is it any wonder our politicians are so mediocre?
If the best you can hope for after trying something radically different is a public lynching, then it’s no wonder most leaders opt to carry on doing more of the same.
But say you have an actual solution to the crisis your tribe or country finds itself in.
Say you want the power and influence that can actually make a difference.
And you know that, if things worked your way, everything would be better.
What’s an aspiring leader to do?
Well, there may be a way for you to change the world without losing your head.
It’s in a text once used to train princes that’s literally called, The Way and Virtue Book.
Better known in the West as the Tao Te Ching.
Lao Tzu’s Answer for How Not to Get Scapegoated
The trick to not becoming a sacrificial victim is to not become a sacred king.
While legends abound of great men who lead from the front, the truth is that those who escaped being shot in the chest often went down from a knife in the back.
Instead, the Tao Te Ching advocates for a kind of ‘doing by not doing’ and a kind of leadership through butterfly effect. What started as advice on how to set up bureaucracies and political systems that could function with as little intervention from the ruler as possible became tenets for a way to live life doing what is right by not overdoing, but doing just enough.
When done right, our teams, communities, and even world can get better without anyone knowing we were behind it. This can be done by:
Inspiring those around us with our own good conduct
Living simply and not giving others reason to covet or hate us
Helping people without them knowing or feeling indebted to us
Letting go instead of trying to force things we can’t control
Getting others to come to our conclusions without claiming credit for their ideas
There’s more (the book is 81 chapters) but this is a good start.
Octavian cracks the code: “just call me first citizen”
While Julius Caesar’s grand-nephew, Octavian, is unlikely to have read Lao Tzu, he nonetheless appears to have been an astute student of The Way.
Rather than seek glory on the battlefield, he delegated war-making to those better suited to warfare.
Being the youngest and physically smallest player in the post-Caesar power struggle, Octavian allowed his enemies to underestimate him, while at the same time quietly gathering support amongst Caesar’s former troops by doing what was right–paying them their late wages.
After defeating all of his enemies and becoming sole ruler of Rome, Octavian abdicated all positions and titles save for that of Princeps or “First Citizen”. This allowed for other ambitious men to seek out the highest offices (and bear the blame when affairs didn’t go Rome’s way).
He sought to correct Rome’s corruption and check its decline by encouraging citizens to cultivate virtue.
Instead of forcing the world to bend to his will, he recognized that it was he who needed to become what the world needed. His last words being, “Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit.”
Not everything he tried worked, and the power he wielded eventually became blatantly obvious despite his protests otherwise. Nonetheless, Rome’s first emperor managed to lead for over a quarter century and live to the ripe old age of 75.
The key to Octavian’s longevity was “ruling by not ruling.” As close to the Taoist ideal of “wu wei” as one could get while still controlling most of the lives and resources of the ancient world.
In the final analysis, Octavian was an exceptional leader who got there by appearing unexceptional. So successful was he at it that when he finally permitted himself to brag “I found a Rome of bricks; I leave to you one of marble” no citizen could disagree.
For the diminutive emperor once expected to amount to little more than Julius Caesar’s grand-nephew, “not ruling” was well worth the sacrifice.