Becoming a Leader, and Teaching Leadership

There is a theory of cognition that holds that understanding is inseparable from language. Einstein exemplified this idea when he said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." For a long time I believed this. Today, I still believe it, but I don't hold it as the exclusive and entire explanation of cognition. There's more, much more.

In Taoism there is the belief that language fails - completely, utterly, fails - to communicate the most essential and elemental truths. Any attempt to describe Truth will fall short, because words cannot contain the fullness of the Truth, the One, the Whole.

Can words alone teach you how to play the violin? After learning to play the violin, are words enough to explain how playing feels, or why you sway, first this way, then that? Of course not. There’s much more to playing an instrument than learning how to read music and sound the notes.

Let's turn from the musical arts and consider the trades; for example, welding. Running a good bead with an arc welder requires a "feel" for the rod and the joint that can never be explained with words, and yet every experienced welder knows exactly what that feeling is, and the steady, controlled motion required to produce that bead.

And now we can come to my point: the teaching and learning of leadership requires words, but not only words.

You can read articles and books by experienced leaders.

You can read news items and books about great leaders.

You can be mentored by fantastic, wise leaders.

But ultimately, when you are a great leader yourself, there will be things you know that no one told you; things you've learned that you cannot describe to those you mentor.

The magic, the miracle, of leadership is found in relationships - not "explanationships."

Everything you've ever done, everything you've ever experienced, every relationship, every interaction, every thought and meditation, becomes an aspect of your leadership. These things affect what you do, and what you refuse to do.

Good leadership comes first and foremost from who you are, and only after that, from what you do and say.

--Bob Young, FIFO Networks

October 7, 2022

(Photo by Mapbox on Unsplash)