Month: September 2019

Machiavelli brings up many points as to how to be a great leader. He discusses many ways a leader can rule their people. Machiavelli talks about how to become a ruler, then how to stay on their thrown. Machiavelli through out his paper talks about many opposites that can keep a ruler in charge, but they must choice one side of doing things.

Machiavelli brings up the arguement is it better to be feared or loved by your followers. I believe the answer to this question is both and also lies with the responsibility you hold. For some leaders such as bosses and CEOs they must have the suppport of their workers but also must remain in charge. The question also comes up alot in parenting is the question, is it better to be their parent or their friend. Again one must be both to grow a healthy relationship.

If a leader is very loved they have the respect of their people, but may not always have their obidience and control over them. For a prince he must be able to control his country so he may choose fear. However if the people are scared of their leader they may not trust them. This will lead to many problems for a prince and his country.

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On Tuesday, September 24th, I attended the first lecture in the Audacious Voices WILL*/WGSS Speaker Series, If They Come For Us: An Afternoon with Fatimah Asghar. Fatimah Asghar is a poet, screenwriter, educator, and performer; she is the writer of If They Come for Us, the writer and co-creator of Brown Girls, and the co-editor of Halal If You Hear Me. I am a member of the WILL* program and a minor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, but I also attended this talk to analyze from the leadership studies lens. Fatimah is an extremely influential artist whose creative expression makes statements about her identity as a queer, Muslim woman in the United States. She told a fascinating story that an editor read her poems and said he “loved how her poems about nature didn’t make political statements like many modern-day poets”. Fatimah noted that if people can’t understand that her art expressions were standing for political activism, that epitomizes his political stance right there. Her poetry addresses gender-based issues with bodily autonomy and gender expression as well as being a Pakistani Muslim woman in the United States today. Fatimah’s points reminded me a lot of our class’s initial discussion of what leadership is and what it might not come in the form of public speaking or overt activism, but art forms and literature can make equally profound impacts. If someone or their work has a following (in Fatimah’s case, the readers of her poems and viewers of her screen series) then they can be analyzed from a leader/follower perspective. Fatimah’s emotional, verbal, and written expressions not only make statements about her life as a queer, Muslim woman but also speak to readers in similar minority positions AND privileged positions as a call to action.

I went to a WILL* dinner and discussion with Fatimah following her talk, and she spoke a lot about her life experiences working in theater, education, literature, and as a student. A point I took away from her was her definition of a “good mentor”; she told me that the most impactful mentors she’s had in her life have been the ones who haven’t tried to put her on a specific path that aligns with their values. I found this extremely valuable with regard to smaller-scale leadership roles– such as parenting or mentoring in the community– because followers do not come to action if they feel they are being told what to do. Her interdisciplinary work tied not only into my WGSS education but also what I’m learning about in Leadership and the Humanities because of her incredible work as a mass influencer.

Anna Marston

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Machiavelli’s point about the oppressor versus being oppressed is one that I have found to be brought up a lot in class discussions. I remember talking about how in order to be relieved from oppression, sometimes you must become the oppressor and I think that can tie into this topic because the article mentioned how if the prince seems to be too wish-y washy or even if they gain their prince-ship from family, they can be easily overturned and removed from power (I am absolutely not saying that oppression or anything is good lol just making that clear). Relating that more to leadership and being a good prince and the whole “being feared” idea, I think that in a way, it makes sense because for them to maintain power and control of the people, they can’t seem to be too persuasive and unsure of what they are doing. Basically, I agree that for a prince to be really effective, they do need to have a fear factor about them so that it keeps people in check and the people don’t want to go against him as long as he really is providing for them and they feel like they are being taken care of. I remember having teachers that I was so scared to talk to or make a mistake in front of just because the vibe of the classroom was so serious and down to business but I also remember that the teacher was one of the best I had had in the way that they taught and that is the point of going to school. We are there (or here) to learn and the retaining of the information is more important than if I was the teacher’s favorite or if they were fun.

 

I also thought the idea about causing chaos in order to gain control, or to at least seem like you are fixing the problem even though you really were the reason it all started. While this is definitely manipulation on the prince’s part in order to seem more put together, it clearly works because people use it now but usually in less serious matters. Even as demonstrations, someone may get people fired up about something and then make a statement that puts things into perspective which might not have been appreciated if the first person had not been as mad or angry.

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I thought that Machiavelli made a decent point when he said, “Those who rise from private citizens to be princes merely by fortune have little trouble in rising but very much in maintaining their position” (106).  Getting to a position of power is not difficult for these people, but once they are there, they may have a difficult time in said position, because maybe they don’t deserve to be there in the first place. I think he focuses on how to maintain power because a lot of the time in the past and present, power is inherited, therefore they are not necessarily built for a leadership position.

Machiavelli also talks about how it is important for a prince to want to be seen as merciful rather than cruel. This is another way to maintain power and obviously you would want your followers to see you this way. However, in my opinion yes a leader should be merciful, but instead of worrying about ones image, a leader should put all their focus onto what their followers want and believe in.

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I find it very interesting how Machiavelli is only focused on how to maintain power once one has it. The majority of the things that he talks about, acquiring new dominions, the civic principality, weather it is better to be feared or to be loved, etc. all have solutions that involve maintain a balance between good and evil so the public likes you but also fears you enough to listen to you. I found that this relates to the articles that we read for Tuesday about the leader and followers’ relationship and how truly important it really is. Although Machiavelli is focusing mostly on the prince in question, he is really talking about how to maintain power through leader and follower relationships.

 

I also found a lot of Machiavelli’s wording to be very interesting because when he was talking about weather being feared or loved is better, he said that the prince should “desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to miss use this mercifulness” (119). This is Machiavelli’s way of saying that the leaders should have some compassion but not enough for the public to think that they are weak. I think that the way that he worded this, especially with the “to be considered” a very sly way of saying that the followers should be more or less tricked into thinking that the leader is merciful.

 

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Last night I attended Dr. Andrew Solomon’s talk on Radical Compassion at the Modlin Center. He opened up the night by discussing his own gay identity, and the ways in which gay rights and the public stigma towards this group has changed in the past fifty years. Dr. Solomon had a great way of putting it-  the only thing that transformed something that was deemed to be an illness, into a legitimate identity and an active community, was radical compassion. He remarked upon his experience with different disability groups as well, doing considerable work with dwarf and deaf children and their families. He noted how many times the people who have been challenged the most will often develop the most compassion due to their previous understanding of the feeling of being isolated, alone, and different. Although Dr. Solomon was not a dwarf or deaf, and did not wish to be, his own identity of homosexuality helped him empathize and understand these marginalized communities. Another great point that he explained was that walls between people, whether being physical or existing as a metaphor, are symbols of individual safety, but simultaneously oppress and imprison us. The only way to overcome these boundaries, stigmas, and stereotypes, is travel. This can mean international travel, but it can also be as simple as traveling to another house in your neighborhood and getting to know people there. Conversations build relationships, and relationships break down walls.

I think Dr. Solomon’s talk had some very important implications on both international and local levels of leadership. It is crucial to the leader’s success that they are able to understand the perspectives of their followers in economic, religious, cultural, and political senses, just to name a few. However, like Dr. Solomon notes, this is not an easy process. Truly understanding the perspective of another requires a degree of vulnerability, honestly, and selflessness that many humans are scared of. I think the media often feeds us misrepresentation or “shadows” (thanks, cave allegory) of what different people are like, and in this way technology is dividing us more than it is bringing us together. A leader with radical compassion will seek to understand the intersectional identities of his/her followers, and will also work to use their global influence to better understand the history, politics, and religions of distinct peoples all around the worl

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So far in the Leadership course, we have only or mainly talked about what makes a leader or who is considered a leader without asking why. We talked about Hitler becoming a leader due to trouble in Germany, and MLK becoming a leader due to the civil rights movement, but never really mentioned the followers and the interaction between the followers and the leader. In the first reading titled Leaders and Followers, I found it interesting how as time passes what we as followers want from a leader changes. The change is not what is surprising, rather it is the actual want this is interesting. Sometimes we want a more fluid leader, that listens and is responsive, but other times we want a rigid ruler that is confident with their decisions. 

What I also found interesting is the line we draw between leaders and followers. Why do we find the need to separate ourselves from a leader that is not much different from us? If in fact, all it causes is the insecurity of knowledge and power that induces change. The last reading was very empowering for me because it really opened my eyes to the possibility of leadership.  Why it took me so long to understand that I too have a place as a leader and should have a place as a leader leads me to the question, what influences leaders to become learners other than hardships or a call from a divine power? 

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Previously we had examined the leader along with their personality traits and varying ways of influencing the people that they lead. In the video and readings for today, we examined more of the follower and the relationship between them and their leaders. We begin to see the ways that the followers influence their leaders just as the leaders influence their followers.

We see in the allegory of the cave video that reality in only a perception, a point of view, merely the way we look at society. The people in the cave know nothing but the shadows and the noise they here, with they perceive are coming from these shadows on the wall. When they are finally released, their eyes are hurt by the fire and everything that they think they know is completely undermined. Would it be better for them to live with the shadows being their only reality and be content or be hurt with the realization of reality? This is the question we must ask which brings us back to the relationship between the leader and the follower. It is an interesting concept to me where the leader chooses to share and have a relationship with their followers and where they choose to lead and keep things to themselves in order to attempt to better society.

 

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A typical follower will experience occasional indecisiveness or hesitancy to step up.  This idea from the citizen leader article verifies that some are naturally imposed to be leaders, while others prefer to stay in the background.  The importance of leaders are often overstated in society, and the article talks about how it is important to develop more a more active participatory population. While this theory makes sense, it is also important for an effective leader to take initiative.  This action can be taken through understanding the community’s unity and identity because the leader will better be suited to address the needs of the general public. Having a sense of the public’s identity is important because there are certain individuals who are more willing to step up and show the characteristics to be the face of a movement, so being able to lead without forgetting about the common person is very important. 

 

The article talks about how the issue with modern-day leaders is that they seem, “stripped of a communal identity.”  While it is important to develop an active citizen base, it is even more key for a leader to be able to act on the behalf of the public with their best interest in mind.  A leader that has this sense of communal identity will be able to inspire their followers to act, creating a leadership hierarchy within their support system. Though I’m trying to argue that the best leader inspires others into action and creates, I am not disagreeing with the author’s point of the importance of an active citizen base.  Creating a culture of accountability and driven individuals will not only make more effective leaders, but it will make a more efficient society.

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In The Prince, there were two main points that interested me the most and seemed to connect to earlier concepts we’ve learned in class. The first is that “men are so simple and so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.” (Machiavelli, 122). Machiavelli’s point ties directly into the idea of toxic charisma. Certain people will always be attracted to charismatic people (the Prince), regardless of the deception/falsehood of what is being said. A modern example would be how the German population adopted Hitler’s ideology despite it being terrible.

The second main point was that it is “not necessary for a prince to have all the above-named qualities, but it is very necessary to seem to have them” (Machiavelli, 123). I thought this was interesting, because Machiavelli is saying that the populous only must believe the prince has the qualities of a good ruler, when they could just be putting on a front. This made me think that leaders (princes) could just be eloquent scammers and that is enough to make the state stable.

Overall, the reading was interesting because Machiavelli wasn’t reflecting on what a leader should be, but rather on what a leader must be to remain in power. That could follow the path of just actions, but more likely than not it would require the prince to be cruel, but not cruel to the point of engendering hatred.

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John W. Gardner in his article Leaders and Followers starts off with a very strong quote that states “Leaders are almost never as much in charge as they are pictured to be, and followers almost never are as submissive as one might imagine (Gardner).” setting the tone for the article and describing one viewpoint for the relationship between leaders and followers. Followers play a crucial role in the leader follower relationship because if there is no one to lead the leader does not exist. Leaders cannot be in positions of power unless followers are willing to be led or believe in the leaders authority. There is a debate as to which type of leadership style is better one of which being the “tight ship” style in which there are a lot of constraints and controls or would a more laissez faire leadership style work better and decades of research have not given a clear answer. However, there has been support for the idea where the leader helps the follower(s) develop their own thoughts allowing for them to contribute more to society. Instead of being robots and responding directly to the leaders command they have the ability to make their own decisions. A good leader is both consciously as well as unconsciously followed because the people understand and recognize that he has the ability to help them and resolve their adversity as well as problems.     

 

In American society today “Cynical spectator-citizens wait for the right type of leader(s) to resolve for them the critical problems in their neighborhoods, communities, states, and country…Leaders appear detached or stripped of communal identity…citizens…choosing instead to pass on unrealistic expectations to public leaders. A way in which this can be combated is with the development of citizen leaders.  In addition, there is a divide both physically as well as mentally seen between leaders and their followers. For example students in California were asked to draw what leadership meant to them. What they got was the leader being depicted much more prominently than the audience, they were divided from the audience by a physical barrier, and were always placed above the audience. Showing the idea how these leaders are not the same as us but rather different and superior/cannot accurately reflect the crowds viewpoints. Describing how the development of citizen leaders would help combat this and allow leaders and followers to feel as though they are connecting with one another. 

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While reading the Gardner piece, I was especially struck by how important followers are in a leader/follower relationship. To be frank, leaders are more reliant on their followers than the audience is on their leaders. Every decision that a leader makes is supposed to be as reflective as possible of the common good to maximize the most happiness and success of his or her constituency. One of the hardest parts of being a leader is being elected and well-liked in the first place, and even after that initial success, s/he often attempts to be elected again while maintaining high approval ratings. For example, the representative democracy that the United States has is so hugely impacted by leaders attempting to represent as much as possible of their constituency’s wishes. When writing a platform, a candidate is hugely biased by what the public has voted on lately. However, I appreciated how Gardner referred to this relationship as a “two-way conversation” in which social norms hugely impacted how both social groups, the audience and those who represent them, acted and what they expect from one another.

It is interesting to consider how constituencies may act without policy-maker’s influence and the impacts of those around them. Societal pressures definitely lead both parties of this relationship to make different decisions than they would have without these societal expectations.

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As John Gardner says early in Leaders and Followers “Leaders are almost never as much in charge as they are pictured to be, and followers are almost never as submissive as one might imagine”(185). This is completely true. Leaders are literally powerless without followers and the illusion of superiority that leaders possess is all a matter of how the followers respond to them. Gardner asks the question “should the relationship [between leaders and followers] be more informal… leaders making the goals clear and then letting the constituents help determine the way of proceeding”(186). I believe that yes, the followers should be the ones that truly influence the way of proceeding; I believe that oftentimes followers do in fact influence the way things turn out, even if they are not aware of it. 

This impact followers can have brought me to think of several examples from class and the world today. One example of the huge role followers can play in the action taken by leaders and in a way lead themselves was the Parkland student’s response to the shootings at their school. When it became clear that no real action was going to be taken by the government to prevent school shootings they made their voices heard. As stated in The New York Times by Margaret Kramer and Jennifer Harlen “The Parkland students became a force for gun control legislation and boosted the youth vote. Here’s how they changed America’s response to mass shootings”(2019). They saw how the leaders of our country were responding and instead of just letting the injustice and terror of the shooting shift into the background they were vocal in a way that was heard by the nation. They put pressure on the leaders to make a change and influenced other followers to not just stand by. If people become aware of the important role that followers play and the huge amount of influence they can have on the outcomes of our leader’s decisions followers can come together and assure that they are being heard in an organized, purposeful way.

Link to NY Times article below:

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This video is applicable in many ways today. The biggest theme I think is perception. In a society of so many unknowns, how do we really know what is true or right? This relates to a theme we covered in 102 about questioning authority. There becomes a time in which that the community must hold authority accountable to keep them true. If the community does not then what we all know will be false.

The prisoner who escaped out of the cave was a leader in that community. He took a step that nobody had done before which is charismatic. However, he became more of a leader once he went back to the other prisoners. He endured the burden by knowing these prisoners were seeing something that was not true. As a leader I believe you run the risk of carrying that burden of a community.

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I found the cave allegory to be very interesting, mainly because I think some of its underlying themes are extremely applicable today. Perception is such a major aspect of politics today that I don’t really think many people take into consideration. More than what a president, or any political person of power, does, good or bad, public opinion is based on how they come across and how they make the public feel. In the cave, they would have never realized that what imprisons them is nothing more than a bunch of mere puppets, and I think that in society today sometimes we need to get up and change our perspective in order to get an idea of what’s really going on in the world.

At least for me, the Gardner reading changed my perspective on the importance of the role of a follower in light of the successful leader. I like how he discussed the relationship between a leader and the followers, whom he groups into one sort of entity. He presents the idea that the most successful leaders are the one who can foster the intellectual development of their constituents, enabling them to become even more substantial contributors to that leader’s movement.  This also creates followers who can take initiative after the leader is gone, and this whole idea of creating a legacy that will impact future generations is something that I think is very often overlooked. Leaders can do some great things, but if they don’t have anyone to continue their efforts after they are long gone, then, in my honest opinion, it was all for nothing.

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The Allegory of the Cave video reminded me of something we touched on in class. I can’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but we said something about leaders with foresight typically don’t last long. It sounds cruel out of context, sorry about that. But this video makes that point ring even truer. Like we have established, humans are bad with long-term planning. We’re bad at thinking ahead. Therefore, when the occasional human who is good at thinking ahead appears… we typically aren’t going to like what they have to say. This is why, in the video, the unchained prisoners kill their releaser. They didn’t like the change, they liked what they had before, the outside world was confusing and overwhelming and they couldn’t understand why they were there. So they kill their releaser. People are not usually receptive to change, and that’s what the first article talked about.

In Leaders and Followers, the author states that the relationship between leaders and followers is not as black-and-white as people think. The followers aren’t just mindless drones, but rather are active participants. “[A leader] can be given subordinates, but they cannot be given a following. A following must be earned” (186). And part of that earning process has to do with the state of the country/group/whatever. People are not usually receptive to change, but when they are, that’s the time that loyal followings are made (this is pretty similar to the “situational theory” mentioned in the second article, but I’m not trying to lean entirely in that direction). Yes, a good charismatic leader is helpful to the process, as is a proper cause, but… honestly, it’s about what the followers want. They have to feel that the leader can help them. And that’s where the releaser in the Cave Allegory fails. He broke the chains of the other prisoners, he brought them outside, but how could they be expected to be grateful when they didn’t ask for the freedom to begin with? They didn’t even know they weren’t free. The releaser could be considered a citizen leader of sorts, he was chained once too, then freed, then he returns with knowledge… but he forgot the values of the people he meant to rescue. Simply because he had seen “the great beyond” doesn’t make it effective to discredit their little… cave society. As we’ve read for today, it really does boil down to the followers.

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There are lots of “ingredients”, as Gardner put it, that make up a leader. From earlier readings in the semester, we know that leaders can be successful, charismatic, toxic, tyrannical, and sometimes just straight up not good at their job. One new ingredient to add to this recipe of leadership is the follower.

According to Gardner, “the state of mind of followers is a powerful ingredient in explaining the mergence of the charismatic leader”. Followers and their state of mind can, and most of the time do, have almost as much influence on a leader as a leader has on their followers. Whether you think the follower-leader relationship should be a formal or informal one is up to debate, but the interwoven relationship between leader and follower is undeniable.

It is interesting to note that in recent decades, it seems as if people support leaders who help them arrive at their own judgements. Maybe in other places of the world, but in America, there seems to be a lot more polarizing arguments rather than arriving at one’s own opinion across a plethora of topics: healthcare, college tuition, immigration policy and the list goes on.

I also found it interesting when Mabye says that theories such as trait, organizational, vision, situational and power theories threaten the idea that the leader can be one of us or among us, putting them up on a literal and metaphorical pedestal. The crises confronting society are on a continuum and so should the relationship between leaders and followers. The dichotomy of the leader and follower titles is what can ultimately get us into trouble of resorting to a “Great Man”-“divine right is above the law leadership theory” we have worked so hard to abandon with democracy and citizen leadership.

Actions speak louder than words and actions of leaders influence actions of followers which again influence the actions of leaders. It is an ebb and flow of relationship between following the leader and leading the follower.

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The Allegory of the Cave was intriguing because we as humans don’t often think about how we are perceiving something and that maybe we are wrong. Humans have a hard time seeing things from a different point of view, but it is a very important tool in life and for also becoming a good leader. Plato’s idea connects to Mabey’s claim that our leaders are becoming more divided from the communities. If the leaders were able to perceive stuff differently or even knew that their perception was always right then maybe we wouldn’t be stuck in this dilemma.

I do not agree with Mabey’s idea of needing more or majority citizen leaders. More citizen leaders would certainly be great, but it is not what I believe the solution is. In fact, I don’t think there is a set answer. I believe that the society needs to know what they want in their leader, and then choose them. Some people won’t be happy with the decision, but at least it is majority. There is no best way to change the leaders and their roles, it depends on what the society and community want.

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After listening to the podcast, it becomes evident that in order to discover truth and expose the hidden, one must understand the importance of perception. Humans tend to only believe what is visible to them, and what is seen is what they allow to construct their thought process and how they think concepts. Without considering the extremities of the cave people, it seems foolish that they could think shadows to be actual beings but once we understand that this is all they have ever seen, it is understood that their circumstances have constituted their realities and that we are not different in how we think. The tendency to simply adopt concepts as opposed to further exploring what we can not see is a common flaw in human thought as it limits our framework of thinking. 

The podcast also offers this idea that if one of the trapped prisoners were to leave and discover a more in depth understanding, it would be extremely difficult, especially if they were to adopt this new ideology in an attempt to try to teach it to their still trapped peers–this idea can also be applied to day to day modern human thinking as well. To create a new way of thinking requires the erasure of prior preconceived notions, which is extremely difficult if every other thought possessed was formulated around this concept. Further, to think the unthought can be intimidating and complex because it suggests that everything ever known was untrue or partially accurate, even further complicating these ideologies. As a result of how uncomfortable re-thinking can be for individuals, it is better understood why many tend to reject any other form of thinking that contradicts or disproves theirs–for fear of it deconstructing their universe or meaning of their existence. 

All in all, the podcast provides a strategic and in depth way of thinking about why it is so difficult to form new/advanced theories and ideas. In evaluating these ideas, however, the podcast also subliminally provides the solution to the problem by identifying the obstacles.  

 

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