Good Balance Creates Good Leaders

BY: B. Keith Plunkett

Society has morphed into a mob that wants to hear our leaders definitively and emphatically say “never” and/or “always”. We get caught up in feel good phrases like “Yes We Can.” Empty and meaningless maxims discount one simple fact: none of us, not even those willing to shout such blather from the rooftops and podiums, are ever really in control.

We reward people as worthy of leadership for the pronouncement of meaningless platitudes. We use it to build an otherwise banal personality into a heroic figure and then lay at their doorstep our problems to be fixed. We want someone else to be the “go to guy”, because at our core, the majority of us are scared to stick out our own necks.

We are fearful little children, who learned to deal with life through our control dramas at a young age, and we have brought those dramas with us into adulthood. How do I get fed? I cry. How do I get my way? I throw a temper tantrum. How do I get out of this? I lie. How do I win? I cheat. Those are the standards of the playground in which we live. It is the ways we have deluded ourselves into maintaining the belief that we can control our situations. It is our lesser selves we revert to when focused on a shortcut to the end result. We have forgotten that we are not in control and never have been. We have allowed ourselves to become manipulators--and maninpulated, out of fear, out of laziness, out of aloofness, and in some cases out of blind allegiance to the perception of power.

That’s all power really is; a perception. Situational control, that is momentary management, will always lie with the person or group that is perceived to have power. That group and control will often change when that power is challenged, when a reaction to new circumstances is insufficient to maintain it, or when they begin to believe that they are above reproach. There are leaders and there are followers. Without belief there are no followers, and there can be no leaders without followers.

We deify those who say “never this” or “always that” and put them on a pedestal. But, when those heroes become all too human, as they inevitably do, those that believed in the miracle can only stand by quietly disappointed and watch as the axe is sharpened, usually by someone else who is shouting, “Never again!”

Then, the process starts anew.

We deify our demagogues, and then sacrifice them at the altar of their own failures when it is WE who have set the bar too high for them, while not even bothering to set a bar for ourselves.

We need a reawakening. We need a renewal of personal responsibility—not control, but responsibility. That doesn’t start with some political catchphrase. It starts with each of us. It begins at the most grassroots level, in our own backyard, and in our own communities. It starts by worrying about what we can do for others and relinquishing any hope at controlling the outcome, and by not scheming about what we need for ourselves or manipulating the situation to gain an edge. It starts with REAL public servants, those are people who are in it for the right reasons, people of courage, people prepared to help bring consensus to difficult issues to solve problems.

Politics reflects society. We get exactly what we deserve. Being courageous doesn’t require being obnoxious and building consensus isn’t the same as sacrificing principle. The path is narrow. It requires good balance to keep from falling off into the weeds.

Senator Chuck Hagel writes, "The quality of leaders and effectiveness of government are directly related to informed and committed citizens willing to participate in politics."

Nothing is accomplished by divisive avarice. Citizens should encourage good balance within our social networks and follow the leaders that naturally appear as a result.