In some cases, “leadership” also consists, in part, of being a Schelling point at which key individuals come together to collectively undertake a difficult task.
Some tasks are so challenging that they require the participation of multiple very competent individuals—all of whom, however, have other things that they could be doing with their time. Such a task may involve substantial investment on the part of each member (which may be simply an investment of time, or it may also require an investment of material resources of some sort).
It would be wholly intolerable, in such a case, for an individual, who is qualified to participate in an attack on such a difficult objective, to lend his participation, to expend his resources—only to see that expenditure wasted, on account of some or all of the other participants lacking a similar level of competence. Similarly, such an individual has little interest, no doubt, in personally going around and attempting to round up other qualified folks, to enlist them in a collective attack on the objective—he has better things to do with his time.
The leader, in this case, is one who can, and does, say: “Alice, come do a 45-minute Baron run with us.” “Do you have a good group,” Alice asks—meaning, of course, “can you promise me that the three other members of the group that you assemble will be at least as competent as you and I are?” The good leader is the one who can credibly answer “Yes” to that question. She (the leader) then goes to Bob, and invites him, and fields the same question, and gives the same answer, and then Carol, and Dave, and now leader+Alice+Bob+Carol+Dave go and do the thing.
Thus the leader manages to put together an unusually effective task group, by virtue of being able to bring together several unusually competent (and suitable) individuals.
This requires some (very basic) “project management” (i.e. scheduling, etc.) skills, and some (slightly less basic) communication/persuasion/personnel-management skills, but most importantly, it requires personal competence and the ability to judge competence in others. The latter is absolutely critical, because when the leader says “I have [or can get] a good group”, each prospective group member must be able to trust that the leader can convince each other prospective group member to participate—which is perhaps not trivial, but more or less surmountable—and that the leader can properly select prospective group members. Note that a failure of the latter skill is far more catastrophic than a failure of the former! If the leader can’t get prospective group members to participate, well—hopes are dashed, a bit of preparation time is wasted, perhaps opportunities to do other things have been unnecessarily turned down, but… it’s not the end of the world. If the leader has misjudged the competence of the group members, then the project proceeds and fails, which is a much greater waste, much more frustrating, etc.
A leader who has this skill set—that of bringing together unusually competent individuals (all of whom are in high demand) to successfully tackle an unusually challenging task—can rack up a very impressive record of accomplishing many very difficult things. It is thus a much more valuable skill set than it might, at first glance, appear to be.
Addendum II
In some cases, “leadership” also consists, in part, of being a Schelling point at which key individuals come together to collectively undertake a difficult task.
Some tasks are so challenging that they require the participation of multiple very competent individuals—all of whom, however, have other things that they could be doing with their time. Such a task may involve substantial investment on the part of each member (which may be simply an investment of time, or it may also require an investment of material resources of some sort).
It would be wholly intolerable, in such a case, for an individual, who is qualified to participate in an attack on such a difficult objective, to lend his participation, to expend his resources—only to see that expenditure wasted, on account of some or all of the other participants lacking a similar level of competence. Similarly, such an individual has little interest, no doubt, in personally going around and attempting to round up other qualified folks, to enlist them in a collective attack on the objective—he has better things to do with his time.
The leader, in this case, is one who can, and does, say: “Alice, come do a 45-minute Baron run with us.” “Do you have a good group,” Alice asks—meaning, of course, “can you promise me that the three other members of the group that you assemble will be at least as competent as you and I are?” The good leader is the one who can credibly answer “Yes” to that question. She (the leader) then goes to Bob, and invites him, and fields the same question, and gives the same answer, and then Carol, and Dave, and now leader+Alice+Bob+Carol+Dave go and do the thing.
Thus the leader manages to put together an unusually effective task group, by virtue of being able to bring together several unusually competent (and suitable) individuals.
This requires some (very basic) “project management” (i.e. scheduling, etc.) skills, and some (slightly less basic) communication/persuasion/personnel-management skills, but most importantly, it requires personal competence and the ability to judge competence in others. The latter is absolutely critical, because when the leader says “I have [or can get] a good group”, each prospective group member must be able to trust that the leader can convince each other prospective group member to participate—which is perhaps not trivial, but more or less surmountable—and that the leader can properly select prospective group members. Note that a failure of the latter skill is far more catastrophic than a failure of the former! If the leader can’t get prospective group members to participate, well—hopes are dashed, a bit of preparation time is wasted, perhaps opportunities to do other things have been unnecessarily turned down, but… it’s not the end of the world. If the leader has misjudged the competence of the group members, then the project proceeds and fails, which is a much greater waste, much more frustrating, etc.
A leader who has this skill set—that of bringing together unusually competent individuals (all of whom are in high demand) to successfully tackle an unusually challenging task—can rack up a very impressive record of accomplishing many very difficult things. It is thus a much more valuable skill set than it might, at first glance, appear to be.