On Leadership. Part 2

Leadership is not a status and not a title. It’s a process.

To be a leader doesn’t mean always being first, in charge, or — least of all — the loudest and most active person in the room. It means knowing how to take responsibility at the moment when that gives the team an edge.

Real power isn’t “assigned from above.” It’s delegated “from below” — out of other people’s consent to follow us. Without that consent, power turns into a fiction.

But the process by which people pick a leader is almost always irrational. It reaches down into the oldest mechanisms of human behavior, into the collective unconscious, where decisions are made not by reason but by instinct. Instead of analysis, what often kicks in are primal patterns and the urge to dodge difficult conversations (first of all with ourselves) and the responsibility that comes with a decision.

— By age: “older means more experienced.”
— By labels: “he studied math, so he must be good with numbers.”
— By coincidences: “we have the same name,” “we’re from the same town,” “we served together,” “we root for the same team.”
— By the volunteer principle, or by the “sacrificial lamb,” if one happens to turn up.
— Or simply by drawing lots — let chance decide.

This isn’t a joke. Most group decisions aren’t about rationality — they’re about avoiding responsibility and handing it over to the will of the universe. That’s how beliefs about “the role of fate” are born. But what really decides is fear. The fear of being wrong.

And this is where the phenomenon of labels and archetypes comes into play. We don’t choose the person — we choose his image. He’s “calm,” “fair,” “generous,” “religious,” “attentive to detail,” “athletic,” “promising.” Or the opposite: “too young,” “shallow,” “abrasive.” But all these qualities are just a projection, a reflection of our expectations, not of reality.

Once I got feedback that in a stressful situation, when I took responsibility and quickly restored order, someone read my decisive but slightly pushy tone as nervousness and authoritarianism. Even though the task was formally done, the opinion was voiced that I “work badly under pressure.” And I understood just how thin the line is between actions and perception.

A person in uniform looks like a professional. A person in glasses — smart. A quiet one — level-headed. And someone who’s simply too hungover to find the energy to talk can come across as “measured and deep.”

Even a vote, which seems so democratic, is rarely free of these distortions. Each of us still chooses not from analysis but from a subjective feeling: “he looks like a leader.”

In small teams a rational choice is possible — there everyone knows each other personally. But the moment the scale grows, archetypes take over completely. People don’t perceive the personality, they perceive a set of signals: the way someone speaks, their posture, their intonation, their style of dress, their confidence, the associations they trigger.

If a person doesn’t carry the matching “labels” — if he doesn’t set off the familiar archetypal associations of the current era — he won’t be perceived as a leader, no matter how smart, kind, or competent he is.

That’s why what matters isn’t playing a role but consciously building your image: understanding which labels have already attached themselves to us, which of them work against us, and which are worth reinforcing. Leadership is not theater, but it isn’t chaos either. It’s the conscious management of perception.

Because people don’t follow logic. People follow symbols.

Here’s to all of us consciously shaping our image — the image of someone others will want to follow: devotedly, with inspiration, and… irrationally. 😎