I feel like almost every really good leader is someone who happens to have that “natural leader” quality, but also asks people for input constantly and is aware of their lack of judgement.
A little semi related aside: There is a fascinating story in “Most Secret War” of the author’s first meeting where Winston Churchill was running the meeting. One, Churchill came in in working clothes, the only one not wearing a suit, and everyone thought for a second that he was the janitor or something entering the wrong room when he walked in. He just didn’t carry himself like “the boss.” Once they all realized everyone stood up and he sort of waved it off and took his seat like nothing special. He had sort of anti charisma.
Once he started running the meeting, Jones said that Churchill had an almost supernatural ability to spot when Jones at least had something he needed to say. Somebody would say something that was wrong, Jones would carefully keep his face neutral because he was just some random low-level peon at this meeting and didn’t want to get in trouble, and the next thing that happened Churchill would say, “Jones, what do you think of that?” Basically he was at a grandmaster level of digging to get to the bottom of what was actually happening so everyone could make good decisions.
I don’t really know that much about any famous leaders through history, but it was just fuckin’ fascinating as a window onto how these decisions and plans actually get made, to some small extent.
True that
I feel like almost every really good leader is someone who happens to have that “natural leader” quality, but also asks people for input constantly and is aware of their lack of judgement.
A little semi related aside: There is a fascinating story in “Most Secret War” of the author’s first meeting where Winston Churchill was running the meeting. One, Churchill came in in working clothes, the only one not wearing a suit, and everyone thought for a second that he was the janitor or something entering the wrong room when he walked in. He just didn’t carry himself like “the boss.” Once they all realized everyone stood up and he sort of waved it off and took his seat like nothing special. He had sort of anti charisma.
Once he started running the meeting, Jones said that Churchill had an almost supernatural ability to spot when Jones at least had something he needed to say. Somebody would say something that was wrong, Jones would carefully keep his face neutral because he was just some random low-level peon at this meeting and didn’t want to get in trouble, and the next thing that happened Churchill would say, “Jones, what do you think of that?” Basically he was at a grandmaster level of digging to get to the bottom of what was actually happening so everyone could make good decisions.
I don’t really know that much about any famous leaders through history, but it was just fuckin’ fascinating as a window onto how these decisions and plans actually get made, to some small extent.