The Wisdom of Napoleon Hill by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: G&D Media
Published: 2020-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

V

Leadership

Initiative and Leadership,

from The Law of Success (1928)

One of the interesting things about this chapter is how little it actually says about leadership as a position, rank, or office. Rather, Hill focuses on the processes that naturally make someone a leader.

To begin with, Hill defines leadership and initiative as essentially the same. Initiative means doing what is necessary without be told, cajoled, or even rewarded. Any manager, director, editor, officer, or supervisor who is feckless or apathetic—who will not go the extra distance to improve a service, product, or outcome—is not a leader, and never will be. Leadership is not a title but an act.

A leader is by definition the best-informed and most capable person in any operation, whatever his or her title. Although I do not view Napoleon Bonaparte as a model of statesmanship, I’ve always been touched by the passage that Ralph Waldo Emerson attributed to the French conqueror in his 1860 essay “Success”:

“There is nothing in war,” said Napoleon, “which I cannot do by my own hands. If there is nobody to make gunpowder, I can manufacture it. The gun-carriages I know how to construct. If it is necessary to make cannons at the forge, I can make them. The details of working them in battle, if it is necessary to teach, I shall teach them. In administration, it is I alone who have arranged the finances, as you know.”

A real leader never asks subordinates to do something that he is unwilling to do. A leader is not above cleaning up a mess, broadly defined—whether his own or another’s. A leader does not find ways to be out of the room or unavailable at a time of reckoning for a mistake or mishap.

A leader also acts decisively. In one of my favorite passages in this chapter Hill writes, “Any reasonable order in an emergency is better than no order.” Life favors action. To dither, in matters large or small, is to virtually guarantee defeat. To act decisively may risk defeat—but the better part of such a risk is deliverance.

A leader also must know those who work for him. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to motivation, reward, or correction. I once knew a supervisor who sought to avoid conflict by delivering blanket orders—willfully ignoring differences in people’s reliability, output, and work style, and thus sidestepping the question of who was or wasn’t contributing, and what support, recognition, or correction each person needed. That is the avoidance of leadership.

In short, there is no such thing as leadership in itself. Rather, leadership is a label that we apply to responsibility and reliability—whether or not it comes with a title.

—MH

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