The "Vision" Thing by Hugh Mackay

The ancient Book of Proverbs got it pretty right: "Where therte is no vision, the people perish".

Say what you like about the need for strong and decisive leaders; about the need for personal integrity; about the need for intelligence, administrative skill and management flair. All these things make important contributions to the art of leadership, yet none of them goes to the very heart of the matter.

It is true that when Australians talk about their ideal leaders, they always mention the need for strength and integrity. And it is true that when the people are disappointed in the quality of political leadership — as they are at present — they often refer to the lack of strength and decisiveness, or the lack of integrity.

But there is one other, crucial factor they always mention when they are dreaming of ideal leaders or complaining about shortcomings in the leaders they’ve got: that factor is inspiration. People expect leader to lift them to new heights of expectation, and to show how these expectations can be achieved. People love to be challanged — even where the challenge generates some initial discomfort — because they know they are being offered the possibility of greater fulfilment of their own potential.

Even when people complain about the lack of strength in leaders (either of the country or of the organisation they work for), they are really complaining about lack of vision: "strength" is merely a symptom of a leaders’ confidence in his or her own sense of direction. Similarly, "integrity" is a symptom of a leader’s sense of vision, because integrity implies having a sense of guiding principles — values — and being prepared to stick by them.

Of course, leadership is also about sacrifice, discipline, and a willingness to rise above self-interest: those qualities are called for in a leader because a vision is pointless unless it can be communicated, and the esssense of communication lies in our ability to listen to the needs, dreams, attitudes, and aspirations of those whom we are tying to reach and influence. But all such skills are merely employed in the service of the leaders’ real task, and that task is to inspire others with a visionary sense of what is possible.

Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst, was once asked by an American journalist to account for the extraordinary rise of Hitler in Germany between the two World Wars. The journalist, H R Knickerbocker, had observed that Hitler seemed to enjoy extraordinary power and influence in Germany, while appearing as something of a buffoon to outsiders.

Jung, who was living in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, explained the phenomenon in characteristically poetic terms: "Hitler is the mirror of every Germans’ unconscious, but of course he mirrors nothing from a non-German. He is the loudspeaker which magnifies the inaudible whispers of the German soul until they can be heard by the German’s unconscious ear. He is the first man to tell every German what he has been thinking and feeling all along in his unconscious about German fate..."

Until he was destroyed by his own megalomania, Hitler was something of a textbook case of inspirational leadership — even if his inspiration was essentially evil. Jung’s phrase, "the loudspeaker which magnifies the inaudible whispers of the German soul", explains what appears to be the almost mystical power of truly outstanding leaders throughout history. In every case, they are channelling, or focusing, dreams and iderals which already exist in the minds of the communities they serve.

So there’s another key to understanding the nature of leadership: leaders serve those whom they lead, by showing them how their dreams can come true; by constructing a framework within which their potential can be fulfilled.

In that sense, the best leaders don’t stand apart from us; they stand with us, and for us. They represent our own capacity to prevail. They defend us against our tendency to be sucked down into despair, depression or even boredom. They raised our sights, our hopes, and our spirits.

In the most sublime cases, they even stir in us an expanded sense of our human potential and, indeed, of what it menas to be human.

This is not mere rhetoric: it is the nuts-and-bolts reality of inspirational leaders. "Vision" is not confined to politics: it exists in all the best and brightest business organisations, at the leading edge of all scientific endeavour, in the best examples of professional work, and in well-functioning communities and families all around the world.

The greatest tragedy of contemporary Australian life is the growing number of people who feel there is a gap between the way they would like to live and the way they actually do live. That gap defines, quite precisely, leadership’s lost opportunities.

Leaders allow us to flourish by inspiring us with the possibility that we can flourish. When leaders fall for the trap of believing that leadership is simply a matter of "getting things done" or of harnessing theresources of other people to achieve the leader’s own ends, the people will, surely, perish — in the sense that they will be exploited rather than inspired; manipulated, rather than energised.

You aspire to leadership? Cast yourself in the role of servant to those whom you lead, and listen to those "whispers of the soul". Then, and only then, will you be qualified to articulate your vision for them.

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