…D’Addario was a rare breed of supervisor for a paramilitary organization. He had learned long ago to suppress the first impulse of command that calls for a supervisor to intimidate his men, charting their every movement and riding them through investigations. In the districts, that sort of behavior usually resulted from a new supervisor’s primitive conclusion that the best way to avoid being perceived as weak was to behave like a petty tyrant.
–David Simon, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

This petty-tyranny is what leadership isn’t. Leadership is getting men to love what you love. (“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”) Leadership is about creating future leaders, who can see what you couldn’t see. Command is always, at its best, a form of submission: submission to the target, to the unseen, to the mission, to the barely-apprehended beloved.

[edited to clarify what I meant by “this”!]


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