Leadership

I think I can boil down the essence of what makes a leader. There are two qualities, I argue, that are necessary.

• The ability to articulate the tasks that need to be done to accomplish a goal.
• The ability to assemble the skills, resources, and motivation needed to complete the tasks.

This is why Obama has a Nobel Peace prize. The committee thinks he possesses these qualities and by the time his term in office is over (my opinion is that) he will have demonstrated a long list of achieved goals. As opposed to the previous President who's claim to fame is difficulty articulating even the most basic ideas (though, declaring himself as "The War President" certainly didn't help his cause for the Peace Prize).

But suffice it to say, there are lots of successful people who can either (1) articulate a set of goals and then get nothing done or (2) assemble skills, resources, and motivation and then do nothing of value with it. There are also tons of people who waffle or flip-flop during the course of mediation because "the issues aren't black and white".

If I were to categorize myself, I'm not sure exactly where on this spectrum I'd fall. I don't think my critics (if they exist) would figure the same thing for me than what I'd figure for myself. But I guess that's not currently relevant since historically I've never done anything of significance.

The point that I'm trying to get at is when assessing a person's abilities to be a leader the two questions that need to be answered affirmatively are, "What goals had the person set?" and "Did the person achieve the goals that they set out to accomplish?"

If you'll allow me to get political, I'd argue that former President Bill Clinton got lots of stuff done, but didn't have a clearly articulated set of goals (which led to legislation that eventually caused loans to be made to people who couldn't afford them because of fraudulent, unregulated "subprime mortgages"). The counterpoint is former President George W. Bush who had a clear goal of "stopping the terrorist insurgency", though he lacked the ability to figure out how to accomplish this and as a result lost control of all aspects of American politics. It would make a trilling debate to argue who the better leader is among these two. Though I will leave that as a thought exercise for the reader.

And with my fingers firmly crossed, I hope that Obama can make the changes that he's described ever so eloquently in his vision for America. I hope he truly has the two qualities needed to be a good leader.