Reluctant leadership, Effective Leadership Part 1

It's interesting to me that most people assume leaders want to be leaders. In my experience, when asked, a lecture room full of people, a recitation full of students, and an apartment full of engineers-to-be will all list a desire to lead, to organize, to direct, among the traits of a good leader. That extroverted leaders will openly enjoy being around followers and introverts will justify their discomfort with their desire to lead.

This is interesting because, frankly, some of the most effective and loved leaders I have had the opportunity to observe hate dealing with people and hate being in charge. 

To my knowledge, the study of leadership is not yet a quantitative concrete tool for determining properties of, and results pertaining to, leadership. We cannot yet add 2 and 2 and create a profile of the perfect leader for a situation.  Knowing this, I believe it is more worth my time to explain my case for the effectiveness of a reluctant leader than disprove the innumerable other theories behind the source of good leadership. 

First, a leader having little to no desire to lead in the pertinent capacity serves as a fail-safe for the purity of motives of that leader. Understanding this concept requires a few definitions, however. 

First, let us consider a perfectly benevolent leader. Let us assume someone who fits this description does everything in their power to further the group they are leading, and beyond that will waste none of that group's time, energy, money, or experience in furthering his or herself beyond what will further aid the group. This is to say that his or her selfish concern pales in comparison to concern for the group.

Let us now consider the exact opposite, a perfectly corrupt leader. This leader will use as much of the group's resources to further his or herself as possible, within the bounds of remaining in good favor and therefore not being removed from power by the group. This means that the only concern that this leader has for the group is as a vessel for gain for the leader.

Next we need to consider our reluctant leader’s attitude towards a position of power. For my argument for the effectiveness of a reluctant leader to remain true, we need to establish that the leader’s disdain for being a leader outweighs the perks of leadership. This is to say that he or she will not seek out a leadership position to better his or herself, despite the rigors and frustration caused by a position. This will also mean that the leader will step down as soon as his or her leadership is no longer required to lead, which removes the possibility of "overstaying their welcome", i.e. to fabricate justification for staying in power, which can lead to complacency (including failure to act properly should another need for a leader to arise) and unnecessary expenditure of the group’s resources. 

It needs to be considered, however, that the reluctant leader may be required to remain in power for a certain amount of time, regardless of their actions. It might be logical to assume that a smart person, unrelated to their reluctance as a leader, will "make the best of it" (referring to their stint in power) by making a gain for his or herself at the expense of the group (possibly behind the guise of the "crisis"- the situation that arose to necessitate our reluctant leader), which is more like our perfectly corrupt leader, who’s concern is purely selfish.

The strongest and most obvious argument against the possibility of the reluctant leader behaving as a corrupt leader in this regard is simply a thought about effort. To better his or herself corruptly, a leader must further officiate, persuade, and request for resources beyond what is needed to solve the "crisis". While in some situations it may be a simple matter of rationalizing something to make a gain for a corrupt leader, any leadership behavior beyond solving the "crisis" is outside the realm of desire of our reluctant leader.

The courses of action of our reluctant leader, dictated by his or her attitude towards themselves being in power, are the same courses of action we can expect our perfectly benevolent leader to take, therefore proving that someone who is reluctant to lead can very much be an effective leader.

Reluctant leaders may also be effective leaders due to the high likelihood of him or her being exceptionally skilled in the area in which they are called upon to lead. This will be discussed in Part 2.