5 Cent Eggs

During a lecture regarding leader-controlled media, a thought about a catch-22 popped into my head. If a leader’s tenure in power is perpetuated by follower support, and the leader makes the poor leadership choice to spin the media in his favor, he is simultaneously becoming a poor leader and making it almost impossible (especially in the short run) to be discovered as a bad leader.

Putting a positive spin on things has never been my strong suit. I tell the whole truth, every anxious frustrating detail. I do this based on the golden rule; I agree that ignorance is bliss, but I’d rather be aware than blissful.

Anyway…

Critiquing a leader’s performance real-time seems to be to be a very tricky endeavor. Rarely is a leader’s situation unoriginal enough to have a good precedent for them to follow, and even if there was a plan that had worked in the past, different leadership styles can attain the same, if not better, results.

A lot of the time (at least in my experience) followers don’t know what to look for in their leader. This makes those followers both blind to important problems and prone to panic.

All of this occasionally makes the decision to support a leader very complicated. If a leader is doing a good job, but the situation leads followers to become frustrated towards him or her, followers may want to remove that leader.  Removing a good leader will be a poor move, save for the small amount of catharsis. Maybe then it is better to leave all leaders until the end of their term, regardless of their popularity. Clearly, however, some leaders are doing such a bad job that they need to be removed immediately. But how clear is it really? How do we know that we won’t thank them for their frustrating leadership later?

This area is nothing but pure grey. Just think, a leader could be smart enough to hide an unpopular decision as to remain in power and see their good plan through, or they could be dumb enough to hide an unpopular decision because they truly believe their obviously flawed plan is brilliant. Go ahead; your brain may now explode

I guess all I’m saying is keep an open mind when critiquing a leader. Don’t panic, keep your head on a swivel, and be logical. And for the love of decisiveity, know what you want.