“Wouldn’t you know it?” my new secretary said pensively as she studied my outfit du jour. “My favorite movie of all time is The Devil Wears Prada.”
Good Leader
In reality, you don’t need tricks and strategies to be a good leader. Neither do you need leadership workshops. What you do need is to have a certain type of personality. If you are in possession of the three following qualities, you will make a good leader:
- You need to be interested in people and genuinely like them.
- At the same time, you need to not care whether they like you back. High tolerance for conflict and disagreement is a must. Ideally, you would have the kind of personality where you’re not even capable of noticing that somebody dislikes you.
- Another crucial quality for a leader is forgetfulness. You should be incapable of bearing grudges. If you’re the kind of a person who dwells on who said what to whom last month, being in charge of a group of people is going to be very painful.
I’m not a great leader because I don’t have the first of the qualities on this list. I am an okay leader because I have the second and the third. I know people who have all three. My Associate Dean is the epitome of this type of personality, and my admiration for him is deep and sincere. I always admire people who have virtues of which I am not in possession.
New Leadership Style
College administrators go to all sorts of business seminars and workshops on ridiculous things like leadership and all that kind of garbage. Then they come back and put everything that they have learned into practice. The funniest thing is that they all do it simultaneously. It is as if the old software were wiped out and a completely new package suddenly got installed. To people who don’t know about the leadership seminars that they attend the sudden change in demeanor looks insane. One can easily learn all about the new leadership fads from the changes in their behavior.
For instance, the new fad is that they talk to faculty as if we were a bunch of extremely traumatized preschoolers. Since we are neither preschoolers nor traumatized but are, instead, a group of adult, very opinionated and dramatically coddled people, this makes a really bizarre impression. And since they all suddenly switched into this mode at the exact same time it all looks deeply unhinged.
We have one administrator who is a typical alpha male with an extremely short fuse. He’s a severe, hardcore dude and I always really respected him for that. Other people hated him for it but imagine everybody’s shock when all of a sudden he comes into a room and starts talking to us in a mealy-mouthed tones of a preschool teacher addressing toddlers. The man is clearly in great pain. This behavior does not jive with his personality.
“So… Stephen here did a really good job on the report. What do we say when somebody does a really good job? Let’s all say it together. Thank you, Stephen! Good job!”
Professors remain mute while Stephen looks at everybody in shocked silence.
The chancellor of the university gave his annual State of the University address the other day. I couldn’t go because I was teaching but my colleagues were crawling out of the room heaving with laughter. He also did the “Let’s all say it together! Good job!” thing. Can you imagine? Whoever came up with this leadership fad is probably taking the piss. This is a great way of making administrators look absolutely ridiculous and lose any remaining shred of their authority in the eyes of faculty. One couldn’t come up with anything more humiliating if one tried.
Professors are a jaded, cynical bunch. We don’t chant “good job, Stephen,” unless we’ve had a couple of drinks and are trying to be funny.
The previous leadership fad that has been abandoned in favor of this one was that you have to assume the persona of a mega important expert and treat others with condescension. The dramatic change from this persona to one of an overly emotional, fussy lady talking to toddlers looks schizoid. But they plough on because the expensive coaches they hire tell them that this is the “it” thing these days.
A Sign of Weakness
Never forbid anything if you aren’t willing to impose consequences for violating the prohibition. This is as true in parenting as it is in geopolitics. Saying “don’t do it” and then sitting impotently by while it gets done is the ultimate weak move.
Power Wins
A preacher showed up on campus a couple of weeks ago. He comes every spring and preaches in the quad about the ills of sexual immorality. We are a public university, and he has the First Amendment right to speak freely on public land. This is exactly the argument he was trying to make as the campus police dragged him away.
We have a large stone in the quad, and there is a tradition of students spray painting messages on it. It was fun to see what students would come up with every time. Then the administration introduced a new regulation that every message has to be pre-approved. You have to file paperwork and wait for your message to be studied and deemed appropriate. That kind of killed the whole long-standing tradition right there.
There are no rights without power.
Liberals and Leftists
I’m a conservative because both these approaches are the product of boundless individualism. They are about catering to the unhinged, impossible to satisfy “gimme, gimme, gimme” of a desiring maw of need that is a human who doesn’t recognize boundaries. Whether this desiring human demands power or rights is not that important.
The quoted poster is absolutely right in that both a liberal and a leftist appoint themselves to be the judges of Good and Bad. They bicker about what that is but the underlying principle that it’s up to them to figure it out remains intact. They can’t conceive of a limiting principle that lies outside of themselves and that they don’t immediately need to violate. They see themselves and their whims as the measure of everything. They are always owed. Whether they are owed power or rights or endless consideration for their feelings doesn’t matter.
In reality, this distinction between wanting power and wanting rights is unimportant. If rights are the most important thing, soon enough you’ll need a lot of power to wrangle more and more exotic rights out of others. We’ve all seen the creation of a disciplinary apparatus to ensure the right of some men to force people to call them women. We’ve all been forced to sit 6 feet apart so that some of us could exercise their right to feeling less anxious.
Epitome of Trolldom
This is really cool, people. Please watch for two minutes of joy to close out the day:
Short-form and Focus
I’m not entirely sure what “short-form videos” are. Any video under an hour is insulting to me. Two and a half hours is a much more respectable duration. Short-form are TikToks, right?
In any case, what I recommend is reading novels. Long novels. Or even novelistic universes such as Trollope’s or Balzac’s. These are excellent for focus.
Rotisserie Dilemma
It definitely makes sense for people on food stamps. But it will be a punishment for everybody not on food stamps because it will immediately drive the price way up.
Sincere Bickering
I’m surrounded by groups of very good, kind, sincere people who are engaged in petty bickering and needless drama. At work, at church, everywhere. They are all great people. I like all of them. They are all upset with me for not taking sides but they are all right to an extent and also wrong to an extent. Like we all tend to be since we are all human.
I understand why it’s annoying that I prance in and out with a beatific look on my face while everybody is denouncing each other. But my inner peace is very hard-won and I’m not giving it up.
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