A wise man once wrote, “That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”
Unquintessential leadership has always existed. In fact, it has been the predominant way that the human race has operated from the beginning.
Unquintessential leadership is completely natural to us, while quintessential leadership is completely unnatural to us.
Unquintessential leadership is based on the most basic aspects that drive our human nature: fear, hate, oppression, injustice, anger, and destruction.
What we fear, we hate. What we hate, we oppress. What we oppress, we are unjust toward. What we are unjust toward, we are angry toward as well. What we are angry toward, we seek to destroy.
Unquintessential leadership takes no thought or effort to do or be because it’s simply the way we are.
It’s critical, however, to understand that we don’t have to yield to the baseness of our natures as human beings. But choosing not to be who and what we naturally are means being consciously aware, thinking critically, and seeking knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
It also means seeing the rest of humanity in a mirror: when I’m looking at someone else, I’m looking at a reflection of myself. Because under the very shallow layer of the epidermis, we are all the same: the blood is red, the skeleton is the same, the muscles are the same, and the thing that gives us life – the breath – is the same.
My potential is everyone’s potential. My basic wants, needs, and desires are everyone’s basic wants, needs, and desires. The way I want to be treated is the way everyone wants to treated. Like me, everyone else has hopes, dreams, and aspirations: we are unique, so these are unique to each of us, but we’re the same in that we all have them.
Recognizing the overwhelming similarities among us humans is an attribute of quintessential leadership, because quintessential leaders are never just about themselves – seeking their own things, to the exclusion of everyone else and/or trampling and destroying everyone else to get what they want – but indeed are aware that, to quote Mr. Spock in the The Wrath of Khan, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.
The white supremacy movement, the neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, the Alt Right movement, and the racial/ethnic hatred that we witnessed this weekend (August 11-12, 2017) in Charlottesville, VA is not quintessential leadership.
It is also a reminder that this kind of unquintessential leadership is nothing new under the sun.
And it’s not just a predominant feature of American history from the time the first Europeans set foot in this part of the world and began a long saga of hate and destruction, beginning with intending to wipe out this continent’s indigenous people.
This kind of unquintessential leadership has been a part of human history from the beginning, is a part of human history now, and it will be a part of human history until there is no more human history.
However, for those of us who are striving to become quintessential leaders, this cannot be a part of our personal histories among the human race. We must choose the opposite – and right course – in our relationships with our brothers and sisters in the human race.
You and I may be among just a handful of people who, to the best of our ability (and, yes, we fail at times, but the difference is we recognize the failure, we admit the failure, we apologize for the failure and do our utmost to make amends, and then we get back up from our failure, recommitted to success), choose continually to do and to be the right thing by and toward every other person on the planet.
That’s the heart of quintessential leadership.
How are we doing?
The Quintessential Leader 