Leadership vitality is experienced in the inter-subjective dynamics of very small events, lasting seconds. ‘The scale is small’ but this is where we live; the scale if small, but this is where we lead, where we are led, where we follow – the relationship between leadership and scale is prone to ‘bigness’. It is often a term of approval for a leader to be seen as ‘focusing on the big picture’, and – conversely – for their failure to be predicted if they ‘get lost in the detail’ – after all the ‘devil is in the detail’.
So, perhaps the vitality of being led, of being a follower, of leading, lies in the ‘here-and-now’. Occasionally, you get leaders with a well-developed relationship to the past (and their own) – but in thinking about leaders and leadership, we often describe ‘here and now-ness’ in terms of ‘their (the leader’s, that is) time has come’; and when they are failing that, ’their time has passed’. Indeed the capacity to ‘seize the moment’ is a widely admired leadership trait.
These ways of talking about leaders and leadership, however, imply a passive attitude to the present moment – it can be seized if the timing it right, as if the moment were passing by slowly (like a boat, passing a dock from which the leader might step). And it is the moment that passes the leader – indeed we speak of ‘missing the moment’.
Slingshot