Friday Night at 8: Leadership

What makes someone a leader?

When I was a little girl, I had the usual fantasies of big strong male leaders who were heroes, yeah, I mixed up leaders and famous comic-book type heroes and that was foolish — because usually heroes worked alone (usually in strange costumes) to halt villains and stuff and that’s why they were called heroes, using raw power and all.

I was married to a jazz musician who was the leader of his jazz quintet.  I found that leadership in this case was pretty much doing all the boring work of checking contracts, dealing with surly club owners and constantly making sure the musicians and singer got to the gigs on time and would show up at a rehearsal or two.  He was a good leader – the musicians dug his original compositions and his playing.  But they showed up to play, they’d do rehearsals for free, but they didn’t do all of the rest of it.

I guess my biggest leadership role in meatspace was when I managed a transcription service.  That was pretty much the same story … I had to make sure all the work was done correctly, and basically I had to allow myself to be hated a lot whenever the temp workers were in a bad mood.  Naturally, an authority figure is always a prime target for the woes we don’t want to take responsiblity for, and there I was, as I worked right alongside my transcribers.  For the most part they did respect me … but oh brother, they would sometimes eat me alive if the mood was cooking up that kind of a storm.

So to me, a leader is someone who does the work, first and foremost, who shows up and does the work.  If they do their work well, most often they find people will gather around them and pitch in.  It’s a kind of vibe, I guess.

We have leaders in our government, at least that’s what they call themselves.  I think that’s mistaken, though, as what they really are is holders of power, the power that the folks who elected them vested in them by their vote.

So they have power.  But do they lead?  These last eight years … eh, not so much.  We all know the disconnect that has occurred between our elected representatives and the folks who elected them.  And we’ve seen the grave consequences of this.

Can individual citizens be leaders?  I mean just regular folks, like us.  Can we be leaders?

I think we can and in many cases we are.

First there is a kind of leadership that comes with self-mastery, to know what you are doing, to be skilled in doing it, and to take responsibility for your words and actions.  That kind of leadership isn’t very flashy and heroic, but it sends out an energy that affects others, just being who you are with your whole spirit.

And then there’s the leadership that comes with working together as citizens to accomplish something, to right a wrong, to solve problems, to build and create.  That’s the kind of leadership that is wonderful to see, because there are so many leaders at so many different levels.  Whoever in this fellowship has the best skills for a particular challenge becomes the leader in facing that challenge, and there’s a fluidity in that kind of organization that can accomplish miracles.  I would call that merit-based leadership.

All these thoughts came to me last night after reading Alma’s comment on what was accomplished while she, Rusty, Wolverine and others worked at the Conyers Blog, helping John Conyers:

Making the timeline for Conyers to use against Bush.  Patriot, who owned Soapbox4truth made a program for us to add links and descriptions easily.  Afterdowning street and other bloggers joined us.  Afterdowning hosted it. We had all been following things then, and weren’t burned out yet.  We just picked something out of our mind/memory, went to see if it was up yet, and if not, searched until we found good, solid, info and links to add for documentation. It went really smoothly.  Conyers then used it in his book to raise election funds instead of going after Bush.  It disappointed me that he didn’t credit Patriot and SB4T, but he did credit bloggers in general, and Afterdowning street, in the book, I believe.

Thats when we all started getting close.  We used to have contests for writing to reps and senators too.  We wrote to all of them, not just ours and committee chairmen.

To me, that’s using leadership skills on so many different levels.  Taking responsibility for a project and seeing it through.

I think that as citizens, we are going to have to stop torture from being national policy and the only way to do that is to show the world that we will make those who have tortured face the consequences of their actions.  Our representatives will, in greater or lesser measure, give lip service to “finding out” what happened.  As far as accountability for those most powerful who have committed these crimes against humanity — I haven’t heard much at all.  Ok, I haven’t heard a single thing.

I am already seeing leaders emerge on this issue, both on the tubez and in our communities.  People who are in it for the work, who want to build something, right wrongs, help others and have enough fun to energize to work some more.  They’re not on the news and they’re not celebrities of any kind.  Just leaders.

Some of them are even here at Docudharma!

‘Course, I’m just a prowler.  But I see stuff, I get around.  Yep.

Happy Friday to everyone.  Crazy weather all over the country this weekend, woo hoo!