“With very few exceptions, we are all continuously bombarded with portraits of “successful” types who allegedly merit emulation…The difficulty lies in the fact that these dubious paradigms tend to glamorize lives that are as superficial and inane as they are unreflective.”

Leadership is always a bit of a fraught topic to write about: almost everyone has an opinion, and most comments come across as superficial at best. It’s also often treated as the silver bullet that could solve everything: if we only we had better leaders, we moan, healthcare/foreign policy/the environment/our favourite issue could be resolved in a heartbeat.

The reality, of course, is not so simple. Identifying exactly what makes a good leader, or what skills we would prize in one, is hard. I don’t personally see consultants or even most managers as models (no offense to them) – they’re more like drivers instead of leaders, to take Warren Bennis’ phrase. Charisma and charm are often necessary to be popular, but they’re not the same as leadership.

Soupios and Mourdoukoutas identify another possibility, based on classical wisdom. Leadership, they argue, comes from knowing yourself. Being reflective and thinking deeply about issues, though not idolized in modern media, is what gives you the ability to understand and empathize with subordinates. It can also give you a broader philosophy of life, one that helps guide you and provide direction. Leaders, after all, inevitably have to be in front of others, and to do that you need direction of your own.

For me, that highlights an important point. Lots of would-be leaders these days seem focused on leading for the sake of leading: they don’t mind where the crowd is going, they just want to be leading them there. I’m not sure that can work. One can drive a crowd in a direction from behind, but to lead one must be in front, and that suggests being there before the crowd. Sometimes the crowd follows and sometimes it doesn’t, but part of being a leader is not needing to look behind you every thirty seconds to see who’s there.

The book isn’t perfect: the introduction is well written and definitely worth reading, but as with many such books, several of the chapters can feel clichéd. It nevertheless raises a point well worth thinking about, and highlights a number of useful ancient texts to refer to. Better, perhaps, as a short article than a book, but still worth the read.

Disclosure: I read this book as an Advance Reader Copy. It is released November 11th. You can also read more here.