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Since 400 BCE, when Plato first imagined a society’s ideal leaders (the philosopher-kings) as having “souls of gold”, leadership gurus have been on a never-ending search for the “shiny things” inside of leaders that set them apart from their followers. The latest rendition of this search is in the best-selling leadership book, Start With Why, in which the author argues that our why is hidden in the “golden circle” of our minds. The book is based off the TED talk of the same title where we are told that what set Martin Luther King Jr. apart from other Civil Rights leaders was a deep sense of his “why.”  

But by focusing exclusively on the inner “why” of Dr. King, we hear almost nothing about the outer “whats” that King led from, through and towards. In other words, by focusing on his presumed psychological strengths (his why) and ignoring the social conditions that shaped him (his whats), we are given an incomplete picture of the leader and a continued misunderstanding of leadership.  

The consequences of the “shiny things” tradition of leadership thought is that it inevitably leads to decontextualized pictures of leaders and contributes to the dangerous tradition where only those who possess the unique inner leadership qualities, like courage, intelligence, authenticity, vision and the “why”, are fit to lead—which historically has usually meant powerful white men.  

The consequences of the “shiny things” tradition of leadership thought is that it inevitably leads to decontextualized pictures of leaders. Click To Tweet

In the case of King, if we only focus on his inner “why”, we risk erasing the diverse masses that carried out those movements as well as the reality that King’s why, like all of ours, is not always as steadfast and invincible as hindsight would have us believe. We lose the outward sweat, tears, prayers, doubts, fears, and struggle. And we also lose the social stuff of history that helps to produce our why—our what.  

This is what I think James Baldwin meant when he said of King’s speeches (and leadership), “The secret lies, I think, in his intimate knowledge of the people he’s addressing, be they black or white, and in the forthrightness with which he speaks of those things which hurt and baffle them.” For Baldwin, what was so powerful about King was not his unique “inner” traits (his why) but his deep knowledge of the “outer” whats of his followers—their social, cultural, and historical stuff. In this way, King’s why—a vision of the beloved community—was always in relation to a deeper what.  

And this is true for all of us; to the degree that we are leaders to those in our lives, our impact will always come down to the degree that we know the social “what” of our lives that we are leading from, through and towards. Leaders are not transcendent figures made up of mysterious inner “whys”; leaders are everyday people who face and figure out their cultural “what”—then do the hard work of doing something about it.  

Leaders are not transcendent figures made up of mysterious inner “whys”; leaders are everyday people who face and figure out their cultural “what”—then do the hard work of doing something about it.   Click To Tweet