Price of Leadership: Emulation & Envy

May 21, 2004, 12.00am IST
S Leelavathi.

Leadership is a powerful construct. A leader is envied for the position and authority he enjoys. He receives adulation and is celebrated as a champion and deliverer. Little wonder, then, a leader is often emulated; even envied. High and powerful positions are fervently sought out for all the promise they hold. And what can be more alluring than the highest post in the land?


Even if Sonia Gandhi’s reasons for abjuring the high post are debatable, the very act of saying ‘no’ — to the most important and powerful job in the country — is something few would have the courage (of conviction) to carry out, and that too with the composure and determination that Sonia displayed.

Now that the “crown of thorns” has been placed on Manmohan Singh’s head, it is instructive to look at what leadership means, both for the leader and the led. True, the head of any huge corporation or country will have almost boundless resources at his disposal and his word shall be law. And sycophants there will be aplenty. However, it is also true that no leader can be free of the baggage of leadership.


This is what the Cadillac Motor Car Company succinctly chose to call “The Penalty of Leadership” in a one-time historic ad that ran thus:


“In every field of human endeavour, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction.


“When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be merely mediocre, he will be left severely alone — if he achieves a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a-wagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass, or to slander you, unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious continue to cry out that it cannot be done...


“The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy — but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as the human passions — envy, fear, greed, ambition and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains — the leader...”


A homespun story often related to little children in Indian homes sums up the concept of “leadership as poison” in very simple terms: The palace maid was bone-tired, cleaning out the Queen’s chamber. The royal bed looked so inviting that the maid lay down to rest before resuming her chores. When the Queen saw her all hell broke loose. The “culprit” was shouted at, warned of dire consequences and punished.


Before being dragged away by the guards, the maid exclaimed to the Queen: “I slept on your bed for barely five minutes and I’ve had to endure so much torture and humi- liation. You lie on this bed every day and for the last so many years — how much more pain must you be suffering?”