Betrayal

Play this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAL6sGxOWEs

Betrayal.

Vision: - A young women is hunched at a wooded dirt crossroad, utterly exhausted. She has fled from enemy soldiers in terror, certain of torture and fearful for her life. Her lungs are fighting for breath, her whole body heaving hungrily for air. She looks around. She knows that time is desperately short and that any wrong choice she makes now may lead to her extinction. She is terrified and she glances in fear across the paths laid out in front of her. Only one path leads to safety but it also leads to shame and betrayal. The other paths, leading back from whence she came will take her back to the enemy. The unfathomable terror from which she fled.

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Leadership is a privilege. In the workplace, across an industry, amongst friends, in the home. For the most part leadership is a gift bestowed by others who choose to trust the authority and the hierarchy where it sits. 

That privilege of leadership is expressed by others as consent. When given freely can be lasting. When forced, it can be transitional, punctuated by doubt and resentment always subject to the circumstances and of the time. It can never be trusted.

Vision: She lifts her head. Flight is now uncertain. The cacophony of rifle fire and explosions approach and she recognises that one of her only path to safety is being outflanked and cut off. Bushes rustle just beyond her and she distinguishes others flying, plunging chaotically through the undergrowth. desperately fleeing from the catastrophe. Now or never she whispers to herself, still in horrible doubt about her choice. But she’s nearly irrational, driven by panic, terrified by the merciless approach of the enemy.

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Some would argue that most people subconsciously crave authoritative, dictatorial leadership, a style of control that depends completely on a follower’s submission. But it is a technique repeatedly discredited because turns out to be much, much more about self. The worst examples are a subsuming vortex of ego and power. Across history there are countless, horrifying examples of leaders driving without thought into chaos utterly self-absorbed. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Idi Amin, Papa Doc, Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe and Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi have, exhibiting not a shred of self-doubt or conscious, led their followers and their countries into complete disaster.

And it’s not over yet.

Vision: Escape is gone. The enemy emerges from the brush across her path and leers menacingly at the fleeing, disorganised multitudes seeking safety. An uncertain number fall as the enemy lift their rifles and fire indiscriminately. The others recoil in horror, turning away, crazy in terror, certain they are about to die. Having discarded their belongings in their headlong panicked flight there is no courage left, just terror. They are consumed by the instinct to flee and survive. But they are now surrounded. - There is nowhere left to go.

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Many would argue that leadership is about inspiration, leading by example. If a leader shows the way this will motivate others to follow. But like so many other things this is not necessarily true. When Captain Albert Jacka, the AIF’s most decorated and fearless soldier, in his most heroic example, charged the enemy in frustration and anger savagely slaying seven Turkish soldiers by bullet and bayonet he did so alone, without any help. 

Vision: Soldiers and civilians are falling around her, fatally wounded as the enemy closes in. Some raise their hands in surrender but most are cut down in the volleys of rifle fire coming from the closing enemy ranks. Desperately she notices there is still some distance, perhaps 50 yards between herself and the nearest enemy before the trap is finally closed. They are now coming from every direction and intent on destruction. It can only be moments before any final resistance is destroyed. 

She changes direction and flies towards the gap.

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And so effective Leadership is about permission. The type of permission granted by those seeking a direction. An individual’s leadership potential can be enhanced by consistency, example and circumstance. But at its most effective it has to be earned. The best leaders are the ones who have been challenged and shattered but re-emerge, wiser and more deliberate. They are the ones who understand the limitations of the responsibility of which they are custodians but more profoundly understand the limits of the people who stand reliant upon them.

Vision: The panic is now complete. The enemy is merciless, screaming at the tops of their voices intent now on total annihilation. Fleeing civilians collapse around her and the air is thick with the sickening sound of supersonic bullets striking soft flesh. The cries of the terrified, the suffering and the dying proclaim unimagined horror. There's no time left. None.

Oh God.

She’s hit.

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Our leaders are those we freely consent to. Freedom of thought, freedom of speech and the freedom to act brings with it the profound possibility that the decisions we are making are mistaken. Freedom can bring with it overwhelming doubt, an almost unendurable anxiety. And so the temptation to cling to leadership of others from whomever and wherever it is offered, however knowingly incompetent and mistrusted is sometimes irresistible.

Vision: She comes to. She’s fallen onto her side, her head rammed into the ground. It’s thundering with pain, and she can’t open her eyes. She tries to lift her arm, but there’s an excruciating stab of agony. The arm won’t move, its pinned awkwardly beneath her. As she rolls onto her back there’s a soft moan only a few feet away. Someone else. 

Someone else. 

Her hand comes away from her face covered in blood. She’s dizzy, disoriented, confused. Whose voice did she hear? Where?

She listens. The cacophony of gunfire and the desperate screams of anger, agony and panic are now in the far distance. The enemy must be still pursuing the survivors, obsessed on their complete extinction. She tries to lift her head but is overwhelmed by vertigo. Eventually she tries again and, blinking through blood encrusted eyes, looks around. She knows it can’t be long before the enemy comes back to finish off the wounded. She rolls onto her side and tries to stand up.

There’s that soft moan again.

Text Continues

Leadership is also about hope. It’s the harnessing of goodwill, the encouragement of collaboration and the recognition of achievement. Hope is the characteristic that underpins the lasting solutions that are built on consensus, inclusion and clear-eyed thinking. An optimistic leadership style is infectious and builds capacity, giving permission to others to pivot, adjust, and back their own judgement while still keeping their eyes on the prize.

But hope betrayed means disillusion, dysfunction and decay.

Vision: The moaning is now continuous and she tries to focus on where it's coming from. Her head is swimming and it threatens to topple her over. She is determined to move, not wanting to miss the opportunity to escape. She stubbornly attempts to stand up straight and stumbles sideways a few steps. She grabs the branches of a nearby tree for balance and succeeds finally in standing fully upright. 

She’s moving now, towards where she thinks the moaning of a wounded survivor is lying. But it’s pitiful, painful tone isn’t getting louder or softer. The quiet groaning remains unbroken and she suddenly realises there is no other survivor. 

It’s her.

She’s alive.