By Tim Middleton
Some people clearly have difficulty parking their car. Some just leave the car wherever it suits them, wherever it is easiest. Many do not park their car within the white lines demarcating the right place; some have the front or the back sticking out into the road, obstructing traffic; others park a long way from the kerb. Do we ever teach people to park?
Of course, the bigger the car, the harder it is to park, as well! And yet, the car being the symbol of our apparent status, the bigger the car, the more important we must appear to be! Top businessmen or leaders in any field need to have large cars, it would seem, the reason for which is not entirely or immediately obvious. Large cars leave scars. As the saying goes, a little car(e) will get us there!
If people find it hard to park a large car, how much more difficult will it be to bring a large ship into harbour? The large ship has absolutely no problem moving when it is out on the open sea but when it comes near to land, it will have greater difficulty in negotiating shallow waters, dangerous rocks or hidden obstructions. In such situations, they need people who know intimately those waters and they need small vessels to guide them. The bigger it is, the harder it is to control. So, what is required in such situations? Tugs are used to tow, push or gently guide large ships out to sea through potentially dangerous channels and to bring other large ships safely into port.
Such is a very accurate picture of what leadership should be, though generally it is rarely defined as such. When we consider it in terms of ships, as we have been considering with other aspects of school in previous articles, too many people are still besotted with the idea that leadership is the large ship — leadership to the majority of people is the aircraft carrier, big strong, heavily-armed and protected, defiant. They expect every other ship to get out of their way; they rule the seas.
However, real leaders are tugs. Real leaders, like tugs, are hardly seen, when alongside the large ships, but their impact is massive and significant. Leaders are few, small in number, while followers are many and come in big numbers. They move others, much bigger than themselves. They do not carry people but they enable others to carry people. They know what areas the people must avoid. They get people started; they bring people to their destination. Big ships may appear awesome out on the ocean; they may motor fast and far but they are weak and inadequate when they come close to land. They need small ships to lead — tugs, in other words (and ‘tugs’ use the same letters as ‘guts’).
Historically, people have considered the flagship of the fleet to be the biggest ship, the finest ship, the most heavily-armed ship, the one with the Admiral on board. It is the most important ship in the fleet. In navies it will be the aircraft carrier; in cruise liners it will be the biggest and most exclusive one. It is no surprise therefore to realise that those same people consider the leadership of an organisation to be the flagship because they see leadership as being the biggest. Yet such a view is a fallacy, a myth, a misconception. The flagship of a fleet should be the tug. The biggest or best player should not necessarily be the leader or captain of a team. They may look imposing or sound threatening but they will not necessarily lead well – think Goliath for one small moment.
It is time that we stop teaching and promoting the myth that leadership is about being the biggest, the toughest, the strongest, the most powerful. We must stop promoting the idea that the leader is the big man or woman. The big “ship” is the crowd, is society. Real leadership is the one who is small, who is able to move the large crowd smoothly, safely, carefully and appropriately. The real leader is the one who can help society move through difficult situations and then let them go under their own steam out on the open waters; the real leaders are the ones who help the vast followers to reach their correct destination without damage to them or to others. The large ships are the hardest to move; they need small tugs to manoeuvre those large ships into position, to navigate them through narrow and dangerous passages. In the same way, real leadership is about moving and landing large crowds safely through difficult passages. Let us give the correct portrayal of leadership, lest our children are deceived. Park leadership correctly, once and for all. Leaders are tugs.
