I’ve been thinking about leadership. Not leadership spills, factional numbers or who has the keys to The Lodge. Actual leadership. And I’ve concluded we’ve confused two completely different things.
Being A Leader and being The Leader.
The Leader has the title. A Leader has people willing to follow them.
Occasionally we’re fortunate enough to get both in the same person, but Australian politics doesn’t manage it nearly often enough. Someone wins a party-room ballot and becomes Prime Minister, Premier or Opposition Leader and immediately we call them a “leader”.
Why? They’ve demonstrated they can obtain the position. That’s not the same as leadership.
A title provides authority. Leadership creates followership.
The Leader has the title. A Leader has people willing to follow them.
I’ve spent decades in business and manufacturing and have seen the difference. I’ve encountered people with impressive titles who couldn’t inspire anyone to follow them out of a burning building. I’ve also watched people on factory floors with no impressive title whatsoever become the person everyone instinctively looks towards when something goes wrong.
Nobody appointed them. Nobody issued a press release. People trust them. That’s leadership.
Real leadership is difficult to manufacture because it’s an accumulation of things that can’t easily be faked: judgment, courage, competence, consistency, character and the ability to make decisions when the information isn’t perfect.
Most importantly, it’s the ability to persuade people to travel somewhere difficult because the destination is worth reaching.
That’s where leadership and vision collide. You can’t lead if you don’t know where you’re going.
Yet Labor and the Coalition have become remarkably efficient at producing The Leader. Join the party. Navigate factions. Build alliances. Win preselection. Get elected. Accumulate supporters. Manage the media. Count the numbers.
Congratulations. You’re The Leader.
But when did anyone establish that Australians actually wanted to follow you anywhere? Perhaps that’s why we have so many people occupying leadership positions while Australia suffers from a leadership vacuum. Management has replaced leadership.
A manager asks: How do we make this system work better?
A Leader occasionally asks: Why are we doing this at all?
Managers administer. Leaders challenge. Managers measure progress against the plan. Leaders sometimes tear up the plan.
Modern Australian politics overwhelmingly rewards management. Another subsidy. Another department. Another review. Another announcement explaining the magnificent progress towards the previous announcement.
Real leadership begins with a much more dangerous question: where exactly are we going?
Leadership isn’t popularity either. If polling becomes your compass, eventually you aren’t leading the electorate. The electorate is leading you.
Focus groups tell politicians what people already think. Polling tells them what people currently want. Neither tells Australia what it will need in twenty years.
Real leaders occasionally tell people uncomfortable things. Government cannot provide everything. Debt eventually matters. Energy involves trade-offs. Population growth requires infrastructure. Sovereign manufacturing capability sometimes costs more than buying the cheapest thing from overseas. And taxpayers’ money remains taxpayers’ money even after politicians rename it “government investment”.
This is part of One Nation’s current opportunity. One Nation doesn’t need to become another major party with different coloured corflutes.
Its opportunity is to attract people who’ve actually done something before politics: manufacturers, farmers, tradespeople, engineers, business owners, doctors, community leaders. People who’ve created jobs, managed people and dealt with consequences.
One Nation’s growing emphasis on manufacturing, affordable energy, fiscal restraint and Australian resource sovereignty provides fertile ground for precisely that kind of representation.
But One Nation should be subject to exactly the same test. Winning seats doesn’t create leaders. A red tie doesn’t confer leadership any more than a red or blue one does. Business teaches leadership rather differently because reality votes every day.
Customers vote. Employees vote. Suppliers vote. Banks vote. Cash flow votes.
You can deliver the greatest speech imaginable, but if the wages aren’t in everyone’s accounts on Thursday, you’ve failed.And business teaches another lesson our political class might contemplate: credit travels down; responsibility travels up.
When something succeeds, give the team credit. When something fails, the person in charge owns it.
Compare that principle with Australian politics and draw your own conclusions.
Focus groups tell politicians what people already think. Polling tells them what people currently want. Neither tells Australia what it will need in twenty years.
Perhaps we should therefore change the questions we ask political leaders.
Forget the title, the party, the polling. Ask: where are you taking us?
Why should we go there? What will it cost? What are you prepared to risk to achieve it? And why should we trust you to get us there?
Australia will always have The Leader. The Constitution and parliamentary system guarantee somebody gets the office. What they can’t guarantee is leadership. That has to be earned.
A Prime Minister can command a party room. A Premier can command a parliamentary majority. But A Leader achieves something much harder.
People voluntarily say: I understand where you’re taking us. I believe it’s worth going there. And I trust you enough to follow.
That’s the difference.
And Australia could use a few more of those.
Excellent critique, Peter.
We need a few more leaders like Marcus Furious Camillus who knew how to deal with the Gauls and gain the support of the people to save Rome in 390 BC.
There are a few in the very early stages of the life the Republic who also acted as true leaders.
The moderns need to take a leaf from the ancients.