All human societies need leadership. A company is a micro human society, therefore all companies need leadership.
Good leaders make good companies, and good leaders are, among other things, good at communicating who they are, what they believe, and who the employees should believe they are. In the end, the final challenge, the ultimate task of leadership is to confer an identity on those the leader leads.
For instance, did Steve Jobs do this? Did he confer an identity on a large number of people? I would say that he did. If you worked for him and his company, I suspect you carried a little voice inside your head that constantly reminded you that you were an Apple person—an Apple-onian; a little voice that made you feel good about yourself. And in your social life, at parties, when you met people, you might sweetly keep your place of work a secret, but when asked, you might feel a little flash of triumph as you revealed, “I work for Apple.” It’s like dropping the H Bomb (the Harvard thing.) It confers an identity on you, for good or ill.
Shakespeare’s Henry V strives for this result in his St. Crispian’s Day speech, when promising his men that they will forever be remembered and honored if they survive the about-to-happen battle of Agincourt.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
I am very interested in giving our clients a process for creating, designing, and delivering presentations that ascend the step-ladder of value-creation, moving from the bottom rung of knowledge to the highest rung of identity—which includes the ability to convey values, principles, behaviors, expectations, and all those soft intangibles that shepherd us to excellence.
Knowledge and intelligence are necessary, but not sufficient for leadership. We need people who are capable of conferring on us an identity that will help us become our best selves.
Some of us can create such an identity for ourselves, but not for others. Some can do it for others, but not themselves. And some of us create destructive identities for ourselves and others. None of us is perfect, which is why we need laws, and leadership, and cultures. We need shaping to be at our best, and for that, we need people who are more than knowledgeable, more than intelligent. We need them to tell us stories—about who we really are, and who we can become.