Solitude and Leadership ~ On Concentration...

William Deresiewicz opines on Solitude and Leadership in The American Scholar -- and with the West Point plebe class...

"My title must seem like a contradiction. What can solitude have to do with leadership? Solitude means being alone, and leadership necessitates the presence of others—the people you’re leading. [...] I submit to you that solitude is one of the most important necessities of true leadership. [About General Petraeus...] what makes him a thinker -- and a leader -- is precisely that he is able to think things through for himself. And because he can, he has the confidence, the courage, to argue for his ideas even when they aren’t popular. Even when they don’t please his superiors. [On failure-modes of multitasking...] Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. [On the role of solitude...] So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better. But there’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship. Of course friendship is the opposite of solitude; it means being with other people. But I’m talking about one kind of friendship in particular, the deep friendship of intimate conversation. Long, uninterrupted talk with one other person. [The punchline...] I started by noting that solitude and leadership would seem to be contradictory things. But it seems to me that solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself."

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