Solitude & Leadership by William Deresiewicz...Why "commonplace", "ordinary", "usual", "common" are "typical" adjectives used to describe leaders in a bureaucracy...the problem with Facebook, Twitter & even the NY Times! Got the link from @pkedrosky on twitter...

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/

Some highlights;

Taken from the last paragraph; 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. 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.

Note the adjectives when Marlow in the novel "Heart of Darkness" describes the manager of the Central Station: commonplace, ordinary, usual, common...Deresiewicz goes on to say;"the perfect description of the kind of person who tends to prosper in the bureaucratic environment"

The great mystery about bureaucracies. Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back.

Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom.

Leadership means finding a new direction, not simply putting yourself at the front of the herd that’s heading toward the cliff.

A book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself. Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today. They say something different from what you hear all the time.

There’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship...the deep friendship of intimate conversation. Long, uninterrupted talk with one other person. Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask. Feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities.