Richard Pryor: Thought Leader

Last night I watched a DVD of Richard Pryor in Concert. Pryor is amazing, getting laughs out his heart attack, his arrest by the police, getting beaten as a child. My housemate made the comment that all comics are like Pryor now. Which is true, but 40 years ago, they weren't. Between them, comedians such Pryor, Lenny Bruce & George Carlin changed what was possible to say on stage, what it was possible to discuss in public as a comedian.

"Leadership" is talked about a lot in the management literature. I was listening to the HBR ideacasts whilst wrestling with some HTML coding the other day at work. It seemed like every second item was the 7 secrets of leadership this & the 3 core competencies of leadership that. After about 5 or 6 of these babies, I ODed. I felt my hair going all pointy & the urge to inflict random acts of leadership on strangers became almost unbearable. I tore the headphones from ears & ran from the room screaming.

The reason we talk so much about leadership is it's scary. Underneath all the words, being a leader is a very simple thing:

Going somewhere that no one else can or will go & getting other people to come with you

Note the first part: If you are going somewhere everyone else is going how do you know that people are following you and not someone else? And going there by yourself is no good. And getting other people to do stuff ain't always easy. Hence the focus on incentives, rhetorical techniques such as storytelling, etc. Because if people are like machines then "point & click" leadership is possible.

And this applies completely to "proper" thought leadership. Most of the stuff put out under this rubric is really marketing bumpf with a survey attached ("75% of Ukrainians like cheese, please buy our software/consulting/toilet tissue"). If there isn't some shock on reading then it's not really telling you anything you don't know already. Pryor was arrested for public obscenity. Are you ready to get arrested for what you write or say? Does this mean all your thought leaders need to be sent on a program of cocaine freebasing & spousal abuse? No (but don't dismiss it out of hand).

One point I would make is that often we are given the choice between saying what we think is true & what we think will make others like us. Most of us end up going for the latter option. If you always do that then you will never be a thought leader. N.B. They tend to be them arsey so-and-sos. They may need other people to sell their ideas for them. Pryor was very charming but he had champions inside show business to smooth over the messes he made.

We tend to focus on individuals as leaders - possibly because we are still infatuated with charismatic saviours. My own experience has been that 2-3 people can act as a "thought leadership" team. They need to trust each other tightly & respect each other's abilities but it is possible. One to find the ideas, one to tell the first one when they're full of it & a third to sell the vision to the group as a whole.

What are your experiences of collective or individual leadership?