How to Address the Paradox of Required Flawless Success

We are expecting from our leaders to be overachievers and at the same time to a flawless record of success. But wait! that’s not consistent.

If a leader has achieved something of significant in his past life, he or she will have been criticized, hated. He or she will have faced failure and disappointments. The project they were working on might only have achieved a small part of its original (grandiose) goals. Thus, an effective leader will not have had a consistent flawless record of success and approval.

When electing or choosing our leaders we need to face this paradox. And we fall into the trap so often! In large companies it is often the quiet achiever that gets promoted (to avoid controversy). In politics, any failure at any point will be duly raised up to demonstrate incapability. Dictators will re-engineer their history to appear flawless.

As a note though valid flaws should not include improper behavior and language, lack of respect etc. This shows a flaw in character, not the impact of having tried something worthwhile. These are not always easy to distinguish from valid failures but they finish by coming out in a long campaign (cf. US presidential campaign).

Inspired by Seth Godin’s post – a must read! ‘The paradox of the flawless record‘.