Leaders: Myth and Reality

by General Stanley McChrystal

It is difficult to step back from Plutarch’s masterpiece and see his “top ten” list of qualities one should emulate, for he left no such capstone for how to be an effective leader. His goal was not to offer a programmatic lens for leaders to take away, and Plutarch generally had the good sense to refrain from distilling his observations into generalizations. Instead, Plutarch hoped that his readers would explore how they might emulate his leaders and the dimensions of their virtue. Accordingly, Plutarch’s essential question was “What was his character?” This is where we deviated sharply from Plutarch’s method. Our interest was not in the character of leaders, but in leadership itself. Our original research question was different: simply, “How did he or she lead?” We reminded ourselves of this essential question often, asking this of each other as we turned page after page of each biography and scanned each archive. To ask “How did they lead?” feels uncontroversial, with the ring of a familiar shorthand. However, over time, we came to see that very question as nonsensical, itself a reflection of the very myths we sought to explore.