Leadership Journal: Leadership and weakness

“Leaders have nothing but themselves to work with. It is one of the paradoxes of life that good leaders rise to the top in spite of their weakness, while bad leaders rise because of their weakness.

Many examples abound.

Abraham Lincoln was subject to fits of serious depression, yet he was perhaps America’s best president, guiding this country through its most severe crisis. On the other hand, Hitler imposed his psychosis on the German people, leading them through delusions of grandeur into the vilest madness and most horrific slaughter the world has ever known.”

Adapted from On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis