There is a moment of great leadership in the book To Kill a Mockingbird, that has always struck me. No, it is not by Atticus Finch, though he is present showing leadership in the scene, or by any other adult. It is by Scout, the young girl telling the story.
The mob has come for “justice,” that is really misplaced racist vengeance. It is a classic mob, faceless, full of its own power, unthinking. There is no physical force present to stop it. But Scout, in her innocence, starts to call out the names of men she knows. God fearing men. She gives them back their names that have been lost in the madness of the mob. Those good, but flawed, men cannot take part in a lynching. The spell of the mob has over them is broken. And they leave.
The mood of today’s online mobs to “cancel” others smacks of witch hunts and religious fervor of times past. We can hope our leaders would work to quell this tendency, but we see, from all sides of the political spectrum, leaders using the mob instead of tempering it.
If this pandemic has shown me anything, it is that too many leaders are lacking in humility. There has been a stampede away from the words “I don’t know” towards statements of certainty. To be clear, this is a plague not just in political parties or in elected leaders, but leaders of agencies, corporations, and communities.
The certainty that you are always right, and others cannot even have a point, is not leadership; it is the language of extremism. Showing humility is one of the best ways to bring people together. The greatest leaders who have messages that transcend tribe and nation have been humble in their leadership, whatever their other faults, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the great crisis of America’s Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”. The humble leader is not the one sure God is on his or her side, but the one who hopes to be on God’s side. Of course, the greatest example of this was shown to us by the example of Jesus Christ.
You and I cannot really change what elected officials do or say. The more national the election, the less impact we have. So much is out of our control. What we can change is how we treat each other.
We need to understand that we do not have all the answers and share that with the people we lead. We need to listen to each other, and see each other as fellow travelers, not as enemies. Others may have different understandings that are totally unfathomable to us. We must, as individuals, do the hard work of understanding each other without the rush to judgement, without righteous anger. Maybe if enough of us do this at our level we can trickle up.
My humble thought: It’s worth a shot.
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