There are times when we understand that we cannot make the right decision but only the least wrong one.
To be a leader means that we will make people follow us, not for who we are, nor for what we can pretend to be, but for the vision of the future that we can give. It means that they know they can trust what we say but also what we have chosen not to say.
A lonely man, behind a desk.
In front of him an arrogant and frightened country, supportive and angry, desperate and hopeful, more demanding and poorer.
An undisciplined nation that evokes order, a rigorous country that demands freedom, an uncertain country that demands rules, directions, comfort.
Is that the portrait of our Premier? No, it is the portrait of almost every premier in the world today, at a time when the glowing rhetoric of the privilege of caste is flanked, when does not overlap, by the axe of leadership responsibility, its dark side.
The leader is not only the one who gets the highest salary, gets the most beautiful car, the house and the yacht. The leader is the one who has to make the decisions and make sure that others follow them. The first part is difficult, even if it's on the second part that the fun comes.
As some people like to say, victory has many fathers, defeat is an orphan. So when the weather is nice, or at least it doesn't rain, everyone says, "I'd know how to do it", but when the storm comes, then everyone remains silent, they all stand aside. They stay croaking in the background, are only good to criticize the maneuverer, who stays alone, as in the sad images of these days. A lost man, without a mask and without gloves, with a microphone to sound out words that cannot fill the void, cannot calm fears, do not multiply possibilities.
Leadership in terrible times reminds me of one of my favourite films, "High Noon", in which, in the splendid black and white of Zinneman, an Oscar-winning performance, the character of Gary Cooper whispers of courage and solitude, the figure of painful leadership, the one that does not gather laurels and applause but slips into an appalled silence.
It is leadership that no one wants, that of powerless waiting. Margaret Mazzantini writes in her very hard novel, Venuto al Mondo: "It had been easier to run under grenades than to walk over the rubble."
And it is here that the leadership of serious days awaits us when others look at us and feel the responsibility to show that we know what we are doing even if the truth is we don't, we cannot know it, because nobody knows it.
There are times when we understand that we cannot make the right decision but only the least wrong one.
Being a leader means that we will make people follow us, not for what we are, not for what we can pretend to be, but for the vision of the future that we know how to give. It means that they know they can trust what we say but also what we have chosen not to say.
This is true for the leadership of a country, but it is equally true for those who today are at the head of organizations, with all the weight that this can entail.
The leadership of the dark times is not that of the general, nor that of the king, it is a patient and ungrateful work of weaving to lead towards believing again, to love oneself and others, or perhaps to do so for the first time.
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