(no subject)

[rm]

Well the show has opened. I can't even begin to tell you how less than thrilled with my own performance I was tonight, which is perhaps absurd and self-absorbed in any case, but especially when you're ensemble. But really, not happy, although far more over it now than I was before.

Unrelated to tonight:

I've been thinking a lot about leadership, seduction and betrayal lately for a variety of reasons -- including trying to understand my own character and trying to understand some of the worlds that I move in.

I'm not entirely sure how to explicate this without example, but I'm going to try. There are many different ways to lead, and perhaps the most effective is to make people desperately want your recognition and approval, and to do that you must seduce and inspire them in some fashion, creating a peculiar and unhealthy burden for all concerned and it leaves, at the completion of the task, perhaps betrayal as the right thing to do, because people you lead in such a fashion, you need to set free within the same metaphor. It's sort of heartbreaking. And very lonely, for all concerned.

This raises a lot of questions for me, both about my past and my future and the ways in which I'm not just willing to have my heart broken, but based on the rest of my desires, apparently want it broken as well.

Comments

[cdpoint.livejournal.com]

I differ with the view that making people desire your approval is the most effective way to lead. In fact, that seems the least effective for the very reason that everyone is left standing around when the leader is out of the picture.

The most effective way to lead is to communicate. Take advantage of every opportunity to pass on your vision--but only that, make every effort to help everyone involved see not only what needs to be done and why it needs to be done, but most important of all, what it means for them to do it.

Too many people in a leadership position believe they have to stay on the job to be a leader. Nonsense. Jesus died a long, long time ago, and he's had billions following his lead since then. The best way to tell if a leader is effective is to take them out of the picture and then see what happens. If everything grinds to a halt, he/she wasn't a leader, but a demagogue.

I have a feeling you see a lot more of the latter in theater/film because the leaders there also have to be creators.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this was very much about the creative world, where you don't really have ongoing organizations per se -- you've got projects with finite lifespans and that's as it should be. It's ephemeral, and that's a big part of how the big capital R gets into everything.