Leading vs Leadering

Time of India

13-05-2025

Times of India's Edit Page team comprises senior journalists with wide-ranging interests who debate and opine on the news and issues of the day.
Memo to top bosses: the two are very different. Don't claim credit. Get the job done
Every successful corporation, mission, or nation, is a whodunnit. Who made it a success? The simple, obvious answer – many people working together, making small contributions to the whole – has no takers because most people tend to be heroes at heart. Democratising success pulls us off our imaginary equestrian statues. That's why credit for collective success is always pinned on an individual – on Steve Jobs at Apple, on Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, on Newton, despite his full disclosure about seeing further by 'standing on the shoulders of giants'.
But this approach is too passive for Trump, who appropriates credit actively. Specimen A: his Truth Social claim about brokering the India-Pak ceasefire. Specimen B: his brag about countries 'kissing my ass' over tariffs. He's positively glowing after the UK and China trade deals and might photobomb the Putin-Zelenskyy meet in Istanbul, if it happens. Trump's behaviour is an example of what Seattle-based blogger Venkatesh Rao termed 'leadering' some years ago – 'the art of creating a self-serving account of whatever is already happening, and inserting yourself into it in a prominent role'.
It's Rao's view that even leadership – the good kind – is overrated because a leader's five minutes of insight, on which a lifetime of fame is founded, is almost entirely a function of chance. Was Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo proof of English genius, or a result of a giant volcanic eruption in Indonesia two months earlier that made Europe too rainy and muddy, as scientists have recently suggested?
Good leaders give credit where it's due, and focus on getting the job done. Consider yourself lucky if your organisation has one at the summit. But if you're saddled with the leadering kind, good luck, for they are clueless. In times of rapid change – which the third decade of the 21st century is, what with a pandemic, AI, EVs and sundry wars changing the old order – leadering types can run your ship aground. Luckily, Trump, for all his leadering, isn't a warmonger. The real danger lies in a leader who seeks war – whether in the market or on the border – for personal glory. That type eventually finds the slippery slope of a Waterloo.
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This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.