Leadership, Competency and an Enlightened Vision

In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato makes some significant points about leadership, which intended for application to government officials, provides helpful insights into what makes a leader effective. He argues that a leader must be enlightened. In other words he must be able to see clearly and understand reality rightly.

Plato describes a situation in which humanity is imprisoned in a cave where all they can see are the shadows of reality. Their eyes are accustomed to darkness and when they are shown reality they pass it off as an imposter for the shadows, which for the people are more real than the real.
A leader is one who has faced the pain of having his vision improved by the light. He has moved from the dark cave into the light of day, and as his eyes painfully adjusted to the light, he did not turn from that adjustment and hence began to see the greater beauty of reality that the shadows just could not show him.

But a leader is more than one who has transcended into a state of wisdom where he sees reality clearly. A leader, according to Plato, is one who, when he see the prisoner of the darkness rejecting reality for shadows, doesn’t laugh at him but pities him. But more than pities, he returns to the same prison, joins with the prisoner in his toil and because he now sees the shadows more clearly, he sees them better than the prisoner and is better equipped to lead the prisoner to happiness and freedom.

Competent leaders do not exist among us who do not understand and appreciate those that they would lead. Competent leaders must strive to understand reality, must look deep into the painful truths of their world, have their eyes adjusted to the potential around them, and then they must return and join in the labor of those they would lead, not to lead them, but to care for them.
That seems to be the missing link in leadership today: care for those we lead. Plato said of leaders “they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the cave, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not.” If we aspire to be great leaders, we must know those whom we seek to lead, we must work beside them and we must care for their happiness. Only then will we be great leaders.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave can be found in Book VII of “The Republic” by Plato.