IV. Rising to the occassion: Situational vs Innate leadership.
So yeah, I realize it is cliche to post a picture of William Wallace from Braveheart in a blog post about leadership, but hopefully the content I post in this blog will be insightful enough to someone to compensate for the commonplace usage of my William Wallace example…So when I hear most people talk about this movie or use examples from this movie to support whatever arguement they are making about leadership, they usually always use one of two examples from the movie. It either the scene where he is lying down on the executioner’s table, yelling freedom before his, presumably executed, thus demonstrating the virtue of self-sacrifice for the greater good…or it is the most often used scene where Wallace address the Scottish Soldiers as they prepare for their battle against the vastly superior English Army, thus demonstrating the virtue of courage against overwhelming odds. I’m not going to talk about either one of those scenes. Rather I would talk about a scene towards the beginning of the movie where the scottish tribal leaders ask Wallace to join their council to talk about the different issues affecting the village that Wallace has settled down in. One of the leaders in particular, Campbell the Elder, who most people know as the older, iron-hided warrior father of William Wallace’s best friend in the movie, Hammish Campbell, attempts to rally William Wallace to join the council so as to support his cause to go to war with England. Heeding the advice of his soon te father-in-law, William Wallace refuses to join and support Campbell the Elder’s desire to go to war with England, wishing to instead live a peaceful life as a farmer with the family he plans to have with the love of his life, Marion. It isn’t until her untimely execution at the hands of the English Regent in charge of maintaining peace in the Scottish Village that Wallace must answer the call to action, which eventually leads him down a path where he becomes the leader of an army of scottish rebels against the English Armies of Edward I (Edward Longshanks).
Point being that if not for the murder of his betrothed Marion, William Wallace may not have had a life history worthy of being artistically documented on film for the viewing pleasure of millions several hundred years after the events of his time. Which begs the question, are leaders born with innate abilities that allow them to lead others, or are leaders merely individuals who are products of situations that force them to don the mantle of leadership. In the case of William Wallace, as portrayed in Braveheart, the murder of his wife-to-be forced him down a path of revenge which acted as catalyst for rebellion against their English controllers for all the other Scottish people. Now an argument could be made that one of the reasons why William Wallace was such an effective leader was because he possessed innate leadership abilities that would have manifested themselves in some form or another regardless of the situation that was forced upon him. But then whose to say that everyone is not possessive of innate leadership abilities in one form or another just waiting for the right situation to bring those leadership abilities to fruition? Consider the case of Rudy from the movie of the same name. Many would not consider the diminutive, yet self-assured man depicted as the protagonist in that movie as one who could inspire and lead others, yet through his determination and courage, he was able to win the favor of those around him, thus granting him the chance to accomplish his dream of playing in a Notre Dame Collegiate Football game.
While my personal belief is that leadership is really dependent on the situation and can manifest itself in any one person or group in a variety of different ways, I also believe that certain people are created with a certain disposition for natural leadership, which is then refined and hardened at varying degrees by their experiences.
theempathetictruth 