Managing Leadership^®

The intellectual – especially in Europe – is a modern-day pretender to the throne. Or, at least, to the elevated role of the noble – particularly after the Enlightenment – as the secular interpreter, guide, and even director of the affairs of the benighted masses.

But as we have come to know, the royals were not exceptionally intelligent. Many of them did become genuinely enlightened, though, according to one or another disturbingly self-referential form of the concept. And when you inform enlightenment with a sense of mission, but not with a remarkably astute intelligence, what do you get?  An ideologue.

And that’s a major problem with the idea of the intellectual, today – especially in the United States, where we’re likely to see more assertive use of the term in coming months and years. In the absence of the social, economic, and educational structures that maintained the distinctions between the European noble and peasant – and, later, the “gentle” – classes, the actual use or meaning of the term has become virtually impossible to pin down.

After all, in an era of widespread literacy and education – including higher education – what, really, is the purpose of the intellectual? In time, unable to satisfactorily address this question, the role morphs into that of the “enlightened one” – which is the phrase literally used to refer to intellectuals in some languages.

But in a world of increasingly popular sovereignty, despite repeatedly discredited self-assigned status as “opinion-shapers,” this role, too, grows daily more marginalized. So what’s left?

The ideologue. And yet, in a political landscape of ever-more universal suffrage, people grow accustomed to making their own decisions, and less inclined to submit to the disparaging incriminations of the scold.

Sometimes, from a spirit of tolerance and generosity that is rarely reciprocated, we accord them venues to express their views, and, sadly even if often inadvertently, offer them encouragement in their delusion that we are but humble pilgrims in respectful homage to their grandeur.

On other occasions we genuinely heed them – not for their ability to shape, but rather to articulate, our own thoughts and opinions. So, while they have their uses after all, it is they who discharge them at our bidding and under our direction, not the reverse.

But, of course, they resist, and struggle mightily to reclaim for their exclusive use the freedoms that now embrace us as well as them, and to escape the obligations which now constrain them as well as us. So, they attempt to amaze and befuddle us by juggling their various hats.

They pretend to greater intelligence or learning. When that proves insufficient to the task, they insist that they are of inherently more refined sensibility. Realizing that disciples are failing to form up according to script, they harangue and intimidate. Challenged regarding their right to adopt this pose, they return to the first one, again claiming superior knowledge or discernment.

Round and round they go; where they’ll stop – well, they never stop.

Entertaining, perhaps. But hardly edifying.

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Today’s tips: You may enjoy stopping over to see this WSJ editorial cartoon depicting two gurus commiserating about the difficulties presented by their field.

Wally Bock, of Three Star Leadership, has opened a new blog dedicated to providing advice on producing effective business communication. Please stop over to see what he has to say about what comes before the first draft, and about how he learned that lesson.

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