Leadership

Like many things there are continual arguments about whether a leader is born or made. I’ll put a stake in the ground right here and say that in my opinion a good leader is born.

Now it is true that you can take that raw talent and train them up to a level that will make them superb leaders and we have had some great leaders. It is rare for us to take someone with no natural ability and train them up to that same level. The issue is identifying who has that raw talent and putting them in a situation where it can be used.

This can come out in every day actions such as when you are out walking, camping or even shopping and there is usually someone that will stand up and take leadership. Although this can change quickly if they are useless and just have an inflated opinion of themselves.

The impact on us as preppers though is that we need leaders. Be it a small group or a large group we need someone to pick up the baton and lead. A leader is necessary for us to react quickly to situations. We should have a true leader, not some jumped up council clerk or a politician who thinks they are in charge.

Although I class myself as a Libertarian I do recognize that no social construct such as the Libertarian ideal is perfect. It is however imo the one closest to where we want to be. I also means that we all need to be leaders, at least of ourselves. That won’t work after an event as we are likely to need someone in charge and if we all went off on our own we would not be able to band together when we needed to.

So anyone that wants to be a leader, regardless of their skills in that area, should be a leader. Set up their own place and look after themselves. It is when they interact with others that they need to accept that others may not want to be led and the real test will come when they need the help of others and that is where they will find out that they are not the only one that believes they can lead. At that stage they will all want to be the Alpha and this could lead to an issue.

Who would make the best leader will be different with different situations. Very few recognised leaders are good leaders in all situations. In the old days when Rome was at its peak they had democracy but they too recognised that when Rome was threatened they needed a single minded individual to take charge until the threat was over. Of course being humans they didn’t always accept when it was time to pass control back but the principle remains. It is still practised in modern days in a different fashion when politicians decide to go to war they allocate a leader from the military to run the campaign. Nowadays of course we then back seat drive and screw it up.

In our situation though we have prepped, we have sacrificed so we have a better chance of survival and we don’t want to then give that away to someone who may very well decide to utilise our resources in a way we disagree with. We want control.

Myself, I accepted a long time ago that I want to be in charge of my little fiefdom. I’ll decide what to do with my limited resources and when I meet up with others we can negotiate how we will interface, more like partners than leader and lead. Then when the time comes that we need to have a single leader, we can decide at that point who would be best for that particular task. Who we believe has the knowledge and understanding to lead.

So how do we decide who is the best leader? Well, if I knew how to pick them I would be making a fortune out there where good leaders are hard to find.