Consensus is not the highest good.
There are moments when inviting every perspective is wisdom. There are others when it is an elegant way to avoid the burden of deciding.
For principals
Leadership development has taught you to become more acceptable.
That may be why it has stopped being equal to the demands of your position.
Bring the question into the roomIn praise of ontological arrogance
The leader’s most consequential work is not to improve their behaviour. It is to alter the ground from which behaviour becomes inevitable.
The comfortable mistake
Most leadership development leaves the leader intact.
It teaches the language of listening, collaboration, accountability and influence. Some of that is useful. None of it reaches the prior question: who is the person from whom those actions emerge?
A principal can become more skilful at performing every approved virtue and remain organised by the same fear of disapproval, the same private need to be right, the same reflex to seek permission before authority is exercised.
That is not transformation. It is a better-trained version of the original structure.
Three refusals
Do not confuse the morality of leadership with its mechanics.
Humility is not self-erasure.
The capacity to be corrected does not require a leader to dilute a clear vision until no one can object to it.
Authority is not domination.
Authority is the willingness to become accountable for a direction before the room has made it safe to take one.
The real challenge
Can you hold a vision without needing the room to agree with you before you act?
Ontological arrogance is not inflated self-regard. It is the refusal to mistake external approval for the source of one’s authority.
It asks a harder form of leadership: to make the necessary disturbance, bear the resistance it creates, and remain open enough to discover when your certainty has become a defence.
Explore private advisoryFurther reading
In Praise of Ontological Arrogance
A deeper challenge to leadership as it is commonly taught, practiced and understood.
Request a copyFor leaders at the edge of a decision