There is a truism that the best leaders are those who don’t want to be leaders. George Washington wanted to retire, and Alexander Hamilton and other had to cajole him to accept the presidency. Conventional wisdom also assumes that those who relentlessly strive to lead are broken in some way. Maybe, the argument goes, their urge to dominate others makes them bad to do what they want to do most.
Most likely, there is no strong relationship between someone’s ambition to lead and their quality as a leader. Other traits, like charisma, clarity of vision, and raw political skills are likely a lot more important.
I wonder if it’s like that not just with leadership, but with other pursuits as well. There may be little relationship between how motivated someone is by external validation and the quality of their work. What follows is that some of the most interesting ideas, deepest understanding and clearest communication comes from those with few followers on social media. They may not even be on social media. They don’t publish in the big scientific journals. They don’t hold prominent positions in academia, media or industry. Their work is overlooked because they don’t mind that they’re not being noticed.
And there may be no shortcut to finding them: you have to talk to a lot of people, listen carefully, and recognize something worth hearing from someone you’ve never heard of.
