“Enjoy, sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting. It is the prerogative of animals. And no man will envy you those honors, in which a savage can only be your rival and a bear your master”
Thomas Paine’s opening salvo in The Crisis, Number Five was aimed directly at Sir William Howe,who led the British forces on the American Continent in the spring of 1778.
Leadership requires bold action. A decisive commitment to carry out the actions necessary to secure – assuming that it is beneficent leadership – the peace and security of those that are led.
The very nature of leadership demands a dance along a fine line of reflection and action. One without the other is not leadership but merely ineffectual or simply intransigent.
To insist on clinging to a course of action without reflection or consideration is to invite disaster as well as new leadership – or, better put, leadership in the first place.
Would Tom Paine see such a situation today if he were alive to take pen to paper?