I'm lazy, make me your leader

"Some men are born leaders, some become leaders, and some men are too lazy to do anything else" to paraphrase the blessed playwright.

After taking the leadership of my PR class group in an unintended coup, I was brought to ponder on the things that make a person a leader. Having spent most of my life leading in one group or another, sometimes formalized and sometimes not it has caused me to wonder why. I mean what really makes somebody a leader? Some people may think it has to do with being willing to do everything, but I contest that it is exactly the opposite. I believe that the amount of time I have spent leading is directly related to my attitude of not wanting to do anything, or at least not to much of it, in other words, my laziness. The abilities required of a leader flow naturally to those who are lazy. Now don't misunderstand me, I don't mean lazy in the sense of sitting on the couch watching television, no these people are involved, that's what puts them in these situations to begin with. But we are lazy when it comes to long term application of advanced skills. We like to learn, but in a lazy fast kind of way. As a result of this we of this type tend to have a wide variety of amateur skills. The only areas the excel in are organizational and communication skills.

These skills are not in spite of but in fact are in response to our laziness, we need to be organized in order to work the least amount possible, the faster we can get things done, or the longer we can push them off means the more time we have. And what do we do with all this time once we have it? We socialize, hence expanding and improving our communication skills.

This leads us to an important point, there are a lot of highly skilled people in many areas that because of strong work ethic have developed master level skills in their field, but as a result of the time spent have lost their ability to communicate with others and to see their skills fit into a broader picture. This is where lazy people come in, the non lazy people won't make assignments because they don't have the socicommunication skills to do so. The lazy people will make assignments because every assignment you hand out means one assignment you won't get and because you've made friends because you had time to, people will listen to you. And so we see why lazy people fall into leadership roles, and oddly enough it works. The organizational and communication skills carry the day in the end bringing together specialized individuals, by someone who has just enough random knowledge to know whether things are getting done or not. I'm lazy, make me your leader