How Pedestaling Leaders Hurts Leaders and Movements

Leadership is vulnerable and scary. Everyone has an opinion about what you should do and say, and they usually aren't afraid to let you know it. Team members look to you for direction, stakeholders monitor your performance, and clients depend on you.

That visibility creates intense pressure to get it right.

In our movements and organizations, we have a tendency to put leaders on a pedestal. When we do that, we strip away their humanity. We expect perfection and feel personally let down when they make a mistake or even just disagree. This harms both the leader and the movement.

And yet we keep doing it, because we are drawn to the archetype of the strong, solitary leader. The one who swoops in, holds it all together, and boldly forges a path forward. We seek it out, reward it, and ask it of each other and ourselves. Then we wonder why we feel so alone.

When we build organizations and movements around a cult of personality or the strong leader trope, we weaken our collective power. The systems we are trying to change are collective problems that require collective solutions. And yet so often we put the weight on one person's shoulders.

For the leaders thrust into that position, it can be terrifying and isolating.

It's easy to have a purity test from the outside and to say what you would do if you were in charge. It's much harder to be the one in the room, weighing real options, making imperfect decisions in real time, and trying not to compromise what you believe or the commitments you’ve made in the process.

The accountability culture you helped build is the same culture that now makes you terrified to move without being certain first. You've shifted from asking "what do I believe" to asking "what can I defend." You're doing your best with what you have and then you get cut down by the very people you love and need most. It's disorienting and dispiriting.

All of this is a trap. We dehumanize our leaders even as we lift them up as saviors, then wonder why fewer people want to step into leadership roles.

Feeling like you're on a pedestal and don't know how to get down? Want to stop being a symbol and go back to being a person?

You don’t have to figure it out alone, let’s talk.

References

Kaba, Mariame, and Kelly Hayes. Let this radicalize you. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2023.