A popular adage about leaders says the most effective of them build self-sufficient organizations. If the conductor leaves, the orchestra plays on. But let’s be honest: That’s not true for many of today’s most influential leaders, in business or politics. Instead, as this year’s run-up to the U.S. election has made plain, we often elevate leaders who believe they’re irreplaceable. Without me, the entire enterprise disintegrates, these leaders seem to think. The music stops.
Now Americans are watching in real time the problems this can cause. Less than a month before the start of the Democratic National Convention, the 81-year-old sitting president, Joe Biden, has capitulated to demands from within his party that he stand down from his campaign for a second term and make way for a younger candidate. His decision has won praise, although some say, as Frank Bruni put it in the New York Times, that it came “weeks later than it should have, after too much secrecy, too much arrogance, too much denial.”
