Leadership is the opposite of Charisma

Ed Kohler forwarded Katarina Fake's latest blog post to me earlier today. As part of a larger theme, she quotes John Holt:

"Leaders are not what many people think–people with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see whether anyone is following them.

Leadership qualities are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, determination, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head even when things are going badly. This is the opposite of the “charisma” that we hear so much about." ~ John Holt

In her piece Katarina talks about her conversations with Anil Dash on the subject, about how it’s hard to communicate the motivation to "build cool stuff, good tools for other people to use" to a new generation of entrepreneurs. Take a few minutes and read it, it's worth your time.

I see so many entrepreneurs in the Valley today building things that are simply variations of the "flavor of the day" darlings. It's incremental innovation if it's innovation at all.

It's time to get inspired. It's time to be inspiring. The world doesn't really need more photo-sharing or group-texting apps. As Katarina concludes in her post, "Let's get excited and make things." Even better, let's get excited and make some NEW things.