JeffBC
Posts: 5799
Joined: 2/12/2012 From: Canada Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Cell Hmm, I wish JeffBC was here. I'm pretty sure he's had a lot more leadership experience than me... would be interesting to hear his thoughts on it. And in the oddest turn of events, I am here... it's been a while (years??) but not surprisingly, this thread caught my attention. Here's my thoughts on the topic which are nothing more than thoughts, this being akin to the sub/slave debates. I'm going to break this apart into three sections... dominance, leadership, and goodness. Dominance For me, dominance is a matter of internal viewpoint. It is the general expectation that the world around me is within my control if I want it to be. It's a willingness to stand and be counted in public for all to see and then to reap the results of your actions, for better or worse, in public. It is pretty much solely an internal mindset and has little to do with the attributes which make that dominance good or bad for those who are submitting. I actually think it has more to do with a specific type of courage (being willing to fail in public, being willing to have others bear the cost of your failure), and a low tolerance for chaos. It may or may not also be connected to a desire for authority but in my experience, it frequently is not -- certainly not in the best of them. In terms of how common this attribute is, I think that's the wrong question. I think us humans are basically a pack species and we naturally form social units. In any given group, there will be those who are more dominant than the others. Roughly 5-10% of those will fall into the dominant role within that group. So in a general sense, everyone is dominant but in a given situation, 5-10% will be. It's kind of like grading on a curve. If you establish a curve that says "The top 5% will get an A" then you 5% of your students will be "A students". Leadership After internal inclination to take control comes the need to actually do so. This is how I see leadership. It's the study and application of tools and techniques to manipulate people into following your lead. Leadership is where concepts like "strategies for decision making" and "span of control" and related topics get looked at in detail. Again, you can have great leaders who are awful for the people they lead. Leadership is also where the relative pro's and con's of various tools like fear, intimidation, respect, loyalty, and consensus all get discussed in detail. Goodness OP asked: but truly, do you feel good dominants are good leaders? I want to be careful about the adjective "good" here. Above I've taken a stance that says a good leader is an effective leader. In this thread (and in most BDSM discussions), "good" means that the leader is beneficial to those who are following. So looking at a "good Dom" as one who's beneficial to those submitting then the only connection I see to being a "good" dominant is being a good person (aside, of course, from being dominant). You either care about and want to help those around you or you do not. Put a bit differently, some people want to be the leader because they desire authority. These are the "bad" leaders. Some seek responsibility. Those are the good ones. Overall I see dominance, leadership, and "goodness" as three circles which only slightly overlap in a venn diagram. When they do all overlap, it tends to be a very special individual and a great experience for all involved.
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I'm a lover of "what is", not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. -- Bryon Katie "You're humbly arrogant" -- sunshinemiss officially a member of the K Crowd
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