Solitude and leadership

The title of this post is the same as Kottke's entry on the subject, which directed me to William Deresiewicz's speech of the same name.

The title, though, is misleading on at least two counts. First, "solitude" in Mr. Deresiewicz's mind does not always mean a complete absence of other people.

So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better. But there’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship. Of course friendship is the opposite of solitude; it means being with other people. But I’m talking about one kind of friendship in particular, the deep friendship of intimate conversation. Long, uninterrupted talk with one other person. Not Skyping with three people and texting with two others at the same time while you hang out in a friend’s room listening to music and studying.

Has long, intimate conversation gone out of fashion? I can't tell, because I do my best to keep my conversations long and intimate, and to interact mostly with people I like well enough to make the conversations worthwhile. I want to focus on the other person, and I want the other person to focus on me. (If you're an introvert, as I am, you probably prefer this style of personal interaction too.)

In his speech Deresiewicz was concerned with "solitude" as a tool to hone one's leadership skills. However, solitude is really a way to get to know yourself, as he noted in the quoted excerpt. That brings me to the second way in which the title of his speech is misleading: it doesn't convey the utility of solitude to the great majority of us who don't need to lead. Getting to grips with what makes one tick is always a good thing.

I know, it's beyond tedious to hear yet again that the trend of multitasking (which I'm engaging in right now, by the way, as I pay part of my attention to the news on TV) is Considered Harmful. That's not what Deresiewicz said, though. Rather, he wanted his audience to understand that multitasking isn't sufficient to make a good leader, and that we would do well to make room for the seemingly devalued concepts of solitude and concentration if we would nurture our leadership potential. I agree, except that I think the potential we would nurture goes well beyond "leadership".