Poor Leadership Quality

Look beyond success to discover the path to inner balance.

Hernan Cortes remained governor of the land he had named New Spain, waiting for the king to elevate him to viceroyalty. He became extremely rich after the conquest of Mexico. The crown gave him gold and silver mines, cotton and sugar plantations, mills and land. He built a castle with towers at Cuernavaca and received the title of marquis. He liked to be called Don Hernando. His fame secured his marriage to Juana de Zuniga, a relative of the Duke of Bejar, one of the most influential people in Spain.

However, the scandals of the past marked the rest of his career. Full of restlessness, he devoted his whole life to the search for another Mexico and another Motecuhzoma. He squandered his wife’s dowry in a useless exploration of the legendary Amazon. He spent his last years in Spain trying to solicit an audience with the king. He became a ridiculous and annoying old man, pulling on the sleeves of minor officials, complaining about the real or imaginary injustices that had been done to him.

Finally, after realizing that he would not receive the royal blessing, he decided to return to his beloved Mexico. He fell ill a few days before he set out on his journey, and died, alone and unhappy, at the age of sixty-two. Today, in Mexico, there is no statue of Cortes, no monument, no tomb. The curse of his first wife, Malinali Tenepal, followed him and his son beyond the grave: “I curse you Cortes, you, our child and Mexico.”

Do you control your tendency to attach value to deeds meant to remain in the depths of the world’s memory, but which can be incriminated if they fall under the obligation to be a legal link with the course of the world?

The world will not stand still just because you have conquered a territory, or because you intend to conquer other territories. What matters is not the territory conquered, but rather what is happening in that territory. What attracts the world to a territory? Does it suggest a new approach to the course of the world, apart from a late expansion of an empire? Is territory an unfinished action that raises questions about the meanings of your behavior? Can the territory be transformed into a socio-economic whole, or into a continuous war?

Moreover, how can the individual transform his territory into a place of collective emancipation?

Hernan Cortes wanted to conquer new territories in an effort to assert his dominant personality, the spirit of leadership (of being invincible). But he did not have the vision to assert, to protect, to revitalize the cultural values of the society in which he lived. He saw the territory of Mexico as a piece of land from which wealth can be extracted, without taking into account the fact that the true wealth of a people lies in its values: equality for all, justice for all, freedom for all, raising life to the height of an ideal.

If the soul of a great man is the soul analysis of a people at some point, then Cortez lacked greatness because he failed to unite the glorious deed with the wise side of the self. In fact, Cortez was so conquered by glory and fame that he did not feel it fall into that self-forgetfulness, and the ethical form of regret manifested itself too late, more precisely when events began to set, when already he could no longer get out of that warm, final forgetfulness.

The leader’s obligation to be a direct link with the course of the world is evidenced by the tense lucidity of the self to admit the imperfection of its being, being willing to take responsibility if not projected in time in the souls of those around him.

Poor Leadership Quality is seen in the way a man judges his self when glorious deeds outweigh his chances of being fit for that position, in terms of the relationships with the general conscience of the other people around him.

When man evaluates his chances of remaining at the forefront of people, he relates his personality to the general position of people towards the success of a goal that must not exceed the consciousness of national identity, the consciousness of belonging to a homogeneous cultural community.

* Note: Colin Falconer - Aztec