The Ideal Candidate For Leadership

Your propensity for leadership is determined by the attitude of a protector and mentor you manifest towards others.

In support of this statement, which I have very often expressed in both my books and my articles on leadership, with a very serious conviction and firmness, there is a particularly interesting happening in Pretty Woman, which I find as one of the most conclusive leadership lessons.

The end of the film is a full of lessons, a reflection of a general view, I believe. Having spent a full week with the controversial businessman Edward Lewis, and having, thanks to him, had penetrated the most exclusive salons of the high society, prostitute Vivian Ward, conquered by the paradise of the new world she had penetrated, decided to change her life – to continue her studies and to build a career.

Vivian is talking to her friend, Kit De Luca, who also was a prostitute, hoping she could persuade her to abandon that “job” without a future, and go with her to San Francisco to find a real job and change their lifestyle, that is, their way of thinking and attitude. But Kit is not open to change, not everyone embraces the chance of improving life.

Vivian fails to convince her, because Kit’s convictions were well-rooted and cemented, so unshakeable. However, the fact that she has tried to change her convictions is a proof of great appreciation, respect, and profound sensitivity to her problems and shortcomings. And at the same time, she shows indisputable proof of her enviable inner beauty, for which her very own kind and loving soul stands witness.

Are you in the midst of the experience of being unbeatable in the face of a demonstration of attitude that begins with a reflection on an independent desire for others and continues with the predestination of leaving something behind?

Paraphrasing the great Romanian writer Octavian Goga, I say that the leader is the man who filters the sufferings and problems of people through his soul, then turns them into an alarm sound.

Leadership is the alarm signal that reminds people of the need for change, it is the alarm signal with which you try to prepare others for the risks posed by an unhealthy mentality. Vivian left behind the proof that any woman can look like a princess, that every man has a lucky star that guides their steps in life, and this star (as a victory of light over darkness, of good over evil) is represented by the perfect moment of allowing a new horizon to manifest in its existence.

As a leader, you have to focus on the minds and feelings of people, seeking to defend, even under tremendous conditions, their dignity, freedom and happiness, proposing everything they can sustain in their personal and career life, urging them to action, and acting tenaciously and responsibly to promote their interests.

It is a terrible illusion to think that leadership is reduced only to occupy an important position. It means to despise your mission, efficiency and possibilities. For a high-class leadership is distinguished, first and foremost, by the high spirituality you show. In turn, spirituality is a form of giving yourself up to a great cause when you abandon yourself to a person other than yourself because of the way you distance yourself from an unfortunate life context meant to solicit your limits.

Trying to be useful first and foremost, struggling to fulfill people’s dreams, imposing yourself through that inner nobility that manifests itself through the ability to truly look interested in their values, their hopes, their future, you will undoubtedly become a pathfinder.

How important is how you react to what’s happening to you as you are compelled to go on the same line in terms of profitability?

Kit turned away from Vivian’s path because she was thinking about everything in terms of profitability, but especially because she did not know how to react to what life throws in her way in an unexpected manner. She appreciates her life on the basis of passing things, without crystallizing her preferences as a reflection of an ideal world, thus betting on a certain amount of indifference to the great hopes, to the norms imposed by society in order to be able to devote herself to inner development.

On the other hand, Vivian is an escalation of confrontation with her own limits, the miracle by which all the reproaches of a consciousness that strives to reason before fantasy are replaced. Vivian is not a change of perspective of one’s own life, she is not the result of a world of perfection and spiritual purity, but rather she represents the predestination to leave something behind, a lesson of life that we best find in the novel “The Name of the Rose” by the writer “Umberto Eco”:

“I have to confess the misfortune of a world that wrinkles. Young people do not want to learn anything, science is in decline, the world is walking on its head, some blind people are leading other blind people and making them crash in the abyss. I learned from my master the desire to learn and the understanding of the true path, which is preserved even when the path is twisted.”

There is a certain rigor in the outer appearance of Vivian’s life, because she does not see in the world the active manifestation of a fundamental, temporary and irreversible need, she does not recommended herself as an ally of a reality that has lost every trace of life, but manages to give an interpretation of the events that happen to her, which transforms her into an ally of a healthy heart that has approached another heart that beats tirelessly, tumultuously. She met Edward Lewis, who is not just anyone, rather a saver of a life lived randomly.

The predestination tool is the chance you give yourself to test your limits in a situation where profitability falls under the assessment of the degree of “inner development” adjacent to the feeling of accountability to your fate: “I do not know why, but I want to do this”.

The Ideal Candidate For Leadership can also be you. And it can be anyone who wants and tries to change something for the better in the lives of others. Give people that genuine, consistent spiritual food to change their attitude and your leadership level will grow. Your understanding of the need to be better with those around you, and the attempt to bring others on the right path will turn into a magnet that will attract more and more supporters.

But you have to have the necessary inclinations and especially the desire to be a mentor for people, a defender of their rights and, at the same time, a modeler of their mentality – in order to improve their lives and the achievement of their ideals.