great man is one who perceives the unseen and knows the obvious. The great-man theory of leadership states that some people are born with the attributes that set them apart from others and that these traits are responsible for their assuming positions of power and authority. A leader is a hero who accomplishes goals against all odds for his followers.

The great-man theory was established in the 19^th Century by proponents like historian Thomas Carlyle, who put forth the idea that the world’s history is nothing more than a collection of biographies of great men.

According to the theory, leadership calls for qualities like charm, persuasiveness, commanding personality, high degree of intuition, judgment, courage, intelligence, aggressiveness, and action orientation that they cannot be taught or learnt in a formal sense.

In South Asia, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Shibli Naumani were greatly influenced by Thomas Carlyle. He had been the single most significant influence on the Muslim scholarship on history. It is equally important to realise that while the great-man theory itself is antiquated and questionable, the traits identified by Carlyle have been repeated in other leadership theories as being desirable in leaders and, because of this, both new and seasoned leaders would do well to develop those.

This theory started the scholarship of which traits and characteristics make great leaders. However, the theory lacks scientific validity and only considers men in power.

As Sidney Hook notes, a common misinterpretation of the theory is that “all factors in history, save great men, were inconsequential.” Carlyle was instead claiming that great men are the decisive factor, owing to their unique genius.

Hook then goes on to emphasise this uniqueness to illustrate the point: “Genius is not the result of compounding talent. How many battalions are the equivalent of a Napoleon? How many minor poets will give us a Shakespeare? How many ‘run of the mill’ scientists will do the work of an Einstein?”

American scholar Frederick Adams Woods supported the great-man theory in his work, The Influence of Monarchs: Steps in a New Science of History. Woods investigated 386 rulers in Western Europe from the 12th Century until the French Revolution in the late 18th Century and their influence on the course of historical events.

American philosopher William James, in his 1880 lecture Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment published in the Atlantic Monthly, forcefully defended Carlyle against his detractors that included renowned philosopher Herbert Spencer.

Spencer held that attributing historical successes to individual decisions was primitive and unscientific and that the so-called “great men” were mere products of their social environment. Before a “great man” could shape and build his society, the same society had to shape and build him.

While controverting Spencer in support of Carlyle, William James asserted: “If anything is humanly certain it is that the great man’s society, properly so called, does not make him before he can remake it... The mutations of societies, then, from generation to generation, are in the main due directly or indirectly to the acts or the examples of individuals whose genius was so adapted to the receptivities of the moment, or whose accidental position of authority was so critical that they became ferments, initiators of movements, setters of precedent or fashion, centres of corruption, or destroyers of other persons, whose gifts, had they had free play, would have led society in another direction.”

What I want to assert is that success is different from greatness. Great people tend to set themselves goals that are impossible to achieve. Very few of them succeed in achieving them. Jesus Christ, Buddha, Socrates, Napoleon and Gandhi fall in this category. For the attributes of a great person (leader), Iqbal gives the most comprehensive description in his couplet.

High ambition, winsome speech, a passionate soul—

This is all the arsenal for a leader of the Caravan

“Success is the achievement of a desired goal, such as for obtaining name and fame or wealth or a higher degree, for which a person has tried his level best.” A successful man finds his purpose bound to his own (or his close ones’) welfare and creates a life where he can fulfill that purpose.

He knows or seeks to find the balance between fuelling that purpose and sacrificing himself and others to make it happen. Various people have observed differently about success. Like, Arianna Huffington, the co-founder of Huffington Post and CEO of Thrive Global says, “To live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a Third Metric a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving.”

Maya Angelou, the American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist opines, “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it.” But the most interesting quote is from none other than Winston Churchill who said, “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

Churchill’s assertion about a successful person brings it closer to a great individual. In Pakistan we find many success stories, but greatness is starkly missing since the demise of Abdul Sattar Edhi. He had empathy. He lived for others; thereby he will live forever. Iqbal’s couplet stated above should be taught to all our politicians. They should make it as their life-long goal. When we have weak state institutions and governments last until the will of the invincible, the need for great individuals will always be felt.

The writer is Professor in the faculty of Liberal Arts at the   Beaconhouse National   University, Lahore.  He can be reached at   tahir.kamran@bnu.edu.pk