"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." -Lao Tzu

Entirely depends on the work that needs to be done. That quote will implode at times when actually applied in reality. Sometimes you need to marshal the soldiers to victory, and you're not typically going to do that by your soldiers barely knowing you exist. You're going to have to inspire them actively, so they better know you exist, and they better believe what you're saying, they better believe in the mission.

There is also a valuable spot in some parts of the business world for the Barnum & Bailey promoter. It can be extraordinarily difficult to stand out from the crowd, often while competing against far larger companies, even if you have a superior product. If you can't be outgoing and draw attention to your superior product (get in front of a major tv audience and nail it, present effectively to audiences on stage at COMDEX, etc), perhaps against far larger ad budgets, your great product may be doomed.

To be fair, I don't think your soldier example is a counterexample. You would have created a better army if you could sufficiently motivate them without using yourself. If you do use yourself, you suddenly become an even bigger vulnerability for the army. If you end up getting killed, the entire motivation leaves the army right in the middle of the battle.

It doesn't mean you are a bad leader if you do it, merely that a better leader might have seen a different path and gotten a better result.

> You would have created a better army if you could sufficiently motivate them without using yourself.

You're going to have to do that yourself at times. You can't build an army without your troops knowing who you are, you have to instruct them at some point, and they have to believe you for some reason. You have to inspire them at some juncture just to get the organization rolling. You can't sufficiently motivate them if they don't know you exist at some point in the chain of events. What are they motivated by, inspired by, if they don't know you exist? You have to actively win them over, they have to believe in you for a good reason. You can't do that by always being the quiet person they don't know exists, they will not believe in you if that's all you have ever been to them. Which goes to the point that there's a time and place - likely many times and places - where even an introvert CEO will be called to inspire actively, to be outgoing for necessary effect. There is no scenario where that won't be the case if you're leading over the long-term. And that's the point and why it is a counterexample. There are times you'll have to be the charismatic outgoing leader that inspires the troops to charge over the hill. Times when the business is against the wall and you have to inspire everyone to fight for survival, believe that it's possible to succeed in a dire context. Or times when you need a massive sea change in the business, and you have to actively get everyone on-board the new direction (otherwise it'll be a disaster). It's the exceptionally rare business scenario where that never needs to happen across years, much less decades. Businesses are made by such moments, just as they also are made by the day to day monotonous work.

Obviously at some point the example gets far too specific to actually be useful, but...

In general there are lots of alternatives. Pay, objective, even lower level subordinates that are personally motivating, etc. There are many ways to motivate people that does not involve being the single shining star for everybody.

Is it realistic to never personally take a visible and active role in running an army? Probably not. I'm not trying to argue that. But - in theory - if you could do it, you'd build a stronger army. Otherwise it will all fall apart the moment you forget to drink enough water and faint on a hot day in the middle of a battle. The more support structures are in place that don't require your visible and active participation, the stronger the organization is.

Remember, we're talking about a one-liner here. It's not going to capture all sorts of realities and exceptions and little details. Just because you can point out that reality is not the ideal does not invalidate a small saying about the ideal.

If someone who knows me is asked to define me, there will be none who says 'shy', then again the same person would likely tell it's been 2 years since we've spoken.

I was the CEO a startup which I had to close due to my health issues 2 years ago. Since then my social behavior has changed polarity, I have nearly stopped any real-time communication(live meeting, call, chat).

I think it was caused by the trauma from events associated with having to explain the health scenario to half-dozen visitors every day over a year(social construct in India), then going through the pain of closing the startup of 5 years(in which I was on phone every hour) and again having to explain it to everyone I know.

This might sound extreme it is, but I've never felt peace like this before. The obvious victim is my business ambitions, There's only few things you can do as an indie who communicates only via email.

Since I've been at the both end of the spectrum, I would say if you're an introvert CEO then you need to have someone else i.e. 'a people person' to do all the extrovert things required for a business. I believe many successful business are run like this because the CEO can put their energy where it matters the most i.e. making money.

"I just want to know what he needs done / and let's go make the thing."

I think this is the problem. It's really really hard to do that at scale. Different people require different types of messages in order to get it. You need to repeat your vision of what needs to get done again and again and again. That can be hard for an introvert. It doesn't mean you can't be shy, but I think that's why it can be a challenge.

Jack Walsh, one of the most successful CEOs ever at GE, where he grew stock capitalization from $12 billion to $417 billion, and revenue grew from nearly $28 billion to $170 billion said his job mainly was repeating his messages and goals all the time. Giving speeches. You'd think a powerful CEO like him would just snap his fingers and order people and they would do it, but no. If someone wanted to gum up the works, there's nothing he could do about it, even as the CEO. This is what he said.

When Welch took the helm of GE in 1981, he built the company’s own pit — a large lecture hall with a pitched floor — at GE’s corporate learning campus in Crotonville, New York, and made it the beating heart of the place. He would hold court there every other week and use it to foster a generation of managers who, in turn, helped him grow GE into the most valuable company in the world.

So it was the constant education and re-iterating goals of the company.

> I just want to know what he needs done / and let's go make the thing.

"You tell grunts what to do. You tell special forces the objective."

I think as a starting point it's best to assume the special forces approach and work your way down to the grunt approach as necessary.

This is entirely based on my personal dislike for being micro-managed.

I feel like that's a good way of accidentally telling folks the wrong thing and never knowing.

I've certainly worked with a lot of folks who detailed "do this" and when done we discovered it is "to achieve this goal" ... that late bit of info proved the thing we did was not as useful or would need more work later.

Just out of curiousity, who was this "magical salesman" CEO? Some well-known face?

CEO of a big company, but not a well known name. He retired a while back. I'd rather not give too much of my work history away, and his name wouldn't be of much use to anyone.

I only met him a few times but he was one of those guys who seemed to be able to figure you out from the start and knew how to connect with you just instinctively. It probably helped that his early history was engineering, then sales, then up the executive chain. He understood the 'types' of folks who did those jobs and how to work with them.

Thank you for your reply. It wasn't my intention to make you reveal too much about yourself, so no problem here.

Sounds like an interesting character either way. You already need to possess a lot of mental flexibility and social intelligence to thrive inside both engineering culture AND marketing culture.