What are the most important positive leadership qualities? Keep reading. Up to this point, we have talked about the importance of being a benevolent dictator and how becoming overwhelmed at work is a symptom of our choices. Now, we are going to take this a step further by remembering again that a business is not a democracy.

Not only do we Americans live in a democracy, but in a leading world power that asserts the idea absolutely that democracy is the greatest form of government and literally justifies acts of war with the notion. Of course, this isn’t unique to the states. More people have been killed in the name of someone’s supposed absolute truth than anything else in the history of our world.

It’s difficult to find a government that hasn’t abused its power with an absolute assertion of values. It is understandable then, that so many business owners and managers would be shy about asserting their values and holding those beneath them accountable. However, this is unavoidable and so the repression, like putting your thumb on a garden hose, causes those opinions to squirt in aggressive and inappropriate ways. Finally, we blame power for having corrupted us (as if power itself is somehow tainted), and blame ourselves for being corruptible. This is perhaps the most profound expression of victimhood in our species.

Very sad indeed.

Without having had a model for what a benevolent dictatorship can look and feel like—and what those leadership qualities include—how are you to preside over one? And yet preside you do.

You cannot healthily preside over your dictatorship while you still operate in overwhelm, for you will not have the high-level sight to be the guiding light for your people and act in their highest good. In overwhelm, you are simply a more sophisticated survivalist leading a group of others: the blind leading the blind.

The job of a benevolent dictator in this age is to lead themselves out of overwhelm, out of survival mode, and then lead their people out as well. A business cannot consistently produce excellence from a survival domain, for true excellence comes from thrival. And thrival comes from not the seeking of happiness as a respite from one’s toils, but as a reaching for greatness as an expression of one’s self.

Clear and Open’s ultimate aim is to be a vehicle to help businesses actively participate in the evolution of consciousness by first evolving the consciousness of its leaders so they are qualified to add as much “benevolent” to their de facto role as dictators as possible. Simply put, we help individuals discover the positive leadership qualities that affect not only their businesses but life as a whole.

Interestingly, while the philosopher kings that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle theorized would be the best rulers in politics are rare to be seen, more and more business owners are taking on exactly this role. In this way, business is perhaps more likely to lead the evolution of our species than government, since it is more tied to reality via its need to produce real value, and cannot afford to languish unproductively in its bureaucracy.

If you are leader, or will be soon, I hope this inspires you. Because you are not just going to lead your department or business, but inevitably in some way, lead the world.