Plato, the Greek philosopher, is described as one of the most influential leadership thinkers because he thought a great deal about leadership. He develops a structure on the nature of leadership in an absolute state. According to Plato, rulers motivated by self-interest were not suitable for leadership. Plato states that a city should be governed by the lovers of the wisdom or the philosophers. According to him, only philosophers acquire the technique and skills of ruling and only they are intellectually and morally suited to lead and govern the states because they are the only ones who are able to attain knowledge on the beauty, goodness and virtue. Furthermore, they have a passion for truth and learning.
Philosophy of Plato
Plato presented a systematic administrative and political model to arrange life in a perfect state. The idea behind this state is to educate people to become good. Thus, this state acts as a moral function in people’s life.
Plato proposed that a state is like the body of a human being where part acts as harmony and complement each other. According to him, in an ideal institution, there is no conflict between the parts. He states that, politicians must have the real knowledge of the leadership and what is good for the people and they must have the skills to rule according to the aims. But political leaders who have the knowledge of political science thoroughly and have moral strength too are very difficult to find.
Plato’s thinking on democracy was disapproving. He proposed two tasks that a good leader must fulfill.
He should know to control the implementation of education.
He should be able to control the propagation of thoughts.
Functions of the controllers are essential; therefore he suggested that the controller must be philosophers. The main objective of Plato was to raise the power of the guardians. Plato’s leaders are not like normal human beings; they belong to the world of gods. Plato’s view was that as a normative standpoint a leader must be a person with power and with a sincere truth-seeking vision.
He proposed that to be successful, a leader must have the gift of grace, which he calls charisma and charisma is something mystical which is not obtained by learning.
Final words on Plato’s theory
From Plato’s world of ideas, execution has been made that his considerations consist of many different areas. A long time ago Plato presented many things that people thought were modern and during the early 20Th century he developed his ideas by the leadership theoreticians. Firstly, Plato presented the theory of an organization as a harmony seeking entity. Second, the concept of management of meaning evolved. Third, attributes of the powerful leader come into consideration.
Plato was ancient, but he is still fresh in people’s mind because he was the actual developer of the leadership in the society, and he gives the theory about the leadership that was always required by the society.