Nature abhors a vacuum, so went the old mantra from physics teachers. What we weren't taught in high school physics was that while nature may abhor a vacuum, it despises, hates, detests and loathes a leadership vacuum. Because leadership vacuums become self-destructive one-way forces that distort everything. People are indiscriminately drawn into the void. Some are well intentioned or at least determined to have a go: "Hello I'm Kevin and I'm here to help". Others are innocent bystanders urged to step into the gap "for God's sake do something before that fool sends us all bankrupt." Yet more are cronies that are not going to miss out on a party in the madhouse.
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The worst residents drawn into the leadership chasm are those chancers, those bits of useless space debris from some intergalactic catastrophe that end up sucked into the centre of the power party. Nobody else on planet power has any idea how this alien matter got there, but there is no overlooking their presence in the mad house.
In recent weeks we have seen aspects of this in the Federal Government. For reasons perhaps best discerned by a political analyst or psychotherapist, elements of the house on the hill have decided that the Chinese are a) prone to shoot to one another and b) on the verge of invading Australia, thus requiring a doubling in size of our military.
It was a sad irony that Clive Palmer's outburst about the Chinese shooting each other coincided with the St Louis police shooting and killing two Americans. The invasion comments by Senator Lambie are risible, but sobering evidence of a black hole in Canberra. Apparently Australia has around 61,700 regulars in the military. China has 2.8 million. With the greatest respect to our quite brilliant military, a doubling from 2% to 4% of of the equivalent of China's military might is hardly going to stop a full on assault on the Melbourne Cricket ground, putting aside China's record of underachievement in the invasion stakes. In times of strong visionary leadership that is in step with the populous, such people would never get elected.
Strong leaders draw followers in gently while leadership vacuums drag in all indiscriminantly. Great leadership has gravitas or gravity. Gravity is actually a weak force that permits freedom of movement, while all the time providing a grounding and a focus. Gravity is not a heavy-handed force, it is not the brutal force of a vacuum. When more and more are drawn into leadership roles and leadership occurs all in one direction, a vacuum is at work.
True leadership emerges from the open interplay of trust, faith, regard, courage, connection and compassion. Nature doesn't trust vacuums. They suck.
Jim Bright is Professor of Career Education and Development at ACU and a Partner at Bright and Associates. Email opinion@jimbright.com. Follow @DrJimBright.
