Observations on leadership - part 2

A good leader inspires you

George Benson was a mathematician. He was a master at my school. As a young boy he was an enigmatic man who strode purposefully from A to B. His trousers were hitched up above his waist and his trouser legs flapped in the breeze as he walked. One of the features of our school was the Prefects’ Path. The Prefects’ Path was a short path that cut off a corner and saved its user perhaps 5 yards. It required the user to mount 2 steps. George never used the Prefects’ Path although as a Master he was so entitled. We young boys were sure that this brilliant man – and he was brilliant – had worked out that the energy required by the two steps outweighed the energy used by walking the extra 5 yards.

George only took sixth form classes – boys of 16 to 18 years of age. I took mathematics and George was what they called my Director of Studies. The story was that George had graduated from Cambridge a disappointed man. The Senior Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge, a position once regarded as the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain. George was reckoned to be in the running for Senior Wrangler. He missed out: he was the Second Wrangler. For George this was a bitter blow and he decided that he would spend his life teaching. Of course, you needed no teaching qualifications then and probably, if you had needed those qualifications, George would have failed. He never married and he was a brilliant Master (not that those two attributes are connected!!) No, he couldn’t teach but he could inspire you to learn. It’s not quite clear to me how he did this, possibly his sense of humour. “I like Handel’s Messiah’” he would say “when they don’t play it.” He had perfect pitch and couldn’t stand hearing anything played – he needed the notes on the paper!

“These University louts,” he opined, “if they hadn’t gone there, they’d be hooligans.”. It was these acerbic comments that enamoured George to us: through his wit he inspired us to do things that we might not have done – and he was wise enough to know when there was something that you shouldn’t do, and he would tell you. George was a leader – but he was a very strange sort of leader. He didn’t lead by dictat or by example, rather – somehow – he inspired us to be the best we could be.