The Common Trait of Great Leaders
What is the Japanese word for finding the environment in which a weakness becomes a strength?
Let’s explore a leadership concept through three different angles: a French movie analysis, a work dinner anecdote and an ancient Chinese parable.
The French Movie Analysis
Last summer, I saw the movie Kaamelott, a comedy-drama about King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and their quest for the Holy Grail. (If you’d like to know why this movie mattered to me, read How A Cult TV Series Helped Me Understand Product Development Cycles.)
Many analyses have been done about the movie, yet none covered what I consider to be its most satisfying detail — the illustration of a memorable line from the Kaamelott TV show, that preceded the movie:
“All great leaders have one thing in common: they only fight for the dignity of the weak.” — Kaamelott, season 6, episode 6
Before seeing the movie, I always interpreted this quote as: great leaders protect the weak from being humiliated. The movie offers a deeper perspective — fighting for the dignity of the weak means transforming the weaknesses of the weak into strengths.
For example, during all six seasons of the Kaamelott TV show, every single time King Arthur required his help, the wizard Merlin tried to solve the problem through biology, physics, zoology or medicine… but never with magic. Merlin was the source of many jokes for being the worst magician ever.
In the movie, Merlin remains a mediocre enchanter, but he helps King Arthur escape from prison thanks to a scientific approach. For the first time, Merlin’s wide knowledge is praised instead of being considered as a way to hide his absence of magical powers.
The movie is filled with similar examples of weaknesses turned into strengths — King Leodagan’s obsession for war weapons, the Burgondes people’s preference for soft music over military organization, etc. Everyone is offered the opportunity to contribute to the final victory, not through a personal transformation but thanks to an acceptance of their true nature.
The Work Dinner Anecdote
At the beginning of my career as a manager, I once got stuck into a difficult situation. I was worried, discouraged and demotivated. It was eating up all my mental space.
One day, my manager’s manager invited me for dinner. He managed to create the environment of trust I needed to open up. I shared with him the problem I was facing. He listened, a lot. He didn’t stay silent though, he asked many questions. What triggered this situation? How did you try to respond to it? What happened as a consequence? Why does it bother you so much?
During the whole dinner, we mostly talked about that topic. He didn’t provide any piece of advice. At one point, there was a pause. He looked to the side, as if trying to think something through. He turned his head back to me, smiled, and said: “That’s a tough problem, man”. I felt acknowledged. We moved on to other topics, and he asked more questions about my obsession for radical simplicity that he had heard about.
The dinner ended. As we shook hands, he said: “About your issue… Don’t let it become an excuse to not do great things, OK?”
I walked back home, wondering what that meant. I thought about the contradiction he had thrown at me. If it was a tough problem that even he couldn’t tell me how to address, wasn’t I entitled for some slack? Why did he expect me to deliver great things, knowing how impossible my situation was?
As I arrived home, I realized the problem had gone smaller. The problem was still there, but it didn’t bother me so much anymore. The next day, back at work, I looked at my problem in a more constructive manner, finding ways to reduce the negative consequences it was having on me.
In the months that followed, whenever we found time to catch up, our conversations focused on a simplification framework I was working on.
(Years later, I realized that the problem I had been facing was partially caused by my fanatic obsession for simplicity. He never mentioned it.)
The Ancient Chinese Parable
A woman was bringing water from the river to her house every day. She carried on her shoulders two large pots, each hanging from the end of a pole.
One of the pots was cracked. At the end of the walk, when arriving at the house, the leaky pot was only half full of water.
One day, the cracked pot told the woman: "I'm ashamed of myself, because my crack lets the water escape on the way back home.”
The old lady smiled: “Have you noticed that there are flowers on your side of the path, and there are none on the other side? I noticed your crack the first time I carried you. The next day, I planted seeds on your side. And since then, you have been watering them every single time we came back up.”
The Skill of Talent Matching
If I were to summarize the core leadership concept illustrated by those three stories, I would call it talent matching. It is the ability to spot people’s natural strengths — as opposed to assessing them according to a set of expectations — and to expose them to an environment where these strengths are valuable.
It flips the question from "How could you better fit this world?" to "Where would you naturally bring value?”.
This approach steers away from heroic leadership (“lead by example”), hands-off leadership (“give goals and get out of the way”) and even from coaching leadership (“transform others into better versions of themselves”). Talent matching is a combination of deep understanding of the person and constant scanning for the external opportunities waiting to be taken. It allows people to thrive effortlessly and to take credit for their victories.
Allowing others to succeed by themselves and by staying themselves is important because, not only it provides a solution for their future, but it also sheds a new, more positive light on their past. They were not wrong all along — they just hadn't found their place yet. They weren't broken, only misused. Their oddness was an asset to be discovered.