Financehome Equally it is a considerable management quality to know when and how to communicate, and to whom. A manager who announces a new contract before it is finally clinched, or a foreman who in a nosetapping mood discloses wage increases before they have been agreed, can turn communications into a nonsense. Nevertheless, if one takes the highest common factor of all that is said and written about management qualities, the question of communications is high on the list. In the admirable 'Proceedings' of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh's first Study Conference held a few years ago the theme throughout was the question of keeping in touch not just 'togetherness' in the somewhat mushy context in which the word is used today, but the achievement of wholeness through sharing. Humanity and intelligence as management qualities are indivisible and add up to a fine formula for leadership. Intelligence that is not necessarily of an intellectual kind, but that is the sum total of the qualities discussed in previous sections of this chapter, guarantees a humane outlook because it is, of itself, intensely human. The manager, manifestly strong in some respects, weak in others, but intelligent enough to understand himself, is a good leader. Intelligence should not mean arrogance or superiority; humanity should not mean weakness or sentimentality. It is sometimes argued that the best manager is just the ordinary chap, the average man who is no better and no worse than the next one, the man who has plodded along to responsibility and power. Too often are quoted (and usually incorrectly) adaptations of the famous remark 'every French soldier carries in his cartridgepouch the baton of a marshal of France', and too often it is forgotten that these words were Napoleon's a convenient generalization for a genius to propound. Is management responsibility no matter how great or small the area over which it has to be exercised in fact something calling for qualities of leadership which, in the final reckoning, are inborn ? Are such qualities intuitive rather than assimilable ? The phrase 'a natural leader' is one answer to the question. Leadership is a natural function to some and totally unnatural to others. In an increasingly complicated world more and more people want to be led rather than to lead. Fear of life and life's purposes produces mass religious and political followings which, lulled by the narcotic of authoritarian manoeuvre, tend to place more and more power into the hands of less and less people. This is an ironic and tragic negation of the democratic ideal but it is an unmistakable trend of our times. This situation puts the problem of management leadership in a democratic community in a searching light. Can the 'natural leaders' be found, encouraged, and be given sufficient outlet for their talents so as to prevent such talents being diverted to destructive and empty causes? Does the growing characteristic of mankind to move in a mass and to live vicariously mean that leadership for good rather than bad reasons will flourish or wither? In any consideration of management leadership, thought must be given to a quality about which it is hard to write in precise terms : that of enthusiasm. interior Planning