Eliza and I are taking a short break over Christmas. The Daily Paradox continues as usual with a series called Management, Motivation and You.

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What have Horatio Lord Nelson, the two hundredth anniversary of the victory of the Battle of Trafalgar and your management got to do with each other?

Quite a lot, actually. Two hundred years ago life on board a sail-rigged warship was, to put it mildly, uncomfortable. If you weren’t blown to pieces by the enemy you probably died of scurvy (lack of proper food) or venereal disease (caught on a drunken night ashore in a port) or other equally nasty ailments. That, or you were whipped to death by the Master at Arms who felt the best way to encourage the others was to make an example of you.

Why did people do it? The same reasons they do dangerous and daring things today – need and greed, plus sometimes a spirit of adventure that couldn’t easily be otherwise satisfied.

Two hundred years later we lived in an enlightened, civilised world, surely? Don’t bother to write and tell me the answer; I know it already. The below-decks deprivations have mostly disappeared. There is not a lot of whip-lashing. Most workers aren’t deprived of the Vit C they need. But life as an employee is still often desperately hard, unfair and, frankly, rotten.

Historians tell us that Nelson, for all his toughness, was much loved by his men – both officers and ratings. Why would that be? He was, after all, a High Admiral. Few of his men ever spoke to him. His commands were not couched in conciliatory terms: England Expects That Every Man This Day Will Do His Duty is not exactly an invitation to a fancy-dress party.

And there’s the rub. Soft suggestions about working nicely together do not make a leader. Quiet ‘words in the ear’ are not the stuff of command. The velvet glove may be kind to the touch; without the iron fist in it, it is nothing more than superficial sham.

In my next few articles I’m inviting you to come with me on a Journey to Good Management. I’d like your boss to come with us, too. If you don’t think he is on the train, cut the articles out, make them into a nice little folder and leave them on his desk for his next birthday. But keep a copy for yourself, too. Good management doesn’t happen without good employees. Your role is at least as important as his.

We define leadership too narrowly. We think of it as something ‘they’ are supposed to do for – or to – us. It is nothing of the sort. It is something we all are supposed to do for each other. Everyone is a leader – or ought to be – many times a day. Other people are constantly looking to us for example, for lessons in matters of which they know little, for decisions about timing.

So what is leadership?

I define leadership as the ability to encourage without bribing, the gift of helping without patronising, the beauty of caring without demanding, the fulfilling of another’s purpose without dominating.

You may find this strange. Not a word about profit; no mention of discipline; have I forgotten order, creativity, quality, hard work? Doesn’t routine, admin, procedure, system come into it somewhere? Of course businesses need all these ingredients. They need loyalty, commitment, focus, determination, single-mindedness, astuteness and many other inputs, too. And leaders have to work, so they need all these desirable attributes themselves.

But as leaders they need first and foremost to lead. They do that by distinguishing themselves from those they lead while at the same time remaining very close to them.

How they may do this we will discuss next time.