One explanation is that the egalitarian ethos of democracy demands that leadership be a capacity open to everyone equally. Leadership, then, must be stripped of all pretension to moral authority based on earned superiority and reduced to a set of skills that anyone can learn. This explanation is complicated, nonetheless, by the melange of sciences that make claim to expertise in leadership. The result is a confusion of psychology, communications, business management, and military administration. Stirred into this mix are often the vaguest of moral-sounding platitudes that bolster the egalitarian demand that democracy makes on leadership, such as I saw recently online: "leadership is not about commanding the storm, but learning to dance in the rain with your team."

The classical view of leadership was understood as both the reward and ability of moral superiority. The egalitarian impulses swelling within the modern conception of democracy, though, produce resentment toward excellence because excellence proves a defiant basis for inequality. 

The modern view of leadership arises as a development within social science. Social science assumes the ability to separate facts from values in the study of human phenomena and to examine those facts from an objective point of view. Thus, the social science approach to psychology attempts to separate traditional value judgments about the quality of the soul (psyche in Greek)—for example, that it is eternal and is affected by moral choices—and to analyze it as though the souls of the examiners are somehow not also involved in their examinations. 

As a result, social science cannot offer normative archetypes, for those would be value judgments. But value judgments are inescapable. Consider that homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder in the first edition (1952) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). That designation was later altered to describe individuals who were distressed by their sexual orientation, but since 2013 all reference to homosexuality in relation to mental disorder has disappeared completely from the DSM. The field of psychology is on one hand unable to say anything about the moral quality of homosexual desire, and on the other hand is somehow confident enough to determine that even distress caused by homosexual desire is not legitimate anxiety.

Modern psychology arose out of theology and medicine as a social scientific attempt to explain internal disorder and mental distress. Similarly, the modern view of leadership as a social science arises mainly from four fields: military science, business management, psychology, and communications. While leadership was always understood to include elements from these fields, the essence of leadership, when stripped of these useful arts, is moral philosophy, and that is the very thing missing from the modern view of leadership. 

Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics with an account of the hierarchy of sciences that corresponds to the hierarchy of ends. The latter must exist because we all do some things for the sake of other things. The "most authoritative and most architectonic" of these sciences, Aristotle writes, "appears to be the political art." This science would have to be the true science of leadership, because it provides knowledge of the ends or purposes of all the rest. 

Aristotle claims that all other sciences "fall under the political art"—"even the most honored capacities." He names three, specifically: generalship, household or wealth management, and rhetoric. These three vie with each other to dislodge the political art from its place of authority in order to claim that they are the true art of leadership. It is unsurprising, then, that people today defer to those in military, business, and communications for expertise on the science of leadership.

All three of these sciences command respect, but when they become untethered from the moral authority of the political art, they are reduced to arts that offer only a partial answer to the question "what is leadership?" Furthermore, without the political—or leading—art, they can be just as easily co-opted for evil as for good ends: because it is not within those sciences to know the difference. The military art can be used to command violence against a just regime; business management can be used to make even a death camp run efficiently; and rhetoric—communications and psychology today—can aid the con artist just as easily as the statesman. 

From a classical perspective, the unique quality of leadership is nothing short of human excellence. On one hand, it is simply the virtue of prudence—deliberation and decision—but on the other hand, as Aristotle notes, one cannot be prudent if one lacks courage, ambition, temperance, or justice. One must be virtuous simply. This kind of person is a rare sight. We say such a one has integrity, wholeness. He is a complete human person or simply a good person. 

Aristotle refers to this person as spoudaios, which is sometimes translated as a "morally serious person." The unique ability of the spoudaios is to see what is good "in a true sense," while others see only what they wish as an "apparent good." The spoudaios, Aristotle writes, "is distinguished perhaps most of all by his seeing what is true in each case, just as if he were a rule and measure of them." This is the essence of leadership: the excellence of a person becoming the very rule and measure of the good for others to see, because he himself is good. Leadership, then, is less like mastering a set of skills or gimmicks and more like becoming a roadmap that others read to know the way to excellence and greatness. Consequently true leadership is this: compelling human excellence.

Such a condition provides insight into what today’s generalship, management, and rhetoric are each missing: the ability to see in any given dilemma what the truly good and beautiful choice is.