We recently lost one of our “dominants” in a learning group I manage on a different platform. Let's call him Tazerface.

I'll miss him. I had planned to clown him for days about his inability to back up many of the memes he was posting. Not that I'm against memes, understand; I've created a few hundred, myself. It's just that memes were all this guy had to show, and not a single one of them were his own.

He blew out when I called him on his beta response to a simple challenge. So I don't feel we're out much with his passing.

His parting remark was that I was jealous. ~chuckles deep~ Sure, kid.

He lost my respect when I challenged him on one particular meme, explaining that “I'm In Charge Alla Time!” only works after you've established to the people meant to follow you, that you're actually WORTH following. That takes years of NOT being “in charge,” so you can have developed the skills. Like in the Military. Dominant Men understand the Chain of Command, and work hard to climb further up it.

Tazerface was having none of that. “...for me there is no choice.”

That tells me Tazerface was an Instant Expert. That guy who spends a few days in a BDSM chatroom, and is suddenly The Iron Willed Demigod of Hard Wired DOMMIE NANCY!! The New Hire who cannot help but brag about how great he is at fill-in-the-blank, who then proceeds to ruin several days of work in his first five minutes on the clock.

I normally wouldn't have a problem with that, and would have side-stepped him anywhere else I might have encountered him. Except, it has no place in a learning group. Sets a bad example. Naked chest beating is NOT Mastery.

And, as I've said many times in the past; If you have to TELL me you're a Dom, it's probably because you fear I'd never figure it out just by getting to know you.

Which prompted me to write this treatise on Mastery as Leadership.

Leadership is almost never about the title. Leadership is about understanding the needs of those around you or under your influence, and working hard to meet those needs to the best of your ability. Leadership is a form of service, which you render to those who chose to follow you. It requires patience, understanding, creativity, the ability to learn and grow, and the flexibility to change directions on a dime, needs must.

Leadership is more about the water in the river than the rocks it flows over and shapes, even as it means standing like a rock when the water needs guidance and direction. I never said it was easy; I said it was worth it.

I'm sure we've all worked for Managers who were ill suited to the job, or who were our inferiors in several aspects of the job we were doing. It happens. By the same token, we've all worked next to people who were so good at what they did you had to wonder why they weren't running the whole Division.

Smart Execs will look for those types so they can offer them greater responsibilities and pay grades. Sadly, the Executive Class is also peopled by folks working well outside of their Level of Incompetence. Bad Execs will find people who should be promoted, and snuff out their flame lest they challenge the Exec in any way. That's not leadership. That kind of systemic stupidity is the bane of businesses, women's groups, and Leftist political movements, the world over.

The Vanilla World assumes all Masters are bad Execs, who only want weak women who are easy to dominate. (Don't get me started on Dommie Fems, and the only kind of guy who finds them appealing.)

Vanilla World also seems to believe women are all manner of intrinsically superior to men. Except that they need extra protections; and deferential treatment; and coddling; and equal pay for less work; and lighter sentences for equal crimes; and lower physical standards of entry into firefighting, policing, and the military; and full custody of the children, plus way more than half your shit when they become restless and divorce your stupid boring ass...
But I digress.

Every desirable slave I've ever met was intellectually exceptional, strong-willed when necessary, and perfectly capable of running her own life. A desirable slave will never settle for a lesser man who is not in many ways her superior. That's why they are rarely caught selling ride tickets to the Corncob Carousel. What they have to offer is far too valuable to cast before swine.

Desirable slaves are looking for a Man whose Leadership they can trust. A Man who has proven himself in the past, and who will pass all of her tests in the present. Leadership is about building the trust of those who follow you, by demonstrating over and over that you are competent to the tasks involved.

You don't have to be perfect. Hell, you can be wrong 66 percent of the time, as long as you continue to make decisions and adjust direction as necessary. We were on course for the Moon just at three percent of the time. Yet we landed men on her and brought them back safely.

Forward motion and course adjustment (making decisions instead of passing them off to other people) are all you really need to get wherever it is you want to be. Well; that, and knowing where it is you want to arrive. Aimlessness isn't a plan. If you're not headed anywhere in particular, that's where you'll wind up.

Middle Managers can get stuck in that “not making a decision” loop. They can cost an organization more money in wasted time, than if they had made the second or third worst decision possible.

Decades ago, I was consulting a $25 million dollar org. Good product, good owner, reasonable marketing, but not making the kind of forward growth the owner really expected. When I came on board, I noticed one of the middle managers kept passing decisions ~suitable for his level~ up to his boss. A man who had proportionately larger fish to fry.

Mr. Middle had been tasked with picking a new phone system. He researched for a few weeks, and narrowed the field down to Merlin and one other system whose name escapes me. Either one would have been infinitely better than their current phone system. Plus, both manufactures were willing to perform free installations at all three facilities.

Their old system was dropping calls, hard to use, and just failing all around. I estimated the cost to sales and inter-office productivity was right at $20K a DAY. Mr. Middle could have chosen either system and had it all wrapped up, installed and working seamlessly, inside of a week. He took FIVE weeks. Despite being tasked with the decision himself, he brought his boss every cost analysis, every proposal, every dithering little thing, weekly. His boss was not aware of how much money his subordinate's lack of testicles was costing the company, as a whole. Mr. Middle chose the system that saved them like $15 a day over the other, when his boss got tired of the subject and forced him to make a decision.

$700K down the drain, because of an indecisive lemming with no understanding of Leadership.

You need to understand that slave girls are instinctively aware of who can Lead, and who cannot. If you're deferring your decisions to your slave; failing to make plans; dropping the ball in the execution of the plans you allow yourself to make... You're not a Master. You're a little boy disguised as an adult male. Puffing out your chest and beating on it will not hide that fact.

Your slave wants a Leader. If you fail to lead, you will lose her. Leading is more than simply being bossy; it requires you to assume responsibility for your decisions, and to always be trying to move your relationship forward.

Back when I was requiring my slaves to be well written, I had a girl write out how she would confess her slavery to her best friend. What she wrote surprised me in its length and detail. Women are detailed and brutal when discussing sex, it turns out. This is an excerpt, sans all the lusty details:

“I'm eager to please. He has already begun to guide me. How can this be right? How can I feel liberated and owned? This is not what I thought it would be. A month ago, I was looking to stick a toe in the water. I'm now floating, fully submerged. It has the sootheing quality of a towel just out of the dryer.

I am a lucky slave girl. I was "discovered", as Master put it. I was worried about navigating through this quest alone. I thought it may take years for me to find the man I could trust to teach me and help me learn and discover myself. Much to my surprise, Master found me. Why am I so lucky? I don't know I'll ever have the answer.
Master is kind, warm, intelligent and makes me laugh. I love to laugh. He draws me out of resting bitch face, and leads me to full uninhibited smiles and laughter. This alone is enough to break the ice and help me not slip into my usual tunnel vision. I don't believe I even felt this safe and cared for as a child.
In just a few short days, he has already opened my eyes to things I never knew about myself. He is knowledgeable, open, steady and comforting. Master slips off my tongue like it's the most natural thing in my world. He seems to anticipate my questions and always gives me the information I seek. I already care deeply about his thoughts of me.
Master tells me we will revisit these ramblings months from now. I assume I will laugh at my scattered thoughts and lack of structure. I am in a state of peace. I have been blissfully content for days. NOTHING has shaken my inner happiness. I find myself thirsty for knowledge. I'm listening to him and soaking in all I can. I believed myself to be a strong, assertive commanding female (who just liked to be dominated for fun). I'm feeling like a girl without a care in the world, as I discover my natural self. I don't have to be the warrior of ALL things now. I don't have to be the repacement mother for scared men. I can be and discover myself. I'm seeing in being OWNED I'm being set free.”

She was a 24 year old genuine dime piece, who had been raised by a liberal mother in a feminist household. Men were the weaker sex, in her family. Never allowed to make decisions. Never to be trusted. I met her at a club in Reno singing karaoke, and kept her in collar for six months. Her mother despises me to this day.

What I'm hoping you gather from her writing is how important Leadership is to what we do as Masters. Dominance is just a small part of the whole package. If you focus just on that, you're missing out on a much larger world.