Art & Creativity Quote by Vance Packard

Leadership, Packard implies, is persuasion with a private certainty and a public smile. The line is elegant because it refuses the sentimental version of leadership as pure service while also dodging the brute version as command. Instead, it lands on the slippery middle ground: you have an agenda, you believe in it, and your job is to make that belief contagious.

The operative word is "appears". Packard, a writer famous for dissecting mid-century manipulation in consumer culture, knows that "leadership" often functions as a flattering label for influence campaigns. The quote quietly relocates power from institutions to psychology: the win is not forcing compliance but manufacturing desire. "Want" is doing a lot of work here. It suggests that the most effective leader doesn't merely secure agreement; they reshape incentives, identities, and social norms so people experience your goal as their own.

Then there's the revealing asymmetry: "something you are convinced should be done". The leader's conviction is the starting gun, not the group's deliberation. That phrasing carries a warning about paternalism: the crowd's autonomy is preserved in form (they "want" it) but not necessarily in origin (you already decided). Packard's context - postwar corporate America, advertising's rise, the professionalization of "motivating" workers and voters - makes the sentence feel less like a pep talk and more like a diagnostic. It praises leadership's artistry while exposing its ethical trap: if you can engineer desire, you can also bypass consent.