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Most of the attributes that people commonly associate with leadership, such as possessing a vision of the future, inspiring followers and motivating laggards, gain their significance only within the framework of interpretation. Good leadership is interpretive leadership, a point that is frequently ignored, as we lack the categories to appreciate it. These categories look more like what D. W. Winnicott called holding and interpretation than they do grand strategizing and master-planning.
Good leadership interprets the hopes and fears of followers to them, so that they will not despair, or be overcome with anxiety. Leadership is about interpreting anxiety, above all what Melanie Klein calls depressive anxiety: that one is not good enough, mature enough, strong enough, and self-controlled enough to make good on the badness in the world, badness to which one has contributed by malevolence or neglect. Good leadership is about helping followers face this anxiety, and so put together the parts of themselves they keep separate so as not to know what they fear to know, their own weakness, immaturity, and incompetence. Good leadership may serve the individualism of followers by helping them separate from the mass, while remaining members of the group.