At the head

The homeroom teacher called Liên, the class monitor, to his office and asked:

• Why did you remove Hảo from the class committee? The whole class voted for her.
• Please, sir, I don't get along with Hảo. We keep working at cross purposes.
• If you disagree, you should ask me which view is right. Why did you simply push her aside?
• Sir, I thought that as class monitor I had the right to arrange the personnel so that work goes smoothly.
• You have misunderstood. A person in authority does not use that authority to get their own way. They may use it only to keep things in order and keep everyone within the rules. Go back to class now. I will come down shortly to settle this properly.
  Liên stood there hesitating. The teacher went on:
• You don't seem to have understood what I just said, because it is a very big idea. A person in authority uses it to carry out the law, not to carry out their own personal wishes. Think about this carefully.
  Liên bowed to the teacher and went out 🚦

Many people do not understand this. Once they have power, they think they are free to do as they please. Everyone has their own "wishes", and they all differ. Society would fall into chaos if everyone followed their own "wishes", which is why there must be someone at the head to press all those "wishes" into a common set of rules.
The authority of a leader is to bring everything into a shared course, not to create a private course and lead everyone off along it. The ethics of the one at the head lie in setting aside personal wishes and keeping impartial, so as to carry out the common path and the common principle.
People think of all kinds of private, personal matters, and what makes a leader superior to everyone else is precisely being able to set aside their own wishes and restrain their personal likes and dislikes, so as to lead their colleagues according to the law and according to moral principle.

Sometimes the one at the head has a new idea, but they must turn that new idea into a common rule and a common plan, and not let it become a personal wish. The higher one rises, the more the ego should fade; that is truth, and that is ethics.
Throughout history, many leaders have made mistakes simply because they believed they had the right to order their subordinates to follow their own will. There is a clip filmed on a mobile phone, apparently in America, in which a fierce policewoman drives a poor man out of a restaurant. Another diner asks her under what law she is throwing a citizen out of a restaurant while he is eating. The policewoman answers, "I am the law." Watching the clip, one feels very sorry for the poor man, who had been invited in by a kind person, only for someone to call the police to throw him out. It was tyrant behaviour.
Having authority does not mean becoming the law; it means making everything follow the law. And in religious communities, the one at the head must be the one who holds the reins and keeps fellow believers on the path of the teaching, not act on their own to serve their personal interests.

Power easily makes people arrogant. It takes a person of real wisdom and virtue to restrain their ego while holding power. We see that good leaders are all gentle and humble, because they can restrain their ego. Such people do not let private likes and dislikes or private wishes govern their actions. They will be able to do a great deal of good for society.
Hitler was the kind of man who displayed too much forceful arrogance and pressed his subordinates too hard to carry out his own wishes. In meetings he always shouted at them fiercely. In the end his career turned to ashes and was ruined very quickly.

No wishes of one's own, no private likes and dislikes, only the common interest of everyone, only the common law of the country, only the common moral principle of heaven and earth: that is the ideal person at the head.