Building Tomorrow's Leaders Today

On Becoming a Polymath Leader

Michael A. Genovese

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317930914
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book focuses on leadership -- what it is, how it works, and how complex, multi-layered and multi-dimensional it is -- and how it will change in the years ahead. If we are to build tomorrow's leaders today, we need to anticipate what skills, temperaments, and specific competencies will be valuable as we face future needs. If the past is a predictor of the future, the world of tomorrow will be characterized by rapid change, new technology, greater diversity, increased globalization, and the need for lifelong learning.

As a political scientist and presidential scholar, Michael Genovese incorporates a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and research on leadership in this book to give students, practitioners, and leadership scholars a welcome and engaging look to the future.

Chapter 1
Leadership

Too Important to Be Left to Chance

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be … this in turn means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

—Isaac Asimov

Genovese Leadership Theorem: Leadership is aspirational or it is nothing.

Nearly a century ago, the German sociologist Max Weber asked a question that vexes us still: “What kind of a man [person] must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?”

Weber’s answer?

“One can say that three preeminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.”

He goes on to explain:

To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not make a politician, unless passion as devoted to a “cause” also makes responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action. And for this, a sense of proportion is needed. This is the decisive psychological quality of the politician: his ability to let realities work upon him with inner concentration and calmness. Hence his distance to things and men. “Lack of distance” per se is one of the deadly sins of every politician. […] the problem is simply how can warm passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in one and the same soul? Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be frivolous intellectual play but rather genuinely human conduct, can be born and nourished from passion alone. However, that firm taming of the soul, which distinguishes the passionate politician and differentiates him from the “sterilely excited” and mere political dilettante, is possible only through habituation to detachment in every sense of the word. The “strength” of a political “personality” means, in the first place, the possession of these qualities of passion, responsibility, and proportion. […] the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity, the deadly enemy of all matter-of-fact devotion to a cause, and of all distance, in this case, of distance towards one’s self.¹

Must we, as Vladimir and Estragon do, merely wait for Godot,² or can we create the leaders of tomorrow, develop and train men and women in the skills and temperament needed to guide us in a dangerous and uncertain world?³

Plato enjoined us to do so. He believed that extended, concentrated leadership training was a necessary precondition to good governing. His Philosopher-King would go through years of rigorous study in preparation for assuming power. Plutarch, in his parallel lives of influential Greeks and Romans invited us to learn the lessons of both positive and negative role models. Likewise, Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince was an effort to advise a would-be ruler on how to govern wisely and well, learning from the great and infamous leaders of the past. Plato, Plutarch, and Machiavelli believed—knew—that leadership was an art as well as a science, and that to govern with skill, a ruler must be well-trained in the specialized craft of governing. Positions of leadership were no place for inexperienced amateurs.

Of course, this view challenges the widely believed myth that leaders are born, not made. Yes, we are born with genes that pre-dispose us in various directions, but there is no leadership gene that propels one to the heights of power and authority. Nature matters, but nurture matters more. Our childhood experiences, leadership opportunities as we grow, education, and a variety of other developmental factors help make us leaders—if we choose to move in that direction. Therefore, we ask: what factors help lead one toward effective leadership? What steps can be taken along the way, to transform person X into a better leader?

Elsewhere, my frequent coauthor Thomas E. Cronin and I listed some common myths about leadership:

• Leaders are born, not made.
• Leadership is a rare and uncommon talent.
• Leaders are necessarily charismatic.
• Leadership is found only at the top of an organization.
• Office holders are necessarily leaders.
• Organizational or group members are either leaders or followers.
• Leaders are smarter and more creative than most of us.
• Power is the dominant currency of leadership.⁴

So just who should have their hand on the wheel of history? Someone who can turn that wheel in the right direction. And what type of person is most likely to both know the right direction toward which to turn that wheel and have the experience, the training, the skill, the courage, and the temperament to actually turn the wheel? A polymath leader.

Do we merely sit back and wait, hoping that our savior will arrive, or do we self-consciously set out to develop men and women with the skill, insight, values, compassion, integrity, and strength to turn the wheel? Of course, we do not merely hope, we also work. And becoming an excellent leader, a proficient leader, takes long, hard work.

An old Arab proverb, apropos to the West as well, goes: “As you are so will be the rulers that rule you.” Or, as a similar saying has it: “In a democracy, people tend to get the government they deserve.” Although it may seem convenient to sit back and wait for a leader to save us, or blame them when they fail us, the reality is that sometimes we do end up with the leaders we deserve. And usually we deserve better.

From the time humans began to live in communities, leadership became necessary. All organizations and communities require direction, coordination, and leadership. A hundred years ago, sociologist Robert Michels coined the phrase, “the iron law of oligarchy,” in reference to the fact that in all organizations, leaders emerge.⁵ It is an iron law that some type of oligarchy or elite will run things. And a study of human history confirms this iron law that leaders are indispensable, inevitable, and ubiquitous. They can also be very dangerous.

But what makes leadership so necessary? Leadership scholar Michael Harvey argues that the human condition does. He writes,

Leadership is part and parcel of the human condition. A mystery as modern as the nation-state and as ancient as the tribe, it brings together the best and worst in human nature: love and hate, hope and fear, trust and deceit, service and selfishness. Leadership draws on who we are, but it also shapes what we might be—a kind of alchemy of souls that can produce both Lincoln’s “better angels of our nature” and Hitler’s willing executioners. In its constituent parts leadership includes three basic social organizing patterns—kinship, reciprocity, and command. From kinship it draws a sense of connection (if often exploited) between leaders and followers. From reciprocity it draws a sense of mutual exchange and benefit (if often betrayed). But from command it takes its most visible aspect, for leadership is above all a social relation of dominance and consent (if often constrained), yoked uneasily together. At the heart of leadership is a tension precipitated by our double nature—social animals with self-reflective and often selfish minds.⁶

Humans need organization as well as hierarchy. As soon as our ancestors started living in groups, government became necessary. And as soon as government became necessary, leaders became necessary. Collective work requires coordination, thus government and leadership.

The Polymath Leader

The leader of the twenty-first century must be a master of many talents; he or she must be a polymath leader. And just what is a poly-math leader?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines polymath as “a person of great and varied learning.”⁷ Such a person must learn a great deal about a great many things.

The United States Army, which has one of the world’s most sophisticated leadership training programs, tries to create what it calls a “panathlete” leader. This is the ideal leader and is defined as officers “who are not only competent in their core warrior skills, but who are also scholars; men and women who are creative, innovative, strategically-minded, culturally competent, and skilled in all aspects of peace, war, politics, and civil administration.”⁸

To illustrate, there are many polymaths throughout history with whom you are already familiar. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) of Greece, engaged in philosophy, physics, metaphysics, poetry, rhetoric, logic, politics and government, ethics, biology, zoology, and more. The famous Roman emperor, Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE) was another polymath leader. He was an accomplished orator, writer, general, manager, strategist, and much more. Jafar Al-Sadig (702–765 CE) from Medina, in Saudi Arabia, was an Islamic scholar, Iman, astronomer, philosopher, physician, physicist, and jurist. Al-Jazari (1136– 1204) was a Kurdish astronomer, mathematician, Islamic scholar, innovator, and mechanical engineer.

Theodore Roosevelt was a polymath. Soldier, statesman, president, author, cowboy, hunter, explorer, Roosevelt was a well-rounded, accomplished, and multitalented person. Perhaps the best known and most accomplished polymath is Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) of Florence, Italy. Leonardo was a sculptor, painter, military strategist, inventor, scientist, mathematician, physicist, engineer, humanist cartographer, and poet. Isaac Newton (1643–1727) was a British physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and theologian. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was a philosopher, inventor, statesman, diplomat, horticulturalist, architect, president, and author of the Declaration of Independence.

It is this polymath leader that president-elect John F. Kennedy spoke of just prior to his inauguration:

When at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us … our success or failure in whatever office we hold will be measured by our answers to four questions:

• Were we truly men of courage …?
• Were we truly men of integrity …?
• Were we truly men of judgment …?
• Were we truly men of dedication …?”⁹

Defining Leadership

Leadership scholars often bemoan the fact that there is no single agreed-upon definition of leadership. But we should not fret. First, many fields offer contested definitions of just what it is they study. In my own field, political science, there is no consensus on just what we mean by politics. Second, there is enough general agreement on the component parts of leadership that we do know what it is we study, and that agreement animates both research and understanding. The obsession with definitional purity obscures rather than enlightens our understanding as we digress to argue just how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines leader as “one that leads,” an altogether useless definition. But this same dictionary defines lead as “to show the way,” a surprisingly apt if incomplete definition. Leaders show the way. They may or may not be office holders. Martin Luther King, Jr. held no political office, but he certainly showed us the way. The dictionary also defines lead as “to guide,” another apt definition. Leaders guide us. And they do so much more. They set a vision, move the machinery of government or the organization behind the achievement of that vision, mobilize supporters, r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• About the Author
• Chapter 1 Leadership: Too Important to Be Left to Chance
• Chapter 2 A Leadership Composite from the Classics
• Chapter 3 The Leadership Toolkit
• Chapter 4 Leadership and the Crosscurrents of Change
• Chapter 5 Building Leaders: The Genovese Leadership Academy
• Chapter 6 Conclusion: Leadership, for What?
• Author Index
• Subject Index