The Leader's Companion: Insights on Leadership Through the Ages

J. Thomas Wren

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781439135976
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

This book serves as a guided introduction to the richly diverse perspectives on leadership throughout the ages and throughout the world. Each of the selections, introduced by the editor, presents enlightening thoughts on a different aspect of leadership. Writings by Plato, Aristotle, Lao-tzu and others demonstrate that the challenges of leadership are as old as civilization. Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Ghandi, and W.E.B. Du Bois provide a wide range of insights into the eternal practice and problems of leadership. Modern masters of leadership such as James MacGregor Burns, John Kotter, and Warren Bennis join such leading practitioners as Max De Pree and Roger B. Smith in discussing contemporary issues in leadership theory and practice.

PART I

THE CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP

Many groups of people—citizens, workers, students, politicians and business executives—are troubled by a lack of strong leadership. Is this a valid concern? Part I addresses this issue. In the first two selections, two giants in the field of leadership studies, John Gardner and James MacGregor Burns, suggest that there is indeed a “crisis of leadership” in today’s society, and that it is incumbent upon all responsible individuals to redress the problem. In the third reading, Richard Couto takes issue with the premise that there is a dearth of good leadership in our society. Couto argues that individuals who make such statements are simply looking in the wrong places for effective leadership; it exists in the form of great numbers of “citizen leaders.” This debate is moderated by Robert Greenleaf in the final reading of this initial section, who articulates a middle way between the jeremiads of Gardner and Burns and the optimism of Couto. Greenleaf is well aware of the challenges to leadership in today’s world, and presents a solution to the “crisis of leadership” which parallels the “citizen leader” of Couto. Greenleaf argues that what is really needed in our attempt to address society’s woes are “servant leaders”—in our neighborhoods, in politics, and in private industry.

1

The Cry for Leadership

John W. Gardner

John Gardner has served six presidents of the United States in various leadership capacities. He was Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, founding chairman of Common Cause, co-founder of the Independent Sector, chairman of the National Coalition, and president of the Carnegie Corporation and Foundation. He is currently the Miriam and Peter Haas Centennial Professor at Stanford Business School.

Why do we not have better leadership? The question is asked over and over. We complain, express our disappointment, often our outrage; but no answer emerges.

When we ask a question countless times and arrive at no answer, it is possible that we are asking the wrong question—or that we have misconceived the terms of the query. Another possibility is that it is not a question at all but simply convenient shorthand to express deep and complex anxieties. It would strike most of our contemporaries as old-fashioned to cry out, “What shall we do to be saved?” And it would be time-consuming to express full your concerns about the social disintegration, the moral disorientation, and the spinning compass needle of our time. So we cry out for leadership.

To some extent the conventional views of leadership are shallow, and set us up for endless disappointment. There is an element of wanting to be rescued, of wanting a parental figure who will set all things right. Such fantasies for grown-up children should not lead us to dismiss the need for leaders nor the insistent popular expression of that need. A great many people who are not given to juvenile fantasies want leaders—leaders who are exemplary, who inspire, who stand for something, who help us set and achieve goals.

Unfortunately, in popular thinking on the subject, the mature need and the childlike fantasies interweave. One of [my] tasks . . . is to untangle them, and to sketch what is realistically possible.

Leadership is such a gripping subject that once it is given center stage it draws attention away from everything else. But attention to leadership alone is sterile—and inappropriate. The larger topic of which leadership is a subtopic is the accomplishment of group purpose, which is furthered not only by effective leaders but also by innovators, entrepreneurs and thinkers; by the availability of resources; by questions of morale and social cohesion; and by much else that I discuss. . . . It is not my purpose to deal with either leadership or its related subjects comprehensively. I hope to illuminate aspects of the subject that may be of use in facing our present dilemmas—as a society and as a species.

The Issues Behind the Issues

We are faced with immensely threatening problems—terrorism, AIDS, drugs, depletion of the ozone layer, the threat of nuclear conflict, toxic waste, the real possibility of economic disaster. Even moderately informed citizens could extend the list. Yet on none of the items listed does our response acknowledge the manifest urgency of the problem. We give every appearance of sleep-walking through a dangerous passage of history. We see the life-threatening problems, but we do not react. We are anxious but immobilized.

I do not find the problems themselves as frightening as the questions they raise concerning our capacity to gather our forces and act. No doubt many of the grave problems that beset us have discoverable, though difficult, solutions. But to mobilize the required resources and to bear what sacrifices are necessary calls for a capacity to focus our energies, a capacity for sustained commitment. Suppose that we can no longer summon our forces to such effort. Suppose that we have lost the capacity to motivate ourselves for arduous exertions in behalf of the group. A discussion of leadership cannot avoid such questions.

Could it be that we suppress our awareness of problems—however ominous—because we have lost all conviction that we can do anything about them? Effective leaders heighten both motivation and confidence, but when these qualities have been gravely diminished, leaders have a hard time leading.

Suppose that fragmentation and divisiveness have proceeded so far in American life that we can no longer lend ourselves to any worthy common purpose. Suppose that our shared values have disintegrated to the point that we believe in nothing strongly enough to work for it as a group. Shared values are the bedrock on which leaders build the edifice of group achievement. No examination of leadership would be complete without attention to the decay and possible regeneration of the value framework.

Suppose that our institutions have become so lacking in adaptiveness that they can no longer meet new challenges. All human institutions must renew themselves continuously; therefore, we must explore this process as it bears on leadership.

I think of such matters—motivation, values, social cohesion, renewal—as the “issues behind the issues,” and I shall return to them often in the pages that follow.

Our Dispersed Leadership

In this society, leadership is dispersed throughout all segments of the society—government, business, organized labor, the professions, the minority communities, the universities, social agencies, and so on. Leadership is also dispersed down through the many levels of social functioning, from the loftiest levels of our national life down to the school principal, the local union leader, the shop supervisor.

We have always associated both kinds of dispersion with our notions of democracy and pluralism. But as our understanding of the principles of organization has developed, we have come to see that there is really no alternative to such dispersal of leadership if large-scale systems are to retain their vitality. The point is relevant not only for our society as a whole but also for all the organized subsystems (corporations, unions, government agencies, and so forth) that compose it.

Most leadership today is an attempt to accomplish purposes through (or in spite of) large, intricately organized systems. There is no possibility that centralized authority can call all the shots in such systems, whether the system is a corporation or a nation. Individuals in all segments and at all levels must be prepared to exercise leaderlike initiative and responsibility, using their local knowledge to solve problems at their level. Vitality at middle and lower levels of leadership can produce greater vitality in the higher levels of leadership.

In addition to all people down the line who may properly be called leaders at their level, there are in any vital organization or society a great many individuals who share leadership tasks unofficially, by behaving responsibly with respect to the purposes of the group. Such individuals, who have been virtually ignored in the leadership literature, are immensely important to the leader and to the group. (And as I point out later, even the responsible dissenter may be sharing the leadership task.)

Understanding Leadership

I have seen a good many leaders in action. My first chore for a president was for Eisenhower, whom I had known earlier when he headed Columbia University. Of the seven presidents since then, I have worked with all but two. But I have learned powerful lessons from less lofty leaders—from a top sergeant in the Marine Corps, from university presidents, corporate chief executive officers, community leaders, bankers, scientists, union leaders, school superintendents, and others. I have led, and have worked in harness with other leaders.

The development of more and better leaders is an important objective that receives a good deal of attention in these pages. But this is not a how-to-do-it manual. The first step is not action; the first step is understanding. The first question is how to think about leadership. I have in mind not just political buffs who want more and better leaders on the political scene, nor just CEOs who wonder why there are not more leaders scattered through their huge organizations. I have in mind citizens who do not want to be victimized by their leaders, neighborhood organizations that want to train their future leaders, the young people who dream of leadership, and all kinds of people who just want to comprehend the world around them.

Citizens must understand the possibilities and limitations of leadership. We must know how we can strengthen and support good leaders; and we must be able to see through the leaders who are exploiting us, playing on our hatred and prejudice, or taking us down dangerous paths.

Understanding these things, we come to see that much of the responsibility for leaders and how they perform is in our own hands. If we are lazy, self-indulgent, and wanting to be deceived; if we willingly follow corrupt leaders; if we allow our heritage of freedom to decay; if we fail to be faithful monitors of the public process—then we shall get and deserve the worst. . . .

Leadership Development

How many dispersed leaders do we need? When one considers all the towns and city councils, corporations, government agencies, unions, schools and colleges, churches, professions and so on, the number must be high. In order to have a target to think about, and setting precision aside, let us say that it is 1 percent of the population—2.4 million men and women who are prepared to take leaderlike action at their levels. How can we ever find that many leaders?

Fortunately, the development of leaders is possible on a scale far beyond anything we have ever attempted. As one surveys the subject of leadership, there are depressing aspects but leadership development is not one of them. Although our record to date is unimpressive, the prospects for improvement are excellent.

Many dismiss the subject with the confident assertion that “leaders are born not made.” Nonsense! Most of what leaders have that enables them to lead is learned. Leadership is not a mysterious activity. It is possible to describe the tasks that leaders perform. And the capacity to perform those tasks is widely distributed in the population. Today, unfortunately, specialization and patterns of professional functioning draw most of our young potential leaders into prestigious and lucrative nonleadership roles.

We have barely scratched the surface in our efforts toward leadership development. In the mid-twenty-first century, people will look back on our present practices as primitive.

Most men and women go through their lives using no more than a fraction—usually a rather small fraction—of the potentialities within them. The reservoir of unused human talent and energy is vast, and learning to tap that reservoir more effectively is one of the exciting tasks ahead for humankind.

Among the untapped capabilities are leadership gifts. For every effectively functioning leader in our society, I would guess that there are five or ten others with the same potential for leadership who have never led or perhaps even considered leading. Why? Perhaps they were drawn off into the byways of specialization . . . or have never sensed the potentialities within them . . . or have never understood how much the society needs what they have to give.

We can do better. Much, much better.

---

Reprinted with the permission of The Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, from On Leadership by John W. Gardner. Copyright © 1990 by John W. Gardner. Reprinted by permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright ^© 1990 by John W. Gardner.

2

The Crisis of Leadership

James MacGregor Burns

James MacGregor Burns won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for his study of Franklin D. Roosevelt. His book Leadership is considered to be a seminal work in leadership studies. Burns has been Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government at Williams College, and he has served as president of the American Political Science Association.

One of the most universal cravings of our time is a hunger for compelling and creative leadership. Many of us spent our early years in the eras of the titans—Freud and Einstein, Shaw and Stravinsky, Mao and Gandhi, Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini. Most of these colossi died in the middle years of this century; some lingered on, while a few others—de Gaulle, Nehru, perhaps Kennedy and King—joined the pantheon of leadership. These giants strode across our cultural and intellectual and political horizons. We—followers everywhere—loved or loathed them. We marched for them and fought against them. We died for them and we killed some of them. We could not ignore them.

In the final quarter of our century that life-and-death engagement with leadership has given way to the cult of personality, to a “gee whiz” approach to celebrities. We peer into the private lives of leaders, as though their sleeping habits, eating preferences, sexual practices, dogs, and hobbies carry messages of profound significance. Entire magazines are devoted to trivia about “people” and serious newspapers start off their news stories with a personality anecdote or slant before coming to the essence of the matter. Huge throngs parade in Red Square and in the T’ien An Men Square with giant portraits of men who are not giants. The personality cult—a cult of devils as well as heroes—thrives in both East and West.

The crisis of leadership today is the mediocrity or irresponsibility of so many of the men and women in power, but leadership rarely rises to the full need for it. The fundamental crisis underlying mediocrity is intellectual. If we know all too much about our leaders, we know far too little about leadership. We fail to grasp the essence of leadership that is relevant to the modern age and hence we cannot agree even on the standards by which to measure, recruit, and reject it. Is leadership simply innovation—cultural or political? Is it essentially inspiration? Mobilization of followers? Goal setting? Goal fulfillment? Is a leader the definer of values? Satisfier of needs? If leaders require followers, who leads whom from where to where, and why? How do leaders lead followers without being wholly led by followers? Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.

It was not always so. For two millennia at least, leaders of thought did grapple with the vexing problems of the rulers vs. the ruled. Long before modern sociology Plato analyzed not only philosopher-kings but the influences on rulers of upbringing, social and economic institutions, and responses of followers. Long before today’s calls for moral leadership and “profiles in courage,” Confucian thinkers were examining the concept of leadership in moral teaching and by example. Long before Gandhi, Christian thinkers were preaching nonviolence. Long before modern biography, Plutarch was writing brilliantly about the lives of a host of Roman and Greek rulers and orators, arguing that philosophers “ought to converse especially with ‘men in power,’ ” and examining questions such as whether “an old man should engage in public affairs.” From this biographer Shakespeare borrowed for his Antony and Cleopatra.

A rich literature on rulership flourished in the classical and middle ages. Later—for reasons we must examine—the study of rulership and leadership ran into serious intellectual difficulties. Leadership as a concept has dissolved into small and discrete meanings. A recent study turned up 130 definitions of the word. A superabundance of facts about leaders far outruns theories of leadership. The world-famous New York Public Library has tens of thousands of biographies, monographs, and newspaper clippings on individual political leaders, but only one catalogue entry to “political leadership” (referring to an obscure politician of forty years ago).

There is, in short, no school of leadership, intellectual or practical. Does it matter that we lack standards for assessing past, present, and potential leaders? Without a powerful modern philosophical tradition, without theoretical and empirical cumulation, without guiding concepts, and without considered practical experiences, we lack the very foundations for knowledge of a phenomenon—leadership in the arts, the academy, science, politics, the professions, war—that touches and shapes our lives. Without such standards and knowledge we cannot make vital distinctions between types of leaders; we cannot distinguish leaders from rulers, from power wiel...