‘To challenge someone – to make a demand as if of right – implies the exercise of authority of an unusual kind,’ mused the young chief executive. ‘If the demand came from a leader, then he or she must have that kind of authority. He or she must be able to ask people not to spare themselves in such a way that they cannot say no.’
‘How does a leader acquire such moral authority?’ I queried.
‘In the first instance they have to be able to show – if called to do so – that they have not spared themselves. They have to be able to uncover their scars. Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, who both endured suffering and imprisonment, have a certain nobility of character. Didn’t their people sense in them what you just called moral authority? It is frequently lacking, alas, in those who rely merely on the authority of their position.
‘Gandhi and Mandela had acquired the right to demand what they have already given.
‘By the same warrant, no Board of Directors can call for sacrifices from their managers and workforce if they, as the senior executives, have taken up residence in Easy Street,’ added the young chief executive.
‘Or Luxury Square. Of course the Chairman of the Board can appeal for everyone to tighten their belts and work harder, using all the now familiar rhetoric of leadership – vision, inspiration, challenge, all the old familiar buzzwords – but his words will lack power.’
‘That reminds me of the Zulu proverb about people not hearing what you say because of the thunder of what you are.’
‘Yes, it is as if human nature obeys certain laws, and if we under- stand those laws it helps us to work with the grain of human nature rather than against it. We do not respond to leaders who do not share our hardships and dangers. Think back to that tragic day September 11, 2001 when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York. One name went round the world as a byword of leadership – Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Why? Because he shared the dangers and suffering of his people.’
‘Yet the leader is surely only voicing the challenge: it is there, implicitly or explicitly, in the situation.’
‘That must be so, for there are plenty of challenges in life that come to us without any intermediary.’
‘Like the challenge facing my son when he had to learn to walk again after a serious motorbike accident, or the target my daughter set herself to do a sponsored walk in the highest region of the Andes to raise money for our local children’s hospice. Both these challenges involved elements of uncertainty and risk – they might not have made it.’
‘If there was no such risk,’ I replied, ‘we might not interpret it as a challenge at all. If the outcome is absolutely safe and certain, it may not fully engage us.’
Keypoints
- TASK is a general word that signifies no more than something that needs to be done. We have to look behind it to see what PURPOSE the task is serving, for it’s purpose that gives it value – the meaning that our spirit seeks.
- The purposes that most inspire are those that are intrinsically good; they are often so because they contribute to the common good. Such service takes many forms, but there is a broad distinction between service that meets individual needs – with personal response as its bonus – and service that meets social needs.
- The value of good is not the only source of inspiration. Truth and beauty – the other members of the trinity of great values – are also forces that draw us to seek them. Where the three overlapping circles intersect may represent the power of love as a spiritual force.
- Purpose suggests both movement towards a result and the result itself. Of all our words for results – vision, ends, goals, aims, objects, objectives – it alone conveys the idea of significance, of values that confer meaning.
- Vision is an act of creative imagination – the ability to see what no one else has seen or imagined possible.
- Apart from having purpose, a task will not stir us unless it stretches us. As the Italian proverb says, ‘By demanding the impossible we obtain the possible’.
Success as a conductor has nothing to do with movement. It has everything to do with the persona, the personality and a person’s ability to communicate with the musicians and convey your ideas. The strength of the performance comes in conveying your involvement in the process, rather than being a god who wields the whip with the capacity to open and close the door. You must be someone who embraces and helps the orchestra. The most effective leadership, to me, is the leadership that doesn’t look like leadership. The moment somebody walks in looking and sounding like a ‘leader’, that’s quite suspicious to me. You must be part of the process – so convinced by what you are doing that everyone else has no choice but to follow you. It’s intuition and personality. You have to encourage people to open up, seduce them, not scare them, to follow you. That’s a great leader!