The kind of contextual perspective on leadership presented here has important impli- cations for the kind of education that should serve top leaders best in their ongoing development. In most domains, the world of business included, there is no role that fully prepares someone for leadership at the top of an institution. Most CEOs pick up their most valuable professional skills and knowledge on their way up through the ranks, and more of the same is rarely the developmental priority at the highest level. Jeffrey Immelt, Welch’s successor at General Electric, is an avid reader of history and biography, but rarely reads business books, and he is not unusual. During his heyday at Citigroup, John Reed read deeply into the history of scientific ideas, studying “how ideas evolve” and how great scientists develop “a sense of where the breaks are coming”, and he was an unusually innovative banker for his time (quoted in O’Reilly 1988: 24).
Perspective, Not Prescription
What leaders are looking for most at this level is perspective, not prescription. Yet, within the business literature, we continue to bombard them with advice on lead- ership attributes, styles and behaviors and wonder why so many take no notice.
If effectiveness depends on the ability to create and embody a compelling story that will reach into the hearts and minds of every stakeholder, then today’s CEOs need to learn how to uncover the deeper values that they share with their followers and how to articulate them in fresh and compelling ways that link their company’s future with its history and its place in the broader scheme of things. If too many of them show little capacity for visionary leadership, it is not because they lack techniques for lateral or creative thinking. More likely it is because their interests are too narrow, their deeper values remain untapped and they are failing to stretch themselves beyond the “completeness of a limited man”, to use the phrase of John Stuart Mill.
The commercial environment of the 1980s and 1990s presented a very clear per- formance priority for business – build shareholder value. The business leaders of the time were highly rewarded for staying focused on this goal, and professional education of the kind typified in the traditional MBA (Master of Business Ad- ministration) program continued to serve them well in meeting this challenge. The business leaders of today are facing into a very different world, with new priorities and new expectations that will require them to go well beyond the confines of their professional training in educating themselves more fully for their roles.
Understanding the New Priorities and Expectations
In his recent book, The Politics of Fortune, Jeffrey Garten (2002), dean of Yale School of Management, identified the new priorities for business leaders in the post
112 B. Leavy 9/11 and post-Enron era, among them restoring integrity to the financial markets, sustaining free trade, reducing global poverty, and expanding corporate citizenship.
All of these will require the business leaders of today to broaden and deepen their en- gagement with their wider society, politically and socially, as well as commercially.
For example, restoring integrity to the markets must be a priority if business leaders are to regain their reputation and standing with the wider community; sustaining free trade can only be done with business and government working in partnership;
reducing global poverty will be the key not only to creating the growth markets of tomorrow but also to earning the legitimacy to participate in them; and expanding corporate citizenship will be the key to securing and retaining the commitment and loyalty of all of the key stakeholders, not just shareholders, but also customers, em- ployees, suppliers, and the local communities within which the firm operates. The strategic assets in more and more businesses today are “knowledge” workers, and these will not be content to devote their talent, commitment and creativity only to the service of the narrow interests of shareholders – they will want their companies to make a difference in the world and be “a force for good”, as firms like BP have increasingly come to recognize. . ..
“Is genuine progress still possible? Is development sustainable? Or is one strand of progress – industrialization – now doing such damage to the environment that the next generation won’t have a world worth living in?” These are the questions that Lord John Browne, the former chairman of BP, posed in a BBC Reith lecture at the turn of the millennium. According to Peter Senge and Goran Carsted (2001:
26), leaders in the business world and related domains are going to have to learn to work within a fusion of three world views, rationalism, naturalism and humanism, if we are to make real progress in moving towards a post-industrial model based on sustainable development:
Rationalism, the belief in reason, has dominated society throughout modern times. It re- mains the dominant perspective in business and education. Yet, it has limits. It cannot explain the passion that motivates entrepreneurs committed to a new product idea, nor the imagination of scientists testing an intuition. Nor does it explain why a quiet walk on the beach or a hike in the mountains may inspire both. These can only be understood by seeing how naturalism, humanism, and rationalism infuse into one another. Naturalism arises from our innate sense of being part of nature. Humanism arises from the rich interior life that connects reason, emotion, and awareness – and ultimately allows us to connect with one another. Epochs in human history that have nurtured all three have stood out as golden ages.
As Jeffrey Garten (2002) argues in The Politics of Fortune, today’s system for edu- cating business leaders does not go far enough to train CEOs to be leaders in society, and to meet the challenges of this new agenda. In these dynamic and uncertain times, it seems timely to look again at the role that the humanities might play in the education of business leaders, particularly at the institutional level, where a hu- manist perspective is now most needed. “Wherever did we get the notion that in management there is a reasonable separation of intellect and spirit. . .. Where did it come from, all this hiding of emotion, of passion, behind some cool mask of macho detachment?” asks James Autry of Meredith Corporation (quoted in Farnham 1991:
51). Yet, much of our traditional approach to the training of leaders seems to reflect
Inspirational Leadership in Business and Other Domains 113 this view. We might all now benefit from recognizing anew what many business leaders and academics of the post-war era believed over half a century ago, that an immersion in the humanities can help an executive become not only a wiser, broader person, but also a wiser, broader businessperson. Few advanced executive development programs go near to developing this capacity to date, and many do not even try.
Leadership as a Potential Process of Self-Discovery and Moral Education
The distinguishing mark of the liberal arts is their emphasis on integration and wholeness, and this is particularly relevant at the highest levels of leadership where strategic vision is more a process of synthesis than analysis. Professional education in the sciences and commerce tend to be organized primarily around the rational search for solutions to well-defined problems. However, top business leaders today are increasingly required to make judgments on questions of values and ethics, not just technical or commercial challenges, and this is where a liberal arts education comes into its own. Some immersion in the humanities can also help a leader to avoid, what Daniel Chirot (1994) has called, the “tyranny of certitude”, in which excessive rationalism, not tempered with enough humanity, can wreak havoc both in business organizations (Taylorism) and in society at large (Nazism/Stalinism).
Finally, study of the liberal arts can also help our leaders empathize more deeply with the “crooked timber of humanity” and learn to value people in the round, with all their virtues and their flaws, and even the most inspirational of figures often have plenty of both. Take, for example, Bobby Kennedy. Historian and biographer, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1978) believed him to be the most creative man in American public life at the time of his assassination, yet during the ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign, cartoonist Jules Feiffer was able to caricature some of the contradictions in his character in the following way:
The good Bobby is a courageous reformer, the bad Bobby makes deals. The good Bobby sent federal troops down south to enforce civil rights, the bad Bobby appointed racists judges down south to enforce civil rights. The good Bobby is a fervent civil libertarian, the bad Bobby is a fervent wire- tapper. (Feiffer cartoon reproduced in Schlesinger 1978: 807).
During the early 1950s, the world was embarked on a long struggle “between op- posing ideals, opposing ways of life”, as Donald David (1949:1), then dean of Har- vard Business School, described it at the time. Today, we are facing this struggle afresh, at a time when business has become the leading institution in geo-political development, and the need for the humanist perspective at CEO level is now more pressing than ever. In leadership studies generally, we still do not fully know where great transcending ambition comes from, but if history is any guide, then the kind of ambition that built the cathedral at Chartres, painted the Sistine Chapel or circum- navigated the globe for the first time with a starving and mutinous crew, does not come from personal ego or the search for material success alone.
114 B. Leavy An earlier generation of business leaders believed that management, like the arts and education, should serve a higher purpose than just the needs of business. It now seems timely to return to this ideal if our institutional leaders hope to be able to inspire their people and help make working lives more meaningful in this post- modern world. As Senge and Carsted (2001: 34) have put it: “If enterprises are not committed to anything beyond making money, why should managers be surprised that workers make transactional commitments?” Leaders cannot hope to engage, inspire and empower in any transforming way without being willing to deepen their knowledge of who they really are and what they truly value, and leadership at the institutional level provides a unique opportunity for such reflective self-knowledge and personal development, for those open, committed, and courageous enough to take advantage of it. In reflecting on his own experience as an institutional leader at the highest level, particularly on his role and responsibilities in the Civil Rights issue, Lyndon Johnson, captured this better than most when he said:
Nothing makes a man come to grips more directly with his conscience than the Presidency.
Sitting in that chair involves making decisions that draw out a man’s fundamental commit- ments. The burden of his responsibility literally opens up his soul. No longer can he accept matters as given: no longer can he write off hopes and needs as impossible. In that house of decision, the White House, a man becomes his commitments. He understands who he really is. He learns what he genuinely wants to be. (quoted in Heifetz 1974: 148)
This chapter began by highlighting the limitations of trying to understand the se- cret of exceptional leadership at the institutional level by focusing on the personal attributes, styles and generic skills of the leader alone. Such skills, no matter how highly developed, are an insufficient basis for leadership that seeks to be transform- ing in impact and moral in influence. Deeper insight can be gained into the nature of inspirational leadership at the institutional level by viewing it as a dynamic process, the outcome of which is shaped by three main elements: context, conviction and credibility. The nature of each was examined in some detail. The chapter concludes by identifying a number of developmental priorities for individuals aspiring to be institutional leaders that are linked to this perspective. What leaders need most at this level, beyond the requirement for the type of well-honed professional skills that helped to get them there in the first place, are a widening of their perspective, a well- developed grasp of the defining priorities for business in society in their particular era, and a capacity for ongoing self-discovery, qualities that some immersion in the liberal arts seems well designed to foster.
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