Beyond Leadership

Ask any self-proclaimed leadership guru what it means to be a leader and you receive an avalanche of aphorisms, ranging from the nearly tautological (to inspire your followers), to the almost paradoxical (to create more leaders). You will rarely get the obvious counter-question: What kind of leader do you want to be?

History is littered with leaders of grand vision who inspired vast followership, were greatly admired in their day, left a deep mark on the world -and were described as monsters afterwards. On the opposite side, there is another kind of leader: often embattled, sometimes lonely, but always setting a lofty and perennial example for the good.

That there are good leaders and bad in business as well as in broader life must be uncontroversial. The same goes for the fact that distinguishing between the two, in real time, is hard. Enron, the American energy behemoth gone defunct 20 years ago is a well-known case study of moral failure. But it is easy to forget that, for much of the decade that preceded its collapse, that company’s executives were hailed as icons of visionary leadership. Business titans fallen from grace have never been in short supply -and likely never will. And, sadly, leaders ‘of the year’ have a habit of going out with a bang…

So, leadership is not what we need. Moral leadership is. And to the objection that morality is subjective, the answer is: not so! Despite their huge differences, humans are found to share the same fundamental, imprinted moral principles across epochs, societies, and religions. Deep-down, everybody knows that harming others unprovoked, cheating your way through, revolting just for the sake of it, or betraying your team is wrong. On the contrary, there is no denying that caring for the good of others, being fair to both friends and foes, fighting for a better world, and remaining loyal no matter what is the right thing to do.

The leaders we need are the ones who allow none of these elements of humanity’s universal moral code to atrophy, either in themselves or in the organizations they lead. Instead -difficult and, at times, even self-sacrificing as it is- they hold them as high up as they possibly can. All of them. All the time.