Terrorism and Leadership

Interview with J. Jeneva Leire Patterson, Senior Faculty, Center for Creative Leadership, Brussels,  https://globalfocusmagazine.com/how-terrorism-challenges-the-way-we-lead/, English, Chinese versions.

8:43 a.m. March 22, 2016. Day Two of the Center for Creative Leadership’s Leadership Development Program (LDP) had just begun when my Apple Watch started buzzing. When I saw that the call was from my husband, who knows the teaching-means-no-contact-unless-urgent rule, I slipped out of the classroom. His voice revealed bewilderment. His taxi was turning back from Brussels Airport, just four kilometers away from where I was sitting, because it was under attack. Moments later, Brussels’ metro was hit and the entire city went on lockdown. The other Faculty and I knew we had to stay where we were.

How do you deal with this kind of situation in the course of a training?

In this situation, as a group, we decided to continue; all participants stayed in the program for the remaining four days. As Faculty, our first concern was to make sure our participants would be safe at their hotel. That done, participants contacted their loved ones as well as their offices to determine travel guidelines amidst a terror attack. Once we got settled back into our seats and were able to concentrate again on the learning experience, we decided to create a group circle, wherein everyone in the room could see everyone else’s face. By creating a safe place in which to share thoughts and feelings, the group’s cohesion accelerated and strong interpersonal bonds were evident by the end of that day.

Did the events affect the content of the program? If so, how?

The content did not change; however, the mood of the group was impacted, which perhaps brought the group closer to the concepts and their application that much more quickly.  In a program such as this, an intimacy between participants typically takes a bit longer to develop.  Participants are still getting to know one another on day two and, depending on personality preferences, slowly opening up. The attacks accelerated this process. Each person reacted in a unique way. More than usual, the personal and the professional wove together in overt ways.

What is your take on the attacks from a leadership perspective?

Day two of the LDP, when we study and experience group dynamics in action, is one of the most powerful modules of the week. In just a few hours, participants typically generate profound and transformative insights that last a lifetime. On that day, the learning went even deeper, and more quickly, than usual. As well as understanding that well-managed interpersonal relationships are essential for exercising successful leadership, each participant grasped the morning’s terror as expressions of interpersonal relationships gone terribly wrong.

Leadership requires a keen understanding of people’s motivations. We ask participants why they, and others around them, take action. Answering that question can be surprisingly difficult at times. Do the terrorists know what motivates them to destruct? We are all motivated by unseen yet powerful needs for acceptance and inclusion, connection and affiliation, and for autonomy over our own lives. Our emotional states propel each of us to satisfy these needs by producing, along a continuum, pro-social, constructive behaviour and by producing anti-social, destructive behaviour.

These emotional states can be decades in the making, even centuries if we’re promoting what our fore-communities may have fought for, believed in or run away from. Could corroded interpersonal relations have been part of the impetus for such violence that morning? Effective leadership development could help to redirect the motivation for anti-social behaviour towards more pro-social, community-building behavior. That leadership development may take a very long time, however.

Do you think leadership development practices could help defeat terrorism? If so, how?

The development of skills and competencies that galvanize groups to act on behalf of and in support of human flourishing can aid in bringing communities ever more concretely unified in order to act against encroaching terrorism attacks. It is of course no simple task, is very complex and can require vast resources.

Still, leadership development practices offer myriad methodologies and techniques. Studying interpersonal and group dynamics can help to demystify and better navigate all manner of social engagement, from dinners with family members to meetings with community stakeholders whose views may counter your own. The expectations we bring to our relationships are based on powerful, often subconscious, needs and impulses.

When these needs aren’t satisfied, the consequences can range from insignificant to disastrous. A negative restaurant review. A divorce. A civil war. A geopolitical standoff. A terrorist attack.

When our expectations are met, the possibilities – minor or major – are boundless. A delighted child. A cure for polio. A peace treaty between the FARC and the Colombian government.

Humans cannot function without social dynamics. They provide the foundation of organized living, or as on March 22 and now far too many other dates, the potential destruction thereof. Scott Atran, Ph.D., a cultural anthropologist and the legendary Margaret Mead’s assistant, advises organizations like the United Nations and the White House on terrorism.

Atran suggests some ISIS fighters’ underlying motivations offer insights into not only how to defeat them but also why they become fighters in the first place. He notes that “violent people…members of militant political groups and religious groups, are people, just like everyone else.”1 He also asserts that youth radicalize not because they are lunatics, but because they too, like much of humanity, derive feelings of joy, accomplishment and intimate communal bonds when they transcend the mundane in pursuit of, what are for them, meaningful goals. For them, a meaningful goal could be jihad and self-expression thereof, like blowing up an airport and the civilians inside, followed by suicide.
 
After the Paris attacks, Atran wrote in The Guardian that, “Current counter-radicalization approaches lack the mainly positive, empowering appeal and sweep of ISIS’ story of the world; and the personalized and intimate approach to individuals across the world.”  (Atran, 2015)  Indeed, the Management of Savagery/Chaos, the ISIS lifestyle manifesto published in 2004, instructs and guides the terrorist diaspora in day-to-day responsibilities as well as offers social dynamics that include and connect, that offer meaning and purpose, to its adherents.    

Are there lessons to be learned from events like that?

Latticework intimacies, the result of emotionally impactful, group learning, are not often experienced in professional settings. Leadership development and its practice are, in part, made up of demonstrations of vulnerability, of the exploration of what humans need to feel accepted, included, safe and valued, and concerted action towards the pursuit of meaningful goals. Such intimacy and ‘real-talk’ are not elusive but they are not common either. Emotions. Behaviour. Change. Evolution. Designing a learning context and process for transformational outcomes requires forethought and a pedagogical process that includes the exploration of the interpersonal dimensions of any given group, such that self-understanding, the understanding of others and empathy can expand. The built-in emotional valence and study of self within well-designed leadership development programs can transform individuals, groups, organizations, countries and more.

This is a privilege that should be shared with the widest audience possible. In the long term, a far-reaching availability of learning about social dynamics and their equal potential for destruction or evolution, can help to prevent further events like those of March 22 in Brussels, or in Nice, or in Turkey, or in Pakistan, or in the USA, or in the UK, or in any other location where human interaction takes place.

No matter their country of origin, each year hundreds of participants wonder, incredulously, why the study of human dynamics isn’t a component of any educational program, be it elementary, secondary, university-level, post-graduate, etc. Our societies, and the civic institutions upon which flourishing civilization relies, must provide avenues for all citizens to strengthen their interpersonal competencies such that society’s collective social interactions promote evolution as opposed to extinguish it.

1 2016. The Psychology Of Radicalization: How Terrorist Groups Attract Young Followers. Hidden Brain.  December 15, 2015. https://www.npr.org/2015/12/15/459697926/the-psychology-of-radicalization...