What can business leaders learn from Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”?

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All it takes for your happiness and your maximum commitment is a culture that respects and appreciates your talents and nurtures your growth, fostering an environment where you can thrive and contribute meaningfully.

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Tolstoy opens his novel with the famous line, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way", thereby setting the stage in a major work of world literature for an exploration of these themes through the novel’s characters and their relationships.

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What is it that makes marriages happy, according to the author?

Shared values and goals: A relationship based on shared ethical, spiritual, and practical goals provides a solid foundation for happiness in marriage.

Emotional Intimacy and Communication: An open, honest exchange between partners that cultivates a deep emotional connection.

Mutual respect and understanding: The recognition and appreciation of each other's uniqueness as well as the understanding of the partner's needs and desires.

Adaptability and Compromise: The ability to adapt to change and compromise helps resolve conflicts and maintain harmony.

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And likewise, what is it that makes marriages unhappy, according to Tolstoy?

Societal Expectations resulting in Lack of Freedom and Individuality: Anna's marriage to Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin is emblematic of unhappiness. It is a union that lacks emotional connection and personal freedom. Anna feels trapped in her societal role that paralyses her individuality and desires, leading to her affair with Vronsky, which brings temporary passion but deep, lasting unhappiness.

Lack of Genuine Connection: Anna's marriage with Karenin lacks a genuine emotional and spiritual connection, leading to distance, alienation, and misery. Their relationship is more about social standing and societal duty than about true companionship.

Incompatible life goals and values: Different ideas about life and the future can lead to fundamental conflicts that are difficult to overcome.

Selfishness and lack of empathy: The inability to understand your partner's perspective and put your own needs above those of the relationship leads to conflict.

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So, what could this all mean for businesses and their leaders?

Shared values and goals: The key to the best possible corporate performance is when everybody in the organisation understands and shares the vision, mission, goals, and values of the company, the value proposition towards clients, and the roles and accountabilities of all colleagues. Finally, it is also important that the strategic plan is understood and resonates for all relevant stakeholders.

Open communication. Mutual trust and respect are the cultural basis for open and deep communication in all directions and will result in employee commitment and loyalty. Deep communication can openly address painful subjects and feelings, and it is essential in companies that everybody has the psychological safety to address these subjects with their leaders. As a leader, you should invite your colleagues to openly speak out about frustrations and pain points, and the goal is to solve these constructively. You basically want to know about what is living amongst the colleagues, and you want to ensure that serious frustrations are addressed and solved. There are frustrations that require discretion and others that can be openly discussed and solved in a group. But in any case, colleagues should be safe when they speak up about those issues that they find difficult.

Mutual respect and understanding: Organisations are not about bosses who realise and live their life dreams and who are served by their employees to do so. Organisations are vehicles that help clients move from problem to solution. Organisations therefore must have a culture of serving their clients and a greater goal. This “culture of serving” needs to be totally entrenched in the organisation at all levels. A leader needs to understand that his colleagues only unfold their full potential for the sake of this greater goal in a safe corporate culture, and a leader needs to build and foster that culture of safe, open, and multi-directional communication and understanding.

Adaptability and Compromise: As market circumstances change with new technologies or more aggressive competitors, as economic cycles leave their footprint on a business’ performance, so will people have to learn, adapt, and sometimes compromise. Typical compromises are that colleagues need to wait for promotions or pay rises, postpone spending, learn a new skill, work in a downsized department, etc. Circumstances are what they are, and organisations need to adapt to that for one reason only: to remain relevant for their clients under changed circumstances.

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What are the attributes of companies with a low-performance culture?

As there is a clear analogy between happy marriages and thriving corporate cultures, there is also an analogy between unhappy families and toxic corporate cultures.

Organisations that perform below their potential employ unhappy people who are not performing even close to their potential. At best, employees do their “obligations”, but they lack intrinsic drive and responsibility. Such underachieving entities often exhibit a profound disconnect between management and staff. In such organisations, employees have the feeling that management decisions are arbitrary, impulsive, or self-centred.

Unhappy employees do not see the value of their company’s mission; they do not really care about the business’ goals; they perform their job because it pays their bills, not because it serves that higher purpose, which they feel committed to serving. There may not be any higher purpose at all. Even companies with very strong brand names often employ workers that have lost intrinsic commitment: they may perform their job in a routinised, repetitive fashion, and in return they receive their monthly paycheque and enjoy a certain level of social status that is associated with their employer.

The fundamental nature of relationships within these organisations is one of mistrust, where voicing concerns or highlighting issues is often seen as betrayal, potentially derailing one’s career advancement, or leading to job termination.

Remarkably, such organisations can manage to sustain themselves, operating well below their potential, and held together by contractual obligations and superficial incentives. Despite the adverse conditions, individuals often endure these environments for extended periods, deterred by the fear of change and the uncertainties it brings. The shortfall in these organisations is a leadership failure rather than a failing of the workforce. Drawing a parallel to Tolstoy’s "Anna Karenina," the connection of the married couple and its communication is at fault, not the offspring.

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Conclusion

Translating the multiple family stories of Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina” to a business environment is an exercise that brings with it a certain feeling of enlightenment. The analogies between happy families and thriving company cultures are too obvious.

As unhappy families do not necessarily fall apart, toxic corporate cultures can also exist and function, and often, such organisations are not easily recognisable from the outside. What unhappy families and toxic companies have in common though is that they house unhappy people who live and perform far below their potential.

Perhaps management schools of the future should offer the course: What you should know about western literature to be a good leader, as all it takes for happiness and maximum commitment is a culture that respects and appreciates your talents and nurtures your growth, fostering an environment where you can thrive and contribute meaningfully.

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