|
|
Kindergarten stuff compared to what's required now. It's a fact that crisis is the crucible of leadership, and the greater the crisis the greater the potential for a truly great leader. Is British Prime Minister Tony Blair emerging as a leader for our times, in a class, dare one suggest, with Winston Churchill? What about bin Laden? If the definition of a leader is someone who has followers, who has a vision and who inspires passion, he's the man, or at least, he's their man. Some people believe that New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has proven his mettle as a leader. And then there's George W. Bush - or is there? All of this is right now occupying the fertile mind of Michael Maccoby. "It's crucial that we have leadership now," says Maccoby, "particularly in terms of the anxiety provoked by this type of terrorist war." A psychoanalyst and anthropologist, Maccoby is a Washington-based consultant on leadership to businesses, governments and unions. He has a PhD from Harvard, where he directed the program on technology, public policy and human development from 1978-90. He studied psychoanalysis with Erich Fromm and is the author of several books, including The Gamesman and The Leader. "Certainly in American history, leadership comes out of crisis," he says, pointing to Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. "Now we've seen that with Giuliani." Maccoby emphasizes, "What is crucial in this kind of situation is that a leader binds the anxiety that people feel. There's a lot of anxiety, particularly in this kind of situation where you don't have a direct enemy face to face. "You can't fight and you can't run. So you have this anxiety that makes people become depressed and feel powerless. And Giuliani right away bound that anxiety. You bind anxiety by focusing, by turning it into activity."
Janet Froetscher, an officer of the Aspen Institute, a U.S.-based global forum for leveraging the power of leaders to improve the human condition agrees: "Anytime you're in a time of very dramatic change, people immediately turn to leaders for direction." And so context emerges as a crucial component of leadership. It's almost always accepted by those in the know as necessary but not sufficient. "It's a little bit of being in the right place at the right time," acknowledges Leigh Thompson, professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Ill. Leaders, she says, emerge not only "in reality - they emerge because people need them to emerge. People need leaders." If, as Thompson says, "it's a little bit" of being in the right circumstance, it is also, she notes, "a lot of having the competency." Thompson doesn't equate competency with charisma, though she acknowledges that extraordinary leaders - who can be born or made - have "a quality, a presence of a true leader. "But I just don't believe that people have some kind of charisma that's going to make or break them as leaders," she says. Charisma, like many other qualities, can be self-fulfilling, she suggests. Studies have shown that if people are treated as if they have charisma or importance or even sex appeal, they'll start exhibiting those qualities. The Aspen Institute's Froetscher goes one step further about what it takes - or doesn't take - to make a leader. "Charisma and great intelligence are not prerequisites," she says. "Passion makes them charismatic." She continues, "Leaders do have to be smart enough to set an immediate vision, and also to see the whole picture and to be able to articulate it." Maccoby describes this as recognizing and articulating "the larger meaning." He gives the example of Lincoln realizing that the larger meaning was the American Declaration of Independence, and not just fighting the Civil War. Now, he says, Blair is "rising to the occasion by taking on the Palestinian issue, expanding his leadership." The crucial thing, says Maccoby, "has to do with a `meaning system' that mobilizes." And that brings us to bin Laden. "He has focused a whole complex combination, of resentment of people who feel hopeless in economic terms, and people who feel more and more that the West has a culture that is libertarian and threatening, particularly men's control of women," suggests Maccoby. For example, when Iranian leaders calls the U.S. "Satan," Maccoby says they are thinking not just in terms of evil, but also in terms of temptation, the allure of luxury and scantily clad, easy women threatening to undermine all the prohibitions. But bin Laden is also focusing resentment on the royal houses of Saudi Arabia, says Maccoby, on the sheiks and people responsible for oppression. "He's galvanizing resentment and also a sense of total certainty," explains Maccoby. "It's the meaning system that they feel totally explains everything, together with perverse hope. I see him in some ways as similar to Hitler: a very potent combination of revenge, hatred and hope of being great."
Bin Laden is also narcissistic. But so were Churchill, Che Guevara and Gandhi. "All visionary leaders are narcissistic personalities," Maccoby insists. He uses the term in the Freudian sense - "not the garbage can term for vain and self-centred." He means "the kind of personality who has not internalized the super ego of a strong father figure, but who is forced to create his own sense of what is right and wrong. It's a productive narcissism." When we decide whom to accept - or create - as leaders, whom to follow, and how to judge them, we look for basic qualities of goodness and competency, says Thompson. Then, she says, we also respond to people who command attention, have passion and drive and appeal to a higher order goal, and who have skills and intelligence." And that brings us to the question of George W. Bush. Thompson feels he's been compared unfairly to Giuliani, whose leadership challenges are not as vast. "Giuliani is dealing with New Yorkers who are raw from the crisis, holding hands, creating a sense of normalcy," she points out. "Bush has to speak to multiple audiences, to a nation divided along a lot of lines." Froetscher suggests that Bush's leadership is just emerging. But does Bush have what it takes to achieve great leadership? Maccoby is dubious. "I'm not that hopeful," he admits. "The thing we're lucky about is that Bush is surrounded by very competent people in foreign affairs: his father, Cheney, Powell. And Bush is very good at listening." Still, Maccoby sees these times as a stunning opportunity for leadership of the legendary kind. "I think the larger meaning that could come out of this would have to do with bringing the people of the world into the global market system in a way that respects difference, but in real terms would also deal with some of the grievances," he says. "It would make clear that we're not supporting oppressive, undemocratic societies." Siding with "whatever thugs there are if they're against Al Qaeda doesn't inspire many people," he observes wryly. Instead, great leadership now would consider the vision of Western
democracy, suggests Maccoby. "What do we stand for as a society that
we're defending? Is it just our lives and our property, or does it go
beyond? Can we talk about tolerance, opportunity, values?"
|
|
