A Google search with the words “crisis of
leadership” is revealing. It returns 639,000 hits for books, 4.4 million news
stories and about 1.1 million videos. Hundreds of thousands of images of
consequential historical figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Nelson
Mandela, Lincoln and Martin Luther king pop up.
As a social construct, leadership is as much
obfuscated and illuminated by scholars in management, political science and
social theory. Eugene E. Jennings in his book An Anatomy of Leadership suggests that leadership is an “omnibus
term” deployed without discrimination to roles as varied as sports coach, politician,
committee chairperson, corporate executive, and school headmaster.
Today we bemoan failure of leadership in
every sector, and especially in the government, media, NGOs – both local and
international – business, political parties, multilateral organizations like
the World Bank and the United Nations.
I will focus on political leadership. On the
one hand rising inequality and poverty, terrorism, global climate crisis and
immigration have created near unanimous mistrust of government and political
leaders. On the other hand increasing change, complexity and uncertainty in an
intensely globalized world have converged to produce an unprecedented demand
for exemplary political leadership at local, regional and global scales.
Traditionally, leadership denotes a state or
position of influence. Understanding political leadership, its failure or
success, must take cognizance of the fact that leadership is a relationship between
two parties, the leader or the persons exerting influence and the persons
influenced.
More importantly, a functional relationship exists
between the leader and the follower. Some early scholars have characterized the
relationship as a structured, institutionalized pattern of authority and
subservience. This was certainly true in imperial Europe, in the dark ages of
colonialism and dictatorship in much of the developing world.
However the construct of authority and
subservience remains the defining model of leadership. Globally, political
leaders have failed to recognize that leadership must be about influence and less
about power or authority. In a republic as opposed to a monarchy or a colony,
we have citizens and representatives, not subjects and potentates. Citizens are
the custodians of sovereign power, which they donate to elected representative
– political leaders.
In my view at the heart of the crisis of
leadership is the fact that political leaders are ossified in the imperial,
colonial era. Even in large democracies like the US we see spectacular displays
of envy of autocracy by President Donald Trump, who has great admiration for Vladimir
Putin’s style of leadership.
The context of political leadership has
changed, and radically so. For example Donald Trump’s decision to exit the
Paris Accord is now seen as temporary absence of the US as State Party. Nearly
100 cities, five stares, six more to join and hundreds of leading firms have vowed
to unite behind the Paris Accord.
Those who sit at the zenith of political organizations
must uphold the ideals of democracy, adapt and innovate to meet the demands of a
dynamic, pluralistic, globalized and multipolar world.
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