Rethinking leadership, re-founding leadership

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St. Gallen Symposium 2011

St. Gallen Wings of Excellence Award

“Just Power”

41st St. Gallen Symposium

University of St. Gallen, Switzerland

12–13 May 2011

St. GallenWings of Excellence

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St. Gallen Wings of Excellence Award1

41st ST. GALLEN SYMPOSIUM


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María de los Ángeles Lasa

Third PlaceMaría de los Ángeles Lasa (AR)Postgraduate Student in Political ScienceUniversidad Nacional de Villa MaríaVilla María

Born in 1986. María received an International Diploma in Human Rights (WFUNA) and a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from the Universidad Católica de Córdoba (UCC, Argentina). She is currently a postgraduate student and a junior researcher at the Universidad Nacional de Villa María (Argentina). Lasa has been awarded the CUIA Fellowship and will begin her Ph.D. in international criminality at UNICAM School of Advanced Studies next fall in Italy.

In 2010, Lasa received the second prize at the World Bank International Essay Competition (Sweden), and was one of the five winners of the Ideas for Action Competition (World Bank Institute, Belgium). The same year, she received an Honorable Mention at the International Essay Contest for Young People organised by the Goi Peace Foundation and UNESCO.

Passionate about international politics, Lasa has worked as a junior researcher at the Observatory of Values in the International Society (UCC), and some of her articles have been published in Mexico and Argentina.


The RiachueloFor some reason, I always introduce my essays with a fable or a fantasy story, and I probably do this because I am convinced that stories help to convey strong messages. This time, I could not think of a tale that was good enough to illustrate my considerations about the need to rethink leadership… so, I chose a true story.

This story begins like this. The Río de la Plata or River Plate, in Argentina, receives many tributaries, one of them being The Matanza-Riachuelo River. The Riachuelo, as it is popularly known, runs across eleven districts, including the City of Buenos Aires, but, unfortunately, its 64-kilometre course has turned into dangerous killing waters. Owing to the fact that it receives large amounts of industrial waste, garbage and sewage, the Riachuelo is one of the worst polluted rivers in the world1. Around 15% of Argentina’s population lives in the Matanza-Riachuelo basin; 15% of 40 million is about 6 million people who are suffering daily water shortages, infectious diseases and even cancer.

Faced with this alarming situation, in January 1993, former Secretary of Environment María Julia Alsogaray, pledged that during her administration, she would “clean up the Riachuelo in 1,000 days” thanks to a 250 million dollars loan from the IDB. She seemed determined to keep her promise, so some people started to imagine the swimsuit that the Secretary would wear for the opening of the decontaminated Riachuelo.

Can you imagine the end of the story? Well, it was not a happy ending. The money that had been allotted to the project disappeared, and the former Secretary was accused of unjust enrichment, a crime for which she never served a time. Argentina’s foreign debt increased and the Riachuelo continued being a dump. Actually, it still is a shameful hole.

The three fundamental dimensions of leadershipIn his well-known study on leadership, Rallph M. Stogdill concluded that “there are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept”2. Although this is an accurate observation, in his analysis Stogdill ignores a fundamental fact. Even with differences, the definitions of leadership we have

Rethinking leadership, re-founding leadership




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been given always focus on the same aspects: power, management, communication and psychological issues. Is this a coincidence? I don’t think so. From my point of view, in recent decades, studies on leadership have been approached from business-oriented perspectives, thus developing skewed definitions of leadership.

Set to write this essay, I thought of the example of the former Secretary of Environment of my country to illustrate what a leader is not. Nevertheless, the example of the Riachuelo is perfect to explain what, from my point of view, are the three key dimensions inherent to every possible definition of leadership: the power dimension, the dimension of management and the axiological dimension.

Regarding the dimension of power, in an excellent essay entitled El poder, un intento de orientación3, the famous philosopher Romano Guardini reflects on the essence of power, and concludes that in its true meaning, power is necessarily comprised of a) an energy that can change the reality of things determining their state and their mutual relations; and b) a consciousness that “guides” this energy, i.e., a willingness that directs all efforts toward a desired end4.

The definition of leadership I have in mind is originated from Guardini’s definition of power because power is an essential and central component of leadership: its first fundamental dimension. Without power, which is the “energy” to change things, a leader cannot exert any influence over people or things.

Going deeper in our analysis, we soon realize that not only power is required; the means that will enable us to reach our goals are also necessary. This leads us to the second dimension of leadership, a dimension widely explored by several authors: the dimension of management.

In my example of the Riachuelo, it is easily understood that to clean up the river, it was not enough to have the “energy” to change things and the willingness to orient that energy towards doing what was needed. To decontaminate the Riachuelo, in addition to human resources, a 250 million dollars loan from the IDB was needed, and this is when our second fundamental dimension of leadership, the dimension of management, gets involved. This second dimension of leadership shows us that it is not possible to talk


about leadership without considering an effective management of the resources, and an efficient action plan to achieve specific objectives.

However, I believe there is still another dimension that characterizes leadership. In his definition of power, Guardini clearly states that power needs a consciousness that gives its energy a purpose, a direction. This means that power does not have any predetermined end, any telos, but that it is that consciousness that holds the power, who determines if the telos will be constructive or destructive, noble or ignoble, good or bad. My third or moral dimension clearly arises: the axiological dimension of leadership.

This axiological dimension might very well be referred to as “the forgotten dimension” of leadership. The definitions of leadership we find on the Internet, books and articles always include the first two dimensions I have referred to above, the dimensions of power and management, but rarely, if ever, do they refer to the axiological one. This omission is aimed at emphasizing the means that a leader may count on, while disregarding the ends he or she expects to achieve. Therefore, it does no longer matter if these ends are reasonable and fair, or unreasonable and unfair, licit or spurious: the question has completely been removed from all considerations on leadership! Consequently, and considering mainstream theoreticians, on what basis can we evaluate as corrupt or irresponsible the attitude of the former Secretary of Environment of my country?

Whenever we evaluate, we do it based on moral values that teach us which human actions are good and which ones are bad. According to the philosophical view we take, values may arise from humanity’s nature – as it is my personal view –, or they may be cultural products or social conventions. Whatever the case may be, I think most of us have concluded that the greatest horrors mankind has lived have been the result of denying human values such as life, dignity, honor and freedom their fundamental quality. In this sense, leadership has proven to be especially dangerous when detached from any positive axiological orientation, and it has become highly destructive when disconnected from a fundamental value: the value of responsibility.




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The principle of responsibilityTry and think of the name of an official, banker or investor who has been made responsible for the international financial crisis in 2008. Be careful: Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not real people; they are corporations. Would you try again?

I have read hundreds of news articles regarding the financial crisis, but I have not found a name, not even one name, that would take the responsibility. Not only did the bankers remain anonymous, political leaders tried to blame an “invisible mass” of faceless and nameless speculators too. So, what is happening?

No one is responsible for the power of nature. If a lightning stroke in the middle of a storm, you would never think of making anybody responsible for such an accident; lightning strikes are not men’s power. Actions derived from human power, however, are always the effect of a decision, and there exists no human activity of which “nobody” is responsible for5.

However, we live in times in which it seems that there is not an individual or shared response to the consequences arising from political, social and economic decisions. We increasingly feel that poverty in underdeveloped countries, the ongoing social crisis and deaths from starvation, are like “facts of nature”, lightning strikes in storms, of which nobody can be made responsible for. We no longer think that we should respond to the consequences when an action we originate eventually affects others. We don’t have, or have lost all sense of responsibility.

Faced with this situation that requires urgent action, I’m convinced that it is not enough to just rethink leadership: it is necessary to re-found it reinforcing the crucial concept of responsibility, thus strengthening the axiological dimension.

Concerned with the current technological age and the harmful influence of man in nature, Hans Jonas reflects on the importance of recovering the value of responsibility6. The German philosopher argues that ethics has hitherto focused on acts that affect the rights of contemporary others. Nevertheless, in the context of globalization, and of a “narrow world”, the “other who lives nearby” can be a person who lives thousands of


miles away, and as a result, decisions we take may have effects that we can’t imagine nor predict.

As in the example of the Riachuelo, or in the example of the international financial crisis, the decisions leaders make today can, and indeed do, have effects on thousands of people now and in the future. What is worse, their decisions may cause irreversible changes. These effects are far greater if the leader’s decisions affect those aspects of men’s life, those which affect their existence and even their highest human interests. Therefore, it is in humanity’s best interest to keep power attached to responsibility, and it is in humanity’s best interest to rethink and re-founding leadership.

The leaders of tomorrowI suppose there is a moral in all this: for me, many people have power and the ability to manage resources, but only true leaders complement both capacities with strong moral values. It is impossible for a leader who has the real dimension of her/his responsibility to make a decision that will cause the death of children on the banks of the Riachuelo, or leave millions of people unemployed and homeless. These are the leaders we need: leaders who are aware of the fact that their decisions affect present and future generations; leaders who feel they ought to give answers for their actions, and leaders who are committed to do the right thing.

What do we need to see this new kind of leaders in action? What can we do to be this kind of leaders? I have consulted dozens of books, articles, and web resources, and none of them gave me such an enlightening message as that of Albert Einstein. I quote: “If you want different results, don’t always do the same things.”

Many young people are persuaded that, not having a great deal of power, we must keep doing the same thing: nothing. After all, a 24-year-old girl like me, for example, could never get the former Secretary of Environment of Argentina to serve time in prison for her crime. In part, this is true: being young and having a reduced share of power, some possibilities, at least for now, are out of our reach. But it is also true that changes begin at some point, and that with small actions, and not only with laws, new institutions and agreements between the same leaders who reproduce the schemes that we intend to change, we can eventually make all that happen. Changes are made with the conviction




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that change is needed, and working daily from the individual perspective, which is the starting point from where our ideas can be turned into a reality… or led to fail.

Never before had young leaders had as much responsibility as we have today. We have to inspire other young people to believe that change is possible, and we have to inspire our own actions on values that build rather than destroy. We have to prove ourselves that by defining our capabilities realistically, we may accomplish a new way of leading. Intellectual training is needed for future challenges, but we also need to establish a new paradigm built on the principle of responsibility. Nobody has said that it will be easy or that it will work out. Nevertheless, something tells me that, even with difficulties, we would be walking down the right path.

Guardini said: “There are two kinds of utopias. The ones that are idle fantasy games; the others, on the contrary, are early sketches of things to come”7. I think the key of this “puzzle” is to demystify the claim that a new way of leadership is a fantasy game. Change is possible when we work for it believing that it is possible, and showing in plans and ideas what is yet hidden, but is trying to come to light.


Bibliography

1 The world’s worst polluted places. The Top Ten of the Dirty Thirty, Blacksmith Institute Annual Report, September 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://www.blacksmithin-stitute.org/wwpp2007/finalReport2007.pdf

2 Cited in BASS, Bernard M. Bass & Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership. Theory, Research & Managerial applications. New York, The Free Press, 3rd ed., p. 11.

3 The power. An attempt to guide. All translations of Guardini’s quotes in this essay are my own.

4 GUARDINI, Romano. El poder. Un intento de Orientación. Madrid, Ediciones Cristiandad, 1977, 2nd ed., p. 14-15.

5 GUARDINI, Romano. El Poder. Un intento..., p. 17.

6 JONAS, Hans. El Principio de la Responsabilidad. Ensayo de una ética para la civilización tecnológica. Barcelona, Herder, 1995, p. 82-84; 172-184.

7 GUARDINI, Romano. El Poder. Un intento..., p. 101.

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Rethinking leadership, re-founding leadership