When it comes
to much of modern literature on leadership styles, I am a sceptic. I do not believe in servant leadership, for
example: it is a modernist fad. No real
leader is always authoritarian: that is simply bullying. Transformational leadership is another incarnation
of personality cults.
True leadership
has no set form. It is not broken up
into labels. It is like water in a
container. Whatever shape that container
is, that water fills it. If a leader has
ossified into a certain style regardless of the realities of the situation, it
is as if that water has frozen into ice, and the container breaks. If a leader has no values, it is like that
water has turned into vapour, and no longer fills the container. Leadership always considers three things: the
goal, the values and the resources. It
is whatever is required to fulfill the goal, to adhere to the values, and to
maximise the resources, including human resource.
Consider
Napoleone di Bonaparte. He is thought by
many to be an epitome of leadership, and to an extent he was. A man born to lesser nobility, who rose from
a minor artillery officer to Emperor of France.
And yet, I consider him a failure. He is a man who won numerous battles, but lost
the war. He died in exile, in St.
Helena. He left France bankrupt, still surrounded
by enemies; and with an entire generation of sons and fathers lost to the nation. Carl von Clausewitz understood this. He was a Prussian general who fought in the
Napoleonic Wars, including the famous Battle of Borodino. In his famous treatise on military campaigns,
Vom Kriege, he wrote, “War is the continuation of politics by other
means.”
Napoleon
understood only war, and had no clear goal.
And that is a mistake many leaders make.
They get involved in the process.
They get emotionally attached to the product, the vehicle, or the
institution. It is like a man who enjoys
cycling so much that he forgot to pay attention to where he is going and finds
himself lost. I never set out on
anything without having an idea of where it will be several moves later. I play chess, on the board and in the real
world. We make a move by thinking seven turns
ahead.
Napoleon
Bonaparte said that a leader is a dealer in hope. In insurance, we are merchants of hope. But selling hope alone is fraud. There has to be a basis for it, and there has
to be a consideration of ethics, values and principles. Leadership is not about merely espousing
values, but living it. That requires a
certain sense of certainty and emotional strength.
Where Napoleon
excelled, was in his utilisation of resources.
He famously said that an army marches on its stomache. Since he began as an artillery officer, he understood
it intimately. He pioneered innovative
tactics using field guns. He paid a lot
of attention to the logistics of running an army. Most importantly, he understood his greatest
resource: his people.
The contention
here is that people are, by their very nature, emotive and emotional. This cult of personality is a double-edged
sword. Whilst his men fought like lions
for him, particularly his famed Vieille Garde, it also meant that the
entire institution, the edifice of state collapsed and created a vacuum when he
was defeated. That is a failure in leadership
because there was no viable succession plan.
A leader is
only as good as the people around him.
That requires either building them up, or recruiting the best, or, a bit
of both. The consideration with having competent
people is that they are also leaders.
This means that we are not just supposed to be leaders of men, but
leaders of leaders. This requires
leading, not from the front, but from the rear.
A successful leader always has a great lieutenant, or several.
Coming back to
our theme, for Napoleon, that man was Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Talleyrand rose from Agent-Generale of the Catholic
Church in France, to First Minister of France, Napoleon’s chief diplomat and
spymaster. He eventually turned on
Napoleon, and survived him to have a long and rich career. Unlike Napoleon, Talleyrand understood the
winds of change, and rode them successfully.
Whilst the public remembers Napoleon, students of leadership, and the
arts of war, remember Talleyrand.
This brings me
to my conclusion. Success is not
synonymous with fame. From the stories
of the Bible to the Epic of Gilgamesh, to Beowulf, to modern television, many characters,
many of our heroes and idols are famous because they tried, they succeeded and
they failed. Elvis Presley and Bruce Lee
are immortalised more for their unfulfilled potential than their successes. That romance of the tragedy, our collective
yearning for what ifs. That is not what
leadership is to me. Leadership is quiet
efficiency in achieving goals, quiet belief in our principles, and quiet
confidence in what we have, resources and people.
