#239: Leadership that does not listen, fails.
Good morning dear friends
This week’s letter took an unexpected turn. I had it planned, then Microsoft’s Co-Pilot suggested a rewrite. I started wrestling with that (it is down at soul) and by the time I was done, this letter had rewritten itself.
It is different from our usual fair. Though, these are unusual times, so it, perhaps, makes sense. Certainly, the biggest failures result when we don’t adapt to changed circumstances.
Effective leadership and powerful strategy happen when we zoom out, when we remind ourselves of the levers that build confidence and goodwill and enable the thriving of all who live on this planet. Today, we zoom out.
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/strategy
The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out) is Winston Churchill’s 16 October 1938 broadcast to the US and UK.
World War Two had not yet started. The Holocaust had not happened.
Churchill warns that evil is gathering. He asks, “Can peace, goodwill, and confidence be built upon submission to wrong-doing backed by force?
One may put this question in the largest form. Has any benefit or progress ever been achieved by the human race by submission to organised and calculated violence? As we look back over the long story of the nations we must see that, on the contrary, their glory has been founded upon the spirit of resistance to tyranny and injustice, especially when these evils seemed to be backed by heavier force”.
Imagine what the world might have been had it listened to him.
He reminds his audience that, whilst dictators “boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home – all the more powerful because forbidden – terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge?”
As we watch the world with fear, Churchill reminds us we have access to a ‘whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge’. Knowledge, words, ideas are all sources of power.
The same applies in business life.
The best organisations create space for challenging thoughts. They also know that when there is fear, silence often follows.
The best organisations think, speak, listen and care. They pay attention to their histories. The best leaders create cultures that encourage that. They know that sometimes the annoying person who speaks out, may well be pointing us to an important truth.
The most powerful leaders are not those who must be right but those who drop to their knees to hear what cheese the mouse has found.
//self
Jerry Colonna, author of one of my favourite leadership books, Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (read more here) recently wrote an article entitled A Call to Action: Memory and Resistance.
In it, he reflects on Archie Brown’s The Myth of the Strong Leader.
Colonna explains that Brown’s work dismantles the idea that “authoritarianism is the mark of effective leadership”, explaining he “demonstrates that the so-called “strongman” leader – who centralizes power, suppresses dissent, and operates with unchecked authority – is often celebrated in the moment but later revealed to be a force of destruction. History does not remember these figures as architects of lasting good; it remembers them as cautionary tales”.
In Colonna’s most recent book Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong, he writes “The task of leadership is not to be the hero, but to create conditions where others can thrive, where the collective can flourish.”
He observes, “The myth of the strongman endures because people mistake dominance for strength. Real strength in leadership is found in restraint, collaboration, and service to the greater good”.
I have nothing to add other than to say Colonna’s conclusion is supported by history, research, our religious and philosophical traditions and dozens of case studies.
When we occupy positions of power, as we all do, we must remember that dissent – even when, perhaps especially then, we do not want to hear it – may hold possibility for a better future. To hear it, we must resist the caricature that says leadership is dominance.
Leadership that does not listen, fails.
///soul
This letter started when, reflecting on South Africa’s history of slavery, I wrote “those who’d been stolen from their homes and brought to this land” and Co-Pilot suggested I meant “robbed of their homes”.
That moment, and this historical moment, reminded me of Ma Boyong’s 2005 The City of Silence published in Invisible Planets: 13 Visions of the Future from China.
In Boyong’s world, authorities publish a List of Healthy Words. Only words from this list can be used online, “If the filtering software found any Web user using a word not on this list, then the work would be automatically shielded and replaced with the phase ‘Please use healthy language’”.
To disregard the list was to risk imprisonment.
The list is updated daily. Words considered risky are deleted. One morning, citizens discover the word ‘movement’ is deleted and so have to use ‘change of position’ to communicate the same idea.
People find ingenious ways to resist. They string together healthy words to communicate rebellious thoughts. Even the numbers one, nine, eight and four held revolutionary potential when said as 1984.
The state develops listening posts, speakers that hear and report every word. Not only are typed words ‘shielded’, so too are spoken words, both public and private.
The list shrinks and shrinks, until one day, there are no healthy words. The List of Healthy Words is published, and there are none. Only silence remains.
Our words are our power. In speaking, we create ourselves and our world.
Enriching our ability to express all we are is the surest way to develop our power. You might not know it, but a dictionary is dynamite.
(If this letter resonates, you may also enjoy Fragments of Freedom).
All the best
Karl
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