Leadership
If you lead a country, you must take into consideration and care for all your inhabitants, not only the ones that voted for you. You must step one ladder up from political differences and encompass the whole of your nation, not only your family, friends, party members, religious believers, your colleagues and voters. And above all you must not only think short-term. Climate change, new forms of energy and flows of refugees demand long-term decisions and rule, not only pragmatic day to day governing, to stay in office.
Many of these points that I emphasize are self-evident and obvious. They are apparent in almost every job interview, political campaign and inaugural speech after the election. Nevertheless, they appear to be gone on the road of factual leadership, eventually glowing more and more with their absence.
I know there are many complicating factors making obstacles on the road. But there must be some basic principles in every leadership, that serve as a fundament for ruling a firm, organization and a country. Lets start with our family.
Levels of leadership:
– 1. Leading a family.
Consider and take care of the whole without suppressing the parts.
If you are a mother or father and in charge of a family, you must always have your entire family in mind. Think of it as an organic whole. On that ground you must make decisions that dampen and preferably reduce conflicts to a minimum. Ideally, you should make choices that increase the family’s well-being and harmony, and not the opposite!
You know that your children, you and your wife, not to mention your parents and grandparents, experience, think and act differently. There is generational diversity in all families. You also know that they occasionally argue about what is right and wrong, what they used to do before, and what should and should not be allowed now. Such differences must be expected and accepted.
Listen to the opposition and notice the protests.
It’s important for all voices to be heard and respected in a family. As a leader, or father or mother, alone or in a team, you must ensure that both the old and the young ones are recognized for what they stand for. That means, no one should feel being pushed aside and being unfairly treated. Such experiences create the opposite of obedience and willingness to cooperate and compromise. It not only creates envy and jealousy. Most often it produces destructive actions toward the family as a whole.
Trying to bridge the gap between opposites.
Managerial responsibility also follows the ability to bridge the gap between differences. This can happen through good descriptions of the situation, plausible explanations, and effective problem – solving strategies. Youngsters who earlier argued, or even had a fight with their brothers and sisters, not to mention quarreled with parents, could get a fierce beating or spanking for this opposition. Spanking children were considered an acceptable form of punishing disobedient conduct.
With the emergence of psychological research during the last fifty years, bodily punishment was abolished in most Western countries. It turned out that the physical punishment, although it led to immediate change of behavior, created a deeper hidden aggression and opposition to the family and certain selected members of it. This somewhat suppressed hatred together with the feeling of injustice, lay there to swarm. As it was just waiting to reappear with triple strength in a later conflict, for example in the distribution of an inheritance, or out in the street.
No, this has no lasting effect, on the contrary it makes thing worse!
Dialogue and representative actions.
Today, age-oriented dialogue and negotiation is the most important tool in family policy, before decisions are made. This applies both between the parents, the grandparents and the children. Listening to their views, wishes and arguments, does not mean they always get what they ask for. But old and young will be heard and respected for what they stand for, and for their opinions.
Executive leadership at this community level, must base it’s decision-making process with the common good in mind, without suppressing or ignoring individual needs . In the short term, individual interests may be encouraged, but in the longer term, decisions must be based on what is best for the community.
Learning to be a responsible member of a community already at the family level.
People are like horses strongly attached to the flock. This is both the advantage and drawback with social media like facebook and twitter., and can be a treath to democracy. We change color with our social and cultural surroundings. (This I have described extensively in other posts. )
If there is a culture of “fighting your way to the top”, where everyone is fighting against the other, we get a harsh, elitist and competitive society. In such a family model there are in fact very few winners and quite a lot of losers, in addition to much frustration, dissatisfaction and anger. This does not by any means create a good family atmosphere. Neither does it provide a good family structure. In other words, we get an unstable family constellation, an unbalanced society in miniature.
– Level 2. Leading a Kindergarten, (school or university)
If you are a head or educational manager of a kindergarten, you also have a great responsibility for every single person at your service. More so you have an even bigger responsibility for the school community that you, your colleagues, the children and their parents are a part of. Therefore, you must try to take care of all parts and units in a good enough way. 
There is no way to be perfect is such a job, only to be good enough. But if those who work in your kindergarten or school are still getting sick, giving up, or leaving, it’s not necessarily because of bad economy and lack of jobseekers. It may as well be your lack of ability as a good and unifying leader.
– Level 3. Leaders of business enterprises and financial institutions.
– Corporate and group leaders and corporate social responsibility.
If you lead a large business or corporation, located in one or more countries, you not only have yourself and your business employees to think about. You must also ask yourself what benefit the community, locally or globally, has of your business.
1. Important infrastructure payed by tax money
2. Important hospital infrastructure payed by tax money.
Does your business contribute to building important infrastructure, which in turn creates safe jobs and good social institutions? Nice jobs with satisfied employees also create more potential buyers of your and others’ products, which keeps the wheels running. Or is it so that your leadership and your company contribute to dismantling the welfare and social security infrastructure where you operate, and thereby destabilizing the systems that in the first place gave your business a robust foundation in the community.
Paul Ryan and friends laughing at their financial success, or the idea of stately regulation of the financial institutions in America?
Today, with so many hidden ownership structures, the purpose of these administrations seems clear. It is most of all to disclose the obvious tax and social responsibility and to maximize profits. This, rather than creating the prerequisites for nourishing communities, – for most people.
No business operates in a value-neutral vacuum.
It’s more important than ever that the CEOs and bosses, give a clear message inside the business, and also to shareholders, that the company does not operate in a vacuum of individuals. Rather it operates in a world community of people, which is largely influenced by the decisions of shareholders and the management. It should of course be allowed to earn good money, but not to base income and profit on tax evasion, prohibition on organizing, and modern slavery.
An example of modern slavery.
Within international business, it should be as embarrassing to build enterprizes with community-hostile and community-destructive methods, as polluting the environment with coal, smoking inside, and harassing employees. Such leadership should be considered a business “imperfection” of the most serious kind.
– Level 4. Heads of states, and national leaders.
Donald Trump and Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Egypt’s president
The main responsibility of heads of states.
Neither management of a family, a kindergarten or a company is an easy task. But it can still not be compared to the responsibility of a state leader. Here we are talking about presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and in some countries monarchs and similar hereditary forms of actual leadership.
States leaders primary job in a country is to create some sort of a functioning unity despite ethnic, religious and cultural differences, as well as differences in background, clan and class affiliation.
Heads of States have a major responsibility not only for their voters but all the inhabitants of their country, and towards the world in it’s whole.
What you as a head of state need to take care of.
The most important task for a government leader in 2018 is to avoid internal divisions in the form of civil war, as well as external conflict in the form of war. Next, is to avoid poverty, and instead distribute wealth in the population!
Jeremy Corbin, labour party leader in UK who bases his program on distribution of wealth.
Income distribution in the UK, (2012), and wealth distribution in the US (2007).
You cannot as a president or prime minister, stubbornly hold on to a party political or religious stand in an ongoing conflict between two major fractions of the population. Then you expose your countrymen to a division that might end with violence and slaughter. You then also risk dividing families, cause deep wounds and traumas in both adults and not in least in children. These are burdens on the population, that usually take generations to heal. Such conflicts are also economically very unprofitable for the country.
Here, as a national leader, or head of state, keep in mind that you cannot alone practice party politics when you are in power. A head of state is responsible for all citizens of the country, including those who voted against you when there were elections. The head of state is responsible also to those who protest in the streets and want reform, including even those who throw Molotov cocktail against the police and government buildings.
Riots on the occupied territory in Palestine, where Israeli leaders refuse to respect the FN resolution.
A state leader must receive such signals, interpret them and learn from them. Punishing legitimate protests in the population is to strangle important voices in an ongoing discourse about the society and the development it should take. Turning to armed conflict and war with other nations, to cover such unresolved inner opposites, is indeed feeble.
Not trying all sorts of peaceful solutions when the country is exposed to external threats, is also poor leadership. It is a form of seducing the country’s youth to risk being killed or destroyed by the tragedy and wreckage of war. From psychology we know that unresolved trauma creates enmity and hatred for generations.
Secondly, the task of a state leader must be to ensure that all citizens benefit from times of economic growth. Likewise, that all citizens of the country must help in downturns, especially those with the best economy. The country’s most vulnerable inhabitants must receive special protection and assistance to escape poverty. As it is today, poverty is reproduced in many countries because there is financial institutions and narrow economic self-interests of the leaders that govern instead of great statesmanship .
This reaminds me of the Mugabe family from Kenya, and Gambia’s departed leader, Yahya Jammeh, who emptied the state’s treasury, before he brought with him a number of luxury cars as he left the country.
Heads of state or villains in elegant suits?
One of the worst examples of a state leader’s special interests I read about today from Iceland. According to Albert Einarsson, in 2008, the country’s then Deputy Governor David Oddson had realized his plan. For more than ten years as prime minister prior to this, he had succeeded in dismantling Iceland’s social democratic institutions by privatizing them. In November 2008, it was in fact the financial world with Oddson that ruled the country under Prime Minister Geir H. Haardes leadership.
But the financial world was at that time approaching the biggest stock market crackdown since 1928. The bank in which the Prime Minister, and Central Bank manager David Oddson and their friends had their values in, were about to run bankrupt. This gloomy fact, the two leading guys had secret inside information about.
They therefore agreed over the phone to transfer the entire treasury of Iceland to Kaupthing, one of the three banks in Iceland that these managers had their money in. Thus, both these two and their friends got their money out, and transferred them to hidden accounts abroad. This happened, while the rest of Iceland’s saving population lost their money. The following day, both Kaupthing, Glitnir and Landsbanki went bankrupt.
The treasury in Iceland had already been emptied, so people across Europe, especially in England who have had their savings in Icelandic banks, lost it all.
We must both expect and demand wisdom and courage from leaders that serve their country!
Everyone can agree that the above example from Iceland is a primitive and irresponsible way of conducting national leadership. It is a total neglect of the people, extremely selfish and greedy. It’s like when mom and dad sell their family home, leave their children, and take all their savings with them to a place abroad, where they can party and be big spenders far from the children’s reality on the streets at home.
As a head of state, you can compare yourself to a father or mother that have taken foster responsibility for a large group of children, young and old. Once you have been given responsibility for the kids, you must treat them well. Ideally, they should develop into independent, responsible citizens, with deep respect of each other and the environment, inspired by your parenthood .
When the next foster parents take over the job, the children should be better off than when you took over. You nedd to think of your population as your big family, and that you care about them, as much as you care about yourself – maybe even more.
If you want to take on leadership of a family, kindergarten, school or business, you should really be aware of the responsibility you put on your shoulders. If you as a leader are not willing to give up special interests and close self-interest, you should at all give up to be responsible for an entire people!