Leaders Build Relationships

In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), the American sociologist, Daniel Bell, identified the greatest threat to Western societies as the loss of civitas, the spontaneous commitment to obey the law, to respect the rights of others, and to reject the temptation of personal enrichment at the expense of the community.  Civitas honours the ‘city’ of which one is a member, the ‘city’, of course, referring to the nation.  It is a concept essential to the entire ethos of leadership.

The survival of liberal democracy depends on the willingness of all citizens to subordinate personal desires to the common good, so the loss of civitas has been a catastrophe.  The descent from debate into diatribe, and the everyday evidence of socio-political anomie reveal the seriousness of the situation in which we find ourselves.

Bell emphasised society’s need for firm ethical common ground: “No moral philosopher, from Aristotle to Aquinas, to John Locke and Adam Smith, divorced economics from a set of moral ends or held the production of wealth to be an end in itself; rather it was seen as a means to the realisation of virtue, a means of leading a civilised life.”

The erosion of sociological self-knowledge and civitas in the West spawns countless stories of social dysfunction, relationship failure, and the sad consequences that flow from estrangement.  It can be seen in family breakdown, conflict between the sexes, toxic corporate cultures, deceitful media, corrupt political practices, and dangerous jousting in geopolitics.  An example from the workplace demonstrates the cost to communities and individuals.

Tom Burns was a professor of sociology at Edinburgh University, who also taught at Harvard.  His study of the British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC: Public Institution and Private World, delivers some very important insights into community dynamics.  Burns’ observations of attitudes and behaviour in the production of television programs, first in 1963, and then in 1973, provide a classic story of social and corporate folly.

His 1963 investigations revealed a communal understanding of the enormous creative potential unleashed when talented individuals in diverse fields, engineers, scene-shifters, directors, actors, stage-managers, gaffers, grips, lighting supervisors, accountants, cameramen, secretaries, and others, were able to successfully merge their activities and to handle crises through rapid-response interventions from all the complementary fields.

Burns likened this spontaneous mobilisation of expert routines and professional improvisation for the good of the common project and the organisation to the dedicated performance of a surgical team in the operating theatre.  And he was able to hold up the high-quality of the work achieved as the obvious consequence.

In 1973, he encountered rather different attitudes and behaviours at the BBC, and a deterioration of standards in the production of television programs.  No longer did managers and administrators secure the space and resources for all the diverse talents involved in each project, so that the creativity and expertise of the people doing the work could direct operations in pursuit of their common goal.

Instead, the endeavours had become bureaucratised, with managers and administrators imposing their own agendas on the multi-layered project teams, and dictating what people should be doing, how they should be doing it, and when they should be doing it.  They had destroyed the functional relationships of a decade earlier, and in so doing had unwittingly put a lid on creative endeavour.  Management had undermined a vibrant culture and the intricate network of relationships it nurtured, stifling leadership in every area.

In a narcissistic society like that of the postmodern West, thinking about relationships tends inevitably to be self-centred, and therefore, superficial.  Yet the simple reality is that any one of us will only find personal fulfilment in the context of relationships.

We are rational, relational beings whose mental and spiritual well-being depends on honesty and respect in regard to other people and ourselves.  And let’s not forget how much we rely on the hard work, respect, and good will of others for our physical well-being as well.  The individual needs community, and community needs the individual.  That’s how human flourishing is achieved.

We develop emotional maturity by accepting our radical dependence on other people, who are not merely means to our ends, but ends in themselves, all fallible human beings with their own desires, disappointments, and demons.  This involves recognising that each of us has limits as an individual, and that it is only in the context of healthy relationships, in which giving and forgiving are more important than getting, that we find meaningful self-expression.

It is a commonplace to say that leadership is about people, but what that really means is that it is primarily about relationships.  That’s why the most serious indictment that can be made of leadership – in the home, workplace, community, or nation – is when the loss of a common vision, the consequent absence of sociological self-knowledge, and the scourge of narcissistic self-assertion tear people apart.

Bringing people together is, logically, the first requirement of leadership.