Terrible, terrible news. I think we have all seen what happened, last night, in Las Vegas. Hopefully you have been able to contact anyone you may know in the area. Being that the news is so fresh, I do not have any editorial comments to add. I simply feel sick to my stomach. Yesterday, I had planned to post a certain article, for today's blog post. Based on the title, alone, I think it is still appropriate to post that article.
The article is titled, "Leadership Over Fear." And, it was written by John Edwin Mroz. Here is the article, in its entirety:
President Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the national despair of the Great Depression was simple and direct: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Today, much of the world lives in fear. Many tens of millions of young people around the world fear they will never secure a job. Increasing numbers of people, including many in the middle class, fear the destruction of their way of life due to global warming, or the powerful and unwelcome influences of globalization. Others fear that the so-called “clash of civilizations” between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds will become an inevitability. Ever-increasing terrorism around the globe, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and a renewed fear of global pandemics have added new uncertainties about our safety. Fear breeds a search for simple truths, which in turn contributes to intolerance, alienation, and extremism. This problem is a global phenomenon. A world increasingly devoid of hope and trust is an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable one.
Peter
Drucker reminded us a decade ago that the world had entered a
prolonged period of profound change every bit as dramatic and
turbulent as that ushering in the Industrial Revolution. Since 9/11,
we have had to deal with an additional layer of unexpected complexity
and uncertainty. Our world is an extremely unpredictable place in
which asymmetric threats make it difficult for governments to
guarantee the safety of their citizens and the well-being of their
economies.
Franklin
Roosevelt boldly attacked the hopelessness of his nation in his first
inaugural address, when he declared “the only thing we have to fear
is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which
paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” FDR
convinced the despairing victims of the Great Depression that the
only way to gain control of their lives was to overcome fear. He
challenged the American people to move beyond their fears and
inspired them to take those seemingly impossible first steps forward,
thus rekindling the spirit and strength of the nation. In short, he
led.
While
tens of millions of Americans crowded around their radios, the new
president, in one mighty stroke, empowered the populace to take risks
and believe again that their lives could and would get better.
Millions of self-appointed citizen-leaders rose to FDR’s challenge.
As that first wave of risk-takers stepped forward, the nation pulled
itself out of its deepest abyss since its Civil War some seventy
years before. The willingness of one leader to stare down fear worked
because he was able to challenge countless would-be leaders across
the nation to join him. And those leaders joined their president not
only in overcoming the Great Depression but also in fighting and
winning the world war that followed.
In
today’s globalized world, top-down leadership by politicians and
governments is simply not sufficient to cope with the challenges of
keeping the global ship afloat in such turbulent waters. The public
sector must partner with businesses and the social sector in meeting
these challenges. A key task is to identify, mobilize, and challenge
naturally embedded leaders in our societies to stand up and lead in a
world that is increasingly seen by its citizens as being adrift.
There are four things we must do: first, natural leaders in a world
of fear and change must step up and lead themselves. Second, such
women and men must imagine the possibility of change. Third, they
must seek out other natural leaders who, like themselves, have had
enough of watching and are willing to assert themselves. Fourth, they
must set a pace that fits the context.
I am
heartened to know that this same pattern of empowering naturally
embedded leaders to step forward and take the risks of leadership is
alive and well around the world—even in places where fear is the
norm and hope a fleeting dream. For example, six years ago in the
war-ravaged former Yugoslavia, the EastWest Institute, an independent
and privately supported international “think and action tank,”
recruited a dozen and a half women and men to try to do something
that governments and experts said could not be done. Following years
of bloody killing based on religious and ethnic lines, families
living in these border areas faced their own great depression with no
possible hope of life getting better. Moreover, their hatred for
families just a town away was intense. They could not forget memories
of the wanton killing and destruction inflicted upon one another just
a decade previously. Our team of women and men had a single common
mission: to mobilize citizens in these war-ravaged regions to work
together across borders to build trust and help local communities
begin the painful journey of exiting their world of poverty and
hopelessness. To accomplish this goal would require our leaders to
help build bridges over many years’ growth of deep-rooted fears,
and to inspire people to themselves become leaders within their
communities. What they accomplished during the past six years is
well-known to the local populations and to governments all over
Europe. It’s a story of enormous hope and testimony.
As
extraordinary as I think each one of my colleagues is as a human
being and a leader, they are “ordinary” women and men. One had no
university education; another was a young mother of two small
children living in a town where some of the heaviest fighting took
place. The first was a Christian, the second a Muslim. Others came
from other tough parts of the Balkans, with a few from European
countries or the United States. All were driven by a personal
commitment to do something larger than themselves. Most of these
leaders took on serious personal risks, from the real possibility of
becoming alienated from their own communities to endangering their
personal safety—all as they worked to build bridges of trust
between the two sides. Leaving their war-torn communities was
unthinkable. They were men and women who had had enough and were
ready to fight fear by taking the risks of going where others feared
to go.
I sat
with twelve of these brave leaders recently in a remote village hall
that billed itself as a restaurant. As the evening progressed, I
asked each to explain exactly how they had succeeded in bringing
together communities devoid of hope and trust. I told them I thought
the key must have been their ability to find others like themselves
who shared a common vision for a future of peace. They respectfully
begged to differ. They reminded me that for the longest time, no one
in any of their communities would speak of peace or a common vision.
Everyone believed that more violence was imminent.
Their
initial success came in finding individual men and women within their
communities who, like themselves, had come to the conclusion that the
only way out of the quagmire of poverty and isolation was to try to
find somebody—anybody—who also was tired of this hopelessness and
wanted change. A tough initial hurdle was persuading communities to
trust that the sponsors of this cross-border work were truly
committed to impartiality and had no hidden agendas. Would we not
take sides when the chips were down? Our leaders in the field and the
EastWest Institute itself were tested once again.
The
story of how our leaders were able to inspire everyday people to face
down their own very real fears and to take leadership roles within
their communities is instructive no matter what kind of organization
you lead. The smallest incremental steps taken by the local populace
became their building blocks to larger initiatives. Because they
listened and continued to talk about and probe their most basic
common interests, barriers continued to fall. When one previously
hostile man proposed that he might let his son play in a sporting
event for younger children with boys of a neighboring village of a
different religious belief, our team on both sides of that border
decided to try to organize a soccer match for younger children. Many
months later it happened, although most families escorted their
children to the playing field with weapons at their side. Several
games later, they came without arms. Eventually they would bring food
from home and share a community table after the match.
The
initial risks people were willing to take were ones based on plain
old self-interest. Could we together find the source of a polluted
stream that was tainting drinking water for families on both sides of
the border? Could children be given a normal experience of playing
sports with other children? Success came by having our staff locally
based and of the community; by not rushing; and by being fiercely
independent as a sponsoring institution, remaining outside of the
politics and focusing solely on the bottom line— improvement of the
human condition. In the end, our teams were able to accomplish things
no one dreamed possible in three difficult areas of the former
Yugoslavia. Their inner drive and sense of purpose at first was
tolerated, then came to be respected and even embraced by a growing
number in the communities they served.
As I
listened to their passionate discourse that evening, I thought about
how diverse these leaders and their backgrounds were. In most cases,
their success was due not to their particular educational backgrounds
or special training, nor to their nationality, religion, family
status and upbringing, age, or gender. It seems the only thing that
really mattered was that these leaders shared innate leadership
strengths springing from a fierce inner drive to face down fear and
be part of a force for change that was larger than themselves. This
resonated in others who stepped forward, every bit as much leaders as
the initiators.
I asked
our team of leaders whether their experience had taught them lessons
that could be applied elsewhere—perhaps to how we in the West could
do better in bridging the growing divide between Muslims and
non-Muslims globally. Their enthusiasm then went to an even higher
level, and the ideas started spilling forth. At the core was a
baseline of shared values, especially a desire for fairness and
integrity in others. I wondered what would have happened if we in the
Institute had not decided to face our own fears and undertake the
seemingly impossible task of cross-border work in the Balkans. In
what kind of world would these women and men have found themselves? I
thought of how comfortable President Roosevelt would have been at the
table that evening some seventy years after he spoke his words that
inspired so many.
Leaders
willing to take risks to overcome fear are all around us. Therein
lies our hope for dealing with the seemingly overwhelming challenges
on our planet in this twenty-first century. A key leadership
challenge today is how to mobilize sufficient numbers of these
naturally embedded leaders across the divides that breed fear and
extremism and threaten our future and that of our children. It all
starts with our willingness to face up to our own fears, stare them
down, and find the emerging natural leader within each of us.
