LEGL 4500/6500 - Employment Law

Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, Esq.

Terry College of Business

Many Americans look back with nostalgia to a time of well-know leaders in the universities, churches, synagogues, businesses, and government. Hard-pressed to identify many such leaders today, they worry about the system of selection, the influence of the mass media, and the single-issue obsession that seem to make it difficult for great leaders to emerge.

For a moment, this all seemed to be changing. But the euphoria we felt when people took to the streets to topple old government in Eastern Europe, and when Nelson Mandela was released in South Africa, has given way to caution and reality. We are learning once again that it is not enough to gain the release of political prisoners, to bring down repressive governments, or to crown new leaders. When expectations outstrip reality, what began as high hopes can be transformed easily into frustration and disillusionment.

Although the present leadership climate may appear at first to be a leadership vacuum, it is more likely that we are simply looking in the wrong place for leadership. If we have learned anything from those who are building new societies in Eastern Europe, Southern Africa and Central America, it is that the next generation of leaders is not likely to fit the traditional mold, nor are those leaders likely to be found in traditional places.

The days of looking for leaders with the right endorsements and the right credentials as defined by an established elite are over. The leaders of the future will not come riding out of the sunset on white chargers-heroes without heroism. Many will instead be ordinary people with extraordinary commitments. Their styles will be different. Their accents will be different and so will their color and complexion. What most will have in common, however, is the commitment to a civil society.

Although the meaning of "civil society" is still evolving, three ideas are converging to provide a common frame of reference for very different expressions of the yearning for opportunity and advancement.

The first is the idea that a good society depends as much on the goodness of individuals as it does on the soundness of government and the fairness of laws. Despite differences in history, culture, and public philosophy, people around the world are coming to believe that citizens have rights and responsibilities that precede the state and that the patriot must, on occasion, protect his country even from his own government. It is for many people in many parts of the world a new way of thinking.

The second is the idea that individuals acting independently can make a difference in the life of government can make a difference in the life of a community or a culture. People around the world are taking matters into their own hands because they have come to believe that, although some governments in some parts of the world are working well for some of their people, few governments anywhere in the world are working well for all of their people-especially those in the margins. It is for many people in many parts of the world a new way of acting.

The third is the idea that people working together to promote the general welfare and to protect basic freedoms find a common ground that transcends differences and provides new perspectives on the purpose of the human journey. They are finding out that when they get involved with the needs of others, both those who help and those who are helped are transformed. It is for many people in many parts of the world a new way of being.

It is no accident that those who use language of civil society seem to be preoccupied with ethics and values. Leadership is in many ways a moral activity. The best and most responsible of the new leaders have a vision of a higher purpose, and they seek to inspire, motivate, and gain the commitment of others to carry out that vision. They are able to persuade others to try new ideas because they are social entrepreneurs who create an excitement about a mission or challenge.

I have certainly found this to be true during recent visits to the Soviet Union. The members of the Congress of People’s deputies I met in Lithuania and the Ukarine, the returning exiles from Siberia who told tragic tales of frustration and perseverance, and even some of the people with whom I visited in their home in Leningrad and Moscow were all fighting for reforms so fundamental that they challenged both the structure and philosophy of the Soviet State,

But leadership in Soviet society, as in other societies of Eastern Europe, is a series of contradiction at the moment. In the midst of the incredible spiritual, intellectual, and political ferment, there is a limited knowledge of process; everywhere creativity is in search of institutional expression. There are many new voices arguing that the society must be made plural and more civil, but there is an anxiety about whether the toleration culture maybe inborn, a product of stagnation, making it difficult to break totally with the past.

In Southern Africa-particularly South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe-I have also found contradictions. Although management and leadership development are among the most obvious needs of a society in transition, there is also an impressive cadre of well-educated and well-trained Black leaders who are ready and able to provide the kind of leadership represented by Nelson Mandela. From the cabinet of Sam Nujoma in Namibia and community leaders in Soweto and Cape Town to leaders trained by the African National Congress in the United States and Europe, I have met men and women with both commitment and the capability needed to build a more just social order.

What are the implications for leadership in America’s third century? Is there a similar social energy about to be unleashed? Our notion of civil society has at times been restrictive and exclusionary. But as the demographics of our communities change, so will the demographics of leadership. It has become fashionable to speak of our world as a global village, and-with new forms of collaboration in Eastern Europe and the Persian Gulf-we even hear talk of a new world order. But very little thought has been given to how a truly representative world order would look.

According to the World Development Forum, if our world were a village of 1,000 people, there would be 564 Asians, 210 Europeans, 86 Africans, 80 South Americans, and 60 North Americans. In the village would be 300 Christians (183 Catholics, 84 Protestants, 33 Orthodox), 175 Muslims, 128 Hindus, 55 Buddhists, 47 Animists, 85 from other religious groups, and 210 atheists. OF these people, 60 would control half the total income, 500 would be hungry, 600 would live in shantytowns, and 700 would be illiterate.

This profile of the new pluralism paints a vivid picture of the need to develop and equip leaders who can operate effectively in a world which the boundaries of community are changing demographically, functionally, and even conceptually. Many of the leaders of the future will come from the margins of society, where issues take on flesh and blood; from the bottom of the economy, where some people wake up every day to overwhelming odds; from nonwhites who have learned to operate effectively in multiracial and multicultural settings.

What is at stake is nothing less than our ability to live together in community, to affirm a common good, and to pursue common goals. As our world becomes more interdependent, with our economies linked together and out life-styles increasingly similar, we see at the same time a return to smaller, more intimate centers of meaning and memory.

Is it possible that we have lost the connecting tissue, the social glue, the ethic of community? What many fear is a new tribalism may in fact be a natural part of the search for common ground-a search that involves, first and foremost, the search for beginnings. As John Naisbitt argues in Megatrends 2000, the more humanity sees itself as inhabiting a single planet, the greater the need for each culture on the globe to assert a unique heritage.

For a time, we thought the purpose of building and seeking to sustain community was to create a homogenized, assimilated prototype of European man. But as we stand at the beginning of America’s third century, we now realize that the greatest challenge may be to promote and foster pluralism while maintaining the coherence needed to act as a single community. This will require a conceptual shift in out notion of community. As Parker Plamer points out in his book, The Company of Strangers, the foundation of community is no longer the intimacy of friends, but the capacity of strangers to share a common territory, act on common problems, and even celebrate their unity without, in many cases, ever becoming friends. The word "stranger" may be too strong a metaphor, but it reminds us of the need to find civic cohesion and social solidarity form something other than a common race, a common religion, or a common culture.

Functional changes in the boundaries of community may have as much of an impact on the nature and function of leadership as demographic and conceptual changes. In the past, when we spoke of the way in which we met social needs and solved social problems, we emphasized the role of the three sectors: a private sector driven by profits, a public sector driven by the ballot, and a third, so-called independent sector driven by compassion. Although some political and economic leaders have emphasized a preference for one sector or another, the lines between sectors have become blurred. As Daniel Bell argues in The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, "what is public and what is private and what is profit and what is not-for-profit is no longer an easy distinction."

The leadership discourse is now far more pragmatic, with large numbers of people losing confidence in the benevolence of either governments or markets in isolation. For years, Americans overemphasized the social role of government while underemphasizing the contributions of private institutions and individuals. Now the opposite is true. We unduly exaggerate the contributions and the potential of private voluntarism while understating the legitimate social role of government. Those who emphasize the importance of one sector in maintaining or cultivating a caring society must now emphasize the limits of that sector as well.

With the decline of ideology, the emerging vision for the new world order may very well be a transformation of the emphasis in the 1980s on national patriotism into a new form of earth patriotism in which humanity seeks to live at harmony with itself, with nature, and with the cosmos. To call this a new environmentalism might be misleading, but it must be a simultaneous concern with the social environment in which almost a quarter of the world’s population is inadequately housed and between 700 million and one billion people live in abject poverty; the natural environment with its creeping deserts and declining rain forest; and the moral environment of human values that direct our relationship to one another, to nature, and to the planet.

From across the racial, cultural, political, and economic boundaries that still divide us, five conclusions about the future of leadership are emerging:

The demographic changes are creating a demand for a new group of leaders who seek power in order disperse it rather than simply hold it. The successful leaders of the future are likely to be those who understand what it means to share power rather than simply dominate it. Those who seek power only to concentrate it will ultimately lose it to those who seek it in order to diffuse it.

Diversity is increasingly a precondition to effectiveness. What we once claimed to be a moral imperative can now be seen as a part of enlightened self-interest. In its presentations to the Olympic Committee, the Atlanta Organization Committee argued that Atlanta’s racial harmony could be a model for harmony among different groups around the world. Some of the delegates who voted for Atlanta commented after the selection that they were swayed by the fact that the team that promoted Atlanta was multiracial and seemed to work well together. In other words, diversity provided a competitive advantage. Several thousand unemployed construction workers in Atlanta now have jobs because the city leadership was a model of diversity.

Tomorrow’s leaders must be able to use their values not simply to affirm absolutes but also to cope with ambiguities. During times of rapid change, there is always a revival of religion. Zealots emerge claiming one truth and one theology. As people search for something to hang on to, they tend to respond to those who provide answers rather than those who point to ambiguities. No religion, however, offers complete clarity and self-evident truth; hence, no vision of the present-let alone the future-can be accepted as final; no institution can be accepted as complete; no ideology can be accepted as closed. In matters of faith and morals, the right question is usually more important than the right answer to the wrong question.

It is imperative that leaders develop the capacity for humility. Our world desperately needs leaders who are open to the possibility of human error in themselves and human wisdom in others. I remember my early days in a new administration in Washington. The euphoria of victory after long months of struggle produced a climate in which It was easy to believe that the millennium had finally come; the rascals had been thrown out, and intelligence and foresight had finally come to government. In fact, some rascals had probably been thrown out, but in every group of people there are likely to be a few who share a commitment to the same goals. The supreme challenge is to identify them and to make them allies rather than adversaries.

It is the involvement with the needs of others that provides the social cement that binds people together in community. Much attention has been given to individualism and "lone ranger" leadership in American history. It remains a major theme of historical analysis and self-understanding. But future leaders may need to acknowledge and affirm another tradition that goes back to John Winthrop’s vision of a city on a hill. Those who seek to "make the condition of others their own" will find that the effect of doing something for others is powerful. When by trying to help you experience the problems of those economically disadvantaged or politically disenfranchised, you are far more likely to feel a common ground. And you are likely to gain a sense of self-worth, personal satisfaction, and meaning in the process. Once the potential leader discovers the ability to make a difference, the leadership impulse-which may start out as a very personal and solitary drive-is likely to be transformed into a larger commitment to making the concern for others, to making some form of civic engagement of behalf of others, a part of the human journey.

National Forum, Winter 1991