The article argues that traditional views of leadership in government have meant that people in a leadership position have two audiences two play two: those with a commercial interest and those with a community interest, when both are in fact inextricably linked. Using the events that took place in New Orleans, the article argues that when we hold onto a linear perspective on leadership it disempowers communities and leaders alike because it separates two groups that are in (or rather should be) very much aligned. The article concludes that when leaders at the local and central government levels take the necessary risks associated with being a leader and when they are ready and willing to have the emotional courage to test and challenge their own assumptions about what leadership is, the alignment of the groups will be a natural sequitur.

The Leadership Challenge
Leadership is a fluid concept. Contextually dependent and deeply bonded to our notions of family and survival it continues to rivet our imaginations and simultaneously draw us together and apart. Government is no exception. Here, the concept of leadership is seemingly dualistic but not necessarily so. Dualistic because it appears as if the leader in local and central government has two separate audiences to address: the stakeholders of the government offices and those with a commercial interest in them and the stakeholders that form the larger community who have elected those officials to that post. Not necessarily so because, as it will be argued, our traditional beliefs about leadership have led us to separate the aforementioned groups when in actual fact they are inextricably linked.

An in-depth analysis of leadership theories reveals that they are inherently focused on the individual instead of a group of individuals who lead and confer some hidden, almost magical power to the leader. From behaviourist to learning theories, situational to transformational/charismatic leadership theories, all perpetuate the belief that a) people need to be led and b) that a leader possesses some power/ability/skill that others do not possess. Take the psychological roots of such positioning into account and it does not seem too far a leap to say that beliefs about leadership can be traced back to the traditional role that the father or paterfamilias has played in the family (be it a tribal family or any other). Being an individual (in most cases a man) to whom the state or group conferred certain privileges and roles, he dictated what was right and wrong, appropriate or inappropriate and in doing so was simultaneously revered and feared. Often these powers were conferred not purely on the merits of the man’s physical power being perceived as greater than his female counterpart (or rival) but because of certain beliefs about the role that he should play as a consequence of evolutionary necessity. In other words, because Man was physically stronger than Woman and because it was he who assumed the role of making the fire and providing the food the dependency on him for survival increased making him indispensable to the group and hence the “leader” thereof. In being the leader he would gain certain privileges others did not have and this partly explains why violence amongst men in these groups was not an uncommon occurrence.

Why is this preamble important to our current discussion? Well, because in modern business we often overlook the psychological, cultural and evolutionary antecedents of our behaviour and the impact that repeated behavioural transactions of one kind or another have in the way we continue to behave. In the past individuals in the group looked toward their leader to tell them what they needed to do. Groups were separated into in and out-groups. Roles and responsibilities were clearly delineated and punishments for “falling out of line” ranged from the benign to the severe. Different power/influence groups were formed in order to readdress perceived imbalances and pandered to different stakeholders in order to achieve their goals. If this all sounds very familiar, it is because these behaviours are visible in the organisations in which we work today. Yet, whatever the motivation for overthrowing or electing leaders may be, be it greed, different political beliefs or sheer survival it is the degree to which our beliefs about these motivations have embedded themselves in how we think our leaders need to act towards us and vice-versa that is most relevant to our understanding of leadership.

If we extrapolate the latter to people’s beliefs about the role that government leaders need to play then it should come as no surprise that when most people are asked, they will say that elected officials are there to serve their constituents. They care less about the commercial challenges that government leaders face, partly because these challenges are rarely communicated to them(1). What they do care about is that the basic requirements for survival are met and that they can enjoy a decent and healthy life. If we read behind the behaviours to the script that is driving them we will find that they are no different to the script that has been followed for millennia viz. people want their leader to provide for them, care for them and ensure them that everything will be alright at a minimum cost to themselves both in terms of effort and time. This is not to throw contempt in the face of the general public or accuse them of lack of involvement or anything of the like. On the contrary, people will rise up and stand for what they believe in when pushed too far. However, the point that is being made here is that our beliefs about what leaders should be doing have become so embedded in our everyday lives that unless reminded of the role we should and can be playing and unless reminded of how much power we truly have to make a change, we only do what we have always done: defer our power to someone else to make decisions about what is good for us. The irony in all of this is that we are the ones who, through our power to vote (and the power we exercised to have the right to vote), put those people there in the first place! Empowering communities to make a difference and being involved in government initiatives is thus the first of the major leadership challenges that leaders at the local and central government level face.

What of the role leaders play? As stated above, they too are driven by traditional scripts. Whilst they may have the best intentions at heart, being in a position of power generally means being affected by it. Moreover, leaders are never independent of those around them, so, when it comes to being a leader at the government level you cannot escape the pandering, pushing or pressuring of those who both work for you and for whom you work. What this means at an individual level is that the leader is constantly faced with a survival challenge in which if he/she want to maintain their jobs they have to make certain influential groups happy. This may or may not come at a cost to the community but in cases where the community does lose out, one often need look no further than personal survival or the loss thereof (when a leader is marginalised and eventually pushed out) somewhere along the chain of command as one of the main root causes of the problem.

Now, one may argue that what I have just laid out is somewhat simplistic and not entirely fair. Leaders in government face a dynamic that corporate leaders only face in a more subtle way viz. affiliation to a large and highly visible group. Unlike the corporate leader, whose affiliation to a group may be more subtle, the leader in government has a very visible and overt affiliation to a political party. When it comes to the formation of policies around a range of issues, the leader may have to follow what his/her political party has set out so how can one say it is an individual problem? The answer to this question is that it is not an individual problem but a question of mindset. As long as one sees the lines of leadership as being vertical and as long as governments continue to perpetuate these hierarchies by sticking to political standpoints that are not always in line with public needs, their leaders will continue to separate out the will of the community from the wish of an influential few and/or from commercial objectives. Who, after all, would dare to challenge those in power or not meet commercial targets at the risk of losing one’s own position simply for the sake of the community?

This leaves us in a very interesting place indeed. On the one hand leaders at the government level have a community of people whom they need to serve and whose lives they have been entrusted to improve but whom (the constituents that is) are not always informed of the challenges they face. On the other hand, they have to manage the commercial realities of running a government office of which people vying for leadership positions, inheriting or working with existing weak executive teams and meeting commercial targets are but a few of the challenges they face. Leading in any environment is lonely indeed, but at the government level perhaps even more so. The challenge that leaders face, thus, is to find a balance between the demands of their constituents and the demands of their employees and other stakeholders whilst at the same time maintaining a profitable organisation. Whilst this balancing act is attainable, it is by no means easy and can go horribly wrong when not applied correctly, as the proceeding example aims to show.

A Case in Point
Recently an event occurred in the United States of America that demonstrates the dissonance that exists when leaders at the governmental level fail to link-up their stakeholders with their commercial objectives. The incident being referred to here is the gross failure on the part of the Federal Government to adequately handle the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Whatever facts one chooses to believe in, it is clear that leadership at all levels of government were neither coordinated nor balanced. At the commercial level, the Federal and National Governments were accused of being completely focused on Iraq to the detriment of its own people. At the community/constituent level charges of racism were lodged against the government for a variety of reasons, ranging from the distortion of facts on the part of the media, to the behaviour of some of the officials on the ground and surrounding areas to the fact that those in positions of power at the Federal and National level have traditionally been conservative, white men who have always maintained a distance from minority groups. On the other hand, the event saw ordinary people from traditionally conservative cities like Texas travel for days to help their fellow Americans out, demonstrating clearly how inaction on the part of the government leaders often leads to action on the part of its constituents. Lastly, at the government employee level there were two distinct reactions: On the one side a sense of shame, despair and guilt on the part of some who were stationed for days outside New Orleans awaiting further instructions from their leaders and on the other a stance of defensiveness claiming they were doing all they could do. The latter group was headed by President Bush and Michael D. Brown, the head of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), who Bush applauded on international television for the work he was doing but whose was later forced to resign amidst growing public pressure. When interviewed by journalists from the BBC he said that whilst he believed he was doing his best at the time and that the Government was not to blame he was happy to step down if it meant that the inefficiencies within Homeland Security and Federal Government would become public knowledge and rectified. The irony of such a statement did not go unnoticed by government watchdogs despite President Bush appointing a new head of FEMA and the Secretary for Homeland Security distancing himself from his previous support for Brown.

Whilst admittedly, the Hurricane Katrina example focuses on an event of extreme proportions, it is highly relevant to the current discussion because it is an example of the difference between leadership that is vertically driven and that which is ecologically/horizontally driven. When leadership in government is driven in a top-down manner only, the consequences thereof are not dissimilar to what occurred in the U.S. Silos are established and where they are not government offices tend to not ‘think’ beyond the mandate they have been given and so instead of government leaders acting as think tanks they end up much like a production line with one person telling the next one what to do. In such cases statements such as “I was awaiting instructions”, “That is not my job” and “It was out of my hands” (to name but a few) are rife. The net effect of this on the community is that because of time lags in decision-making and because leaders promise action will occur, traditional scripts are defaulted to ultimately disempowering the community or in extreme cases (as was recently demonstrated in France) leading to exactly the opposite: an extreme reaction from them.

The position of the ecological/horizontal leadership approach is different. Here the leader creates a strong alignment between strategic and commercial objectives with the needs of the community firmly in check. In doing so, the leader’s engagement with their stakeholders is driven by a similarity in purpose and attentions do not end up being entirely focused on one initiative as is/was the case in America. Furthermore, the leader recognises the competencies that are needed to achieve his/her goals and is comfortable to take the necessary risks to ensure that they are present. The latter is already taking place in several countries throughout the world were governments have realised that the traditional government leadership model is outmoded in the marketplace and unable to meet the demands of its constituents. Flexibility and connectivity of initiatives, stakeholders and purpose (be it commercial or otherwise) is key to this approach because what it essentially does is engage people to create a vision of what they want their government to look like. The role of the leader, then, is to act as a facilitator and guide in these discussions. He/she may adopt the role of the hard business driver who tells people what they need to do when the situation requires it but he/she is driven by a much bigger and deeper aim than their own survival, namely, the betterment of his/her fellow citizens. Considering human behaviour, it is clear that such a task is not an easy one to be asking of our leaders because it is, at some level, asking them to go against the grain of what we believe is human nature. However, it is an absolutely essential one because whilst not dismissing our innate drive for personal survival it links that survival drive to the community of which we are a part. The challenge facing local and central government leaders then is just as much an organisational as an individual one and involves each level reminding the other why they wanted to be there and were elected to those positions in the first place.

Concluding Remarks
The discussion has shown that the complexities that local and central government leaders face are vast and complex and driven by psychological, cultural and evolutionary factors. On the individual levels leaders are tasked with challenging their own conceptualisations of what it means to be a leader. On an organisational level leaders are challenged to find a balance between forces that seemingly and often pull them in a variety of directions. The example that was used for the discussion was chosen because it so clearly illustrates what happens when a vertical/top-down approach to leadership is applied as opposed to an ecological/horizontal one. Ultimately, government leaders have to be clear that whilst they have business objectives to meet they are not a business in the traditional sense of the word. They also need to have the emotional courage to take the risks that are needed to ensure that the appropriate links are made and that they have the right people around them; this is one of the hallmarks of a good leader. Above all else, leaders need to look at leadership not as some intangible concept that only lies within the sphere of psychology but as a practical skill that can be applied on a daily basis and in a structured and supported manner. When governments begin to look at leadership in this way and when they challenge their own notions of what leadership means at a central and local level, they will begin to see that the links they were looking for were there all along and that all that was needed was the alignment thereof.


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(1) The reasons for this are beyond the scope of this discussion but one cannot ignore the implications that decisions around information-sharing have for our understanding of leadership and the power differentials that emanate from them.