Can Singapore as a society afford to deprive itself of these capable leaders’

Core to the argument against tolerating infidelity is that leaders, by definition, carry significant influence. If they fail to act with integrity in private, they may not be trustworthy in their work.

Societies generally cut corporate leaders some slack as their realm of influence is typically limited to the corporate world. Also, the state would have difficulty implementing any penalties for their infidelities.

However, public leaders are in the public eye. They naturally become role models for communities. According to this argument, they should be held to higher standards. Citizens should use their power, as the people who pay their salaries, to remove them from their jobs if they fail.

But in fact, views on the acceptability of private foibles of individuals vary by country, gender, and some biological factors.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman caught being unfaithful may face the death penalty. Between 59 per cent and 80 per cent of Anglo-Saxons claim that adultery is “always wrong”.

But Europeans, especially the French and Italians, are relatively blase. When former French president Francois Mitterrand died, both his wife and his mistress attended the public funeral. In some parts of Africa, infidelity is so normal that the children who result are publicly accepted as belonging to their biological parents.

Rates of infidelity are hard to determine as survey respondents typically under-report when asked embarrassing questions about extra-marital sex.

Based on a large, international study by condom manufacturer Durex, an average 22 per cent of married people are unfaithful at some point. Singapore is below average, at 17 per cent.

Biology plays a part in determining who will lead, who will be unfaithful to whom and when. Testosterone, the principal male sex hormone, is related to leadership, libido and the number of lifetime sexual partners. Men with higher testosterone levels are more likely to seek positions of leadership, have stronger libidos and have more sexual partners – regardless of their marital status.

Women are much more likely to be unfaithful when they are ovulating – the period when they are most likely to conceive – than at other times in their menstrual cycle. While ovulating, they are likely to pursue healthy, virile, hunky men. At other times, they are more interested in men with wealth and power and who can provide security.

In a simple study on this point, women were asked to rate the desirability of men shown in a stack of photos. They were given fictitious information on each man’s salary and job title. Women were considerably more likely to find the men desirable when they were told the men held powerful, high- paying jobs.

That effect was not found when genders were reversed. Men tended to rate women’s desirability on their appearance, not financial or occupational information.

Evolutionary psychologists explain that women experience an unconscious pressure to look for healthy men to be the biological fathers of their children – hence the desire for hunks when ovulating.

But they seek rich, powerful, leader-types after conception so that their children will be raised with security and influence.

Men, by contrast, have an evolutionary pressure to spread their genes as much as possible, and so are inclined towards women who are fertile, that is, healthy, and young. They are less concerned with security, ongoing relations or their partners’ status in society.

If other societies had chastised their leaders as we in Singapore in 2012 have done, they would have lost Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the movement to end racial discrimination in the US; Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China; Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, favourite US presidents; and Mohandas Gandhi, pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India, who shared his bed with multiple young women – whom he claimed not to touch; and thousands of others.

While there are not many noted public female leaders who are believed to have been unfaithful, it is surely a matter of time before that changes.

As a child, I lived in France at the time when president Valery Giscard d’Estaing had an affair with a dancer. He was so consumed by it that when terrorists took French diplomats hostage in Holland, Mr Giscard was not involved in directing the situation as he was “unavailable”.

For four days no French newspaper reported his indiscretion. When a satirical weekly wrote a mocking article about the president’s conduct, both major national newspapers immediately responded with scathing pieces about the inappropriateness of reporting on the personal life of a president.

Personally, I find Mr Giscard’s negligence egregious. And I do not for a moment condone the old-fashioned tolerance of workplace sexual harassment as being “just what boys get up to”. As a psychologist and university faculty member who teaches leadership, I have seen the incredible damage sexual misconduct can do to families and work environments. However, we have something to learn from the French.

Former Speaker of Parliament Michael Palmer, and Workers’ Party MP Yaw Shin Leong have left their political offices due to scandals. Others may be considering leaving public service early for fear that they will soon be discovered. And many aspiring public leaders that I train are concerned that the lack of privacy in high office will be too much to tolerate.

Can we afford to deprive ourselves of their leadership? I suggest, no. Paradoxically, in our attempt to improve our society by cleansing it of corruption, we have gone too far. Overly condemning leaders who, like a large portion of the population have faults in their personal lives, deprives us of their potential contribution to our society.

(First published by The Straits Times, Singapore, 8 January 2013)

The pursuit of happiness is high on most people’s life agenda. In fact, it is writ large in political manifestos – in the Singapore pledge of allegiance, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and in Bhutan’s case, even as a measurement of progress: “Gross National Happiness”. So what actually contributes to happiness?

Clearly, wealth has something to do with it but it is only a fraction of the equation. Researchers, including Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, have shown that on average the more wealthy a nation, the greater the well-being of its citizens. Denmark is at the top of the curve; the USA, a wealthier nation as measured by purchasing power, is not far behind – but it is on the same level as Venezuela – a very much poorer nation. As for Singapore, despite its wealth per capita (11th in the world according to Gallup’s researchers), ranks poorly. Singaporeans described themselves as “struggling” significantly more than the citizens of other countries. Money, it seems, is like hygiene: it can protect people from the lows of disease and discontentment, but it cannot take a person or a population to the highs of thriving and well-being. So once we have met the basic factors of life (food, shelter, and health), what are the causes of happiness?

The self-help section in your local bookstore is likely to shed some light of the issue, but it is unlikely to describe more than one of the three paths researchers have found that actually increase well-being. The strategies you will read reflect the ideals and goals of a society oriented to commercial success. Motivational can-do guru Anthony Robins, life coaches, sport psychologists, and empowerment groups teach us to identify, visualize, plan, and attain our heart’s desires. This might mean acquiring more fame, owning a new BMW, getting that tight body, finding Prince Charming, or improving your immune function. The methods are powerful. In fact, if you do not describe using some of these psychological methods in your application to elite military forces, e.g., the US Navy SEALs, you will be rejected simply because you lack the psychological skills that lead to resilience. While these “go get what you want” methods may help you achieve, gain, and acquire, will they bring you to really high well-being? Apparently not.

Many people follow this path with great success only to find their rich and famous selves sitting on top of their careers and asking, “What is this all for?” Saint Paul, the primary author of the New Testament, described this ennui as a “groaning” for God that cannot be satisfied this side of heaven. The Buddha explained that pain as an inherent dissatisfaction with the unenlightened life. And clinical psychologists call it a mid-life crisis – I had my first one at age 11.

Many people respond by borrowing one of the 19 million copies of the self-help book The Secret by Australian television writer and producer Rhonda Byrne, and adopting a minor modification to the same ineffective grind. A few, however, move on.

Profound and pervasive well-being

The second, more mature stage of seeking well-being, is characterized by accepting one’s mental and emotional states. People focus on accepting what they have and changing previously unrealistic expectations. They start to see that discontentment exists in the space between what is and what they think should be. Many atheists, agnostics, and spiritual practitioners seek progress along this path. Its essence is described well by Reinhold Neibuhr’s prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

According to well-being researcher Dr. Jeffery Martin, director of the Centre for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness, 99 percent of the population is able to improve well-being incrementally using a variation of the standard techniques alluded to above. But, sadly, they rarely arrive at their goal – permanent well-being.

Dr. Martin has interviewed 1,200 people who perceive themselves to have “arrived”. They experience a profound and pervasive state of extraordinary well-being typically brought on by a sudden, dramatic shift. These people report that no matter what situation may arise, they are able to return to a high baseline of wellness very quickly. They do not experience any void or gnawing dissatisfaction with life. As one participant described it, “I now live in a state of sweet stillness, and I would never want to go back.”

Neuroscientists at New York University and Yale have scanned the brains of some people in this population and believe their findings substantiate these claims. While describing the most unusual brain examined, one researcher (who requested to be unnamed) described two important areas of blue to indicate “silence,” ergo, “he lives in a world of incredible peace, with a feeling of being connected to all things, and in a continuous sense of flow or presence. It’s truly remarkable.”

This state is characterized by “positive surrender”. Unlike the previously described stage, where people are actively trying to let go of the need to control, in this stage, surrender is a natural state of being. One might be excused for thinking this “blue”-brained lot would be lazy, un-achieving, and impractical. In fact many have demanding executive level jobs. They describe conducting their lives as a natural expression of who they are rather than with the goal to achieve something in particular. Jeffrey Walker, ex-Chairman and CEO of CCMP Capital, explained to me that this population makes exceptionally good bankers. One reason may be because their emotions do not interfere with their clarity of thought.

So how can any of us get to this stage? While some people claim they achieved it through spiritual practice, many others describe it suddenly happening to them despite having no particular practice. One person became obsessed with mirrors, the reflection of mirrors within mirrors, and the question of “What is reality if everything can be a seen as a reflection?” He found himself questioning the nature of reality and then suddenly…pop! He claims his baseline of well-being profoundly changed forever.

Electric Awakening

In an attempt to harness technology to effect this change, Dr. Martin’s privately funded research group has created a “happiness hat”. It uses transcranial direct current stimulation to invoke a prolonged state of well-being by sending an electrical signal to the relevant parts of participants’ brains. I interviewed one of the first participants, Sally.

She described profound and increasing amounts of joy for the three to four hours following her treatment. “It wasn’t giddy. It was deep. I felt an immense, imperturbable peace and joy throughout my body.” She went on to explain having a very tricky and potentially painful discussion with her romantic partner during that period. “It was the kind of discussion that might have made me afraid that we were heading toward separation. But I felt such well-being inside, I just wanted to communicate with him in a straightforward way, completely uncensored. It’s the kind of thing you would never normally do, but everything just felt so right. I was in a place where what was being said to me could not affect me emotionally or decrease the well-being I was feeling.”

Since then a number of people have experienced this electrical impulse with varying degrees of success. According to Dr. Martin, it is likely that sometime between tomorrow and 20 years from now, well-being is going to be available in the zap of a happiness hat. If he is right, the impact on our society will, literally, be mind-boggling. But it may not be the kind of “surrender” one envisioned.

If the job of our governments is to increase the well-being of its populations, should they start investing in electrode-filled hats rather than roads or schools? And if this hat were to be very successful, would we all use it? Some part of me wonders if in fact a cheap road to well-being would be a good thing. It does not seem natural but perhaps that does not matter. The last time I saw Sally I asked for her thoughts. She beamed as she described her experience. She also explained that she and her partner had just bought a home and regardless of the impact on society, she wants another shot at the machine. As I watched her glow with joy as she talked, I could not help but wonder how much had been caused by her experience in the happiness hat and… I wanted to give it a try myself.

(reprinted from Global-is-Asian Nov-2012)

To find them, I looked for the most profoundly happy people alive. I reasoned that they would have the least interest in acting selfishly. I sought the help of the Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness as they have tracked down more than 1,100 people who show remarkably high levels of well-being. In order to understand the cause of their well-being, researchers have scanned their brains at Yale University and New York University. I recently spoke with Gary Weber, one of the participants whom scientists have most closely examined.

Over a decade ago, while doing a yoga posture he had done thousands of times before, he had an unexpected, sudden, psychological shift that led to profound, on-going well-being. Like others in this study, his remarkable happiness is associated with a permanent reduction in the amount he thinks. I asked him how thinking less has helped with decision-making. He explained that many of the remarkable achievements of humanity have come from a place of mental stillness, e.g., Archimedes who found his answers while stepping into a bath; Friedrich Kekule dreamed the solutions that made him famous; and Benjami Franklin watched a lightening storm.  Their discoveries came from inspiration, not thinking.

“At board meetings,” he described, “people are only 10%-50% present. And that’s optimistic. They are distracted by how to get even, what’s going on at home, or how much better everything would be if so-and-so were not around.” The quality of ideas is related to one’s ability to be present and discursive thinking can contaminate those ideas. So most people, like those board members, do not reach their potential at coming up with good ideas. Gary, by contrast, lets ideas “well up inside — as if they come from a place in the body.” Oddly, he is as surprised as anyone else with the content of these ideas. “When I speak aloud these inspirations, they tend to be so good, I look like the smartest guy in the meeting!”

Gary, and others I met in this study, use this “thought-less” decision-making method in aspects of life that range from finding a parking space in rush hour to investing corporate funds. Gary’s success is evident. He became the senior vice president of a Fortune 500 company, PPG Industries, with 1000 people under him, five research labs, and a budget of a quarter of a billion US dollars. And, he rarely gets parking tickets.

To see if others could learn how to do this, I asked him to advise me on how to help a coaching client who was very stressed as he considered getting back with his ex-wife. “After considering the main issues, your client should get into a state of stillness and he should ask himself ‘Should I get back with her or not?’ If his answer feels like it comes from his head, that’s not the right answer. If he feels it rise from some place deep within, that’s more likely to be correct. To re-test his answer, he should ask himself why he believes that is the right answer; if he gets an explanation in the form of discursive thought from his head, he should be suspicious. But if he gets no explanation but simply a sense of the answer, that’s probably the right way to go.”

Perhaps thought-less decision-making is not as odd as it at first seems. After all, it was only a couple of hundred thousand years ago that our species developed the capacity for conscious thinking. That is the twinkling of evolution’s eye. Perhaps Gary and the others in this study are so profoundly happy because they have rediscovered something we lost generations ago. In any case, it seems this technique can be taught, and, according to Gary, if we learn to trust the ideas that come from stillness, our decisions and our lives will be enormously better. In the case of my client that meant getting back together with his ex-wife.

Footnote

All details regarding coaching clients have been kept anonymous, and no identifying information included.

(reprinted from Global-is-Asian Jan-2012)

In the twinkling of an eye, in evolutionary terms, our brains almost tripled in size from the half kilogram of homo habilis 2 million years ago to the hunky 1.3kg 200,000 years ago of homo sapiens (humans). That remarkable transformation produced a frontal lobe that makes us unique among animals at foreseeing the consequences of our action. As a result, we’ve been able to create antibiotics, astronomical instruments, and atom bombs. But we never evolved to handle the power we now possess. Evolution left out two key abilities: handling abstract problems and coping with fragile egos.

Unlike our ability to handle oncoming rocks, we are not good at coping with the enormous, abstract problems our frontal lobe has helped us create. Take climate change. It’s hard for our minds to grasp the real effects of melting ice caps, increased ocean acidity, and changes to weather patterns. To most of us, all that stuff can seem a bit…dare I say it…nebulous, even irrelevant, as we think about what to do with our busy days. To make matters more difficult, anything we try to do now doesn’t bring what our brains expect: an immediate, tangible increase in our safety. In brief, because our species never needed to handle these abstract problems, we simply haven’t evolved to handle them well.

Evolution’s second omission is an antidote to our tendency towards fear and aggression. While psychologists comparing humans with other species have described us as “psychopathic” because of this predisposition, most of us politely describe the core of the problem as our having “sensitive egos”. I recently witnessed an example while coaching a former executive of a major financial institution. For a year he had worked with his firm to make sure they were prepared for him to take early retirement. He missed his children and wanted to be part of their daily lives. He wanted to drive them to school. However, on his last day of work, the CFO of the firm became demeaning, rude, and contemptuous of him. Rather than brush that off and embrace his children as he’d planned, my client vowed to strike back at the CFO by destabilizing the firm’s half billion dollar investment in South East Asia. He worked slavishly at his new project for three years until his original firm was clearly suffering. His mellow retirement had been entirely hijacked by his ego and his children continued to be driven to school by a chauffeur. (Incidentally, his original firm then offered him one of the most senior positions in their company and a lucrative signing bonus. He turned them down — and then he did, finally, take his retirement.)

But the effect of ego pinching goes far beyond corporate vendettas. Several senior statesmen, including Singaporean luminaries, believe that one of the reasons for the US-led invasion of Iraq was a vendetta against Saddam Hussein by the family of George Bush. If that is true, thousands of innocent men, women, and children have died because of ego.

There are now 22,000 nuclear warheads, each of which is between 100 and 1000 times more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Several are “missing” and may be in the possession of rogue states that are led by people with particularly sensitive egos. It is simply logical to think that it is a matter of time before our technological prowess and tendency towards aggression meet in catastrophe. After all, in the last century alone, we killed more than 100 million of our own kind and we didn’t have the type of technology that is available today.

I had the privilege of asking the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Anan this question. He said that we have a 30% chance of destroying ourselves. I went on to ask ten faculty members of the Lee Kuan Yew School and Harvard Kennedy School how likely they think it is that we will destroy at least half of our species in 200 years. The median response was 33%. When asked what they thought the likelihood was of our destroying our species at some point in the future, they responded “100%”.

I asked Mr. Anan how we might overcome these two flaws in our psychology. He said, “We have to build empathy. Those with the ability to fix the problems must see the impact these problems have.” My initial reaction was that his solution sounded weak, tedious, and ineffective. But the more I think about it, the more I realize we have no other choice. Fortunately, recent research on empathy and compassion shows that people who deliberately try to cultivate these qualities themselves become happier. In fact recent brain scans have found that among the happiest people studied are those who deliberately try to cultivate compassion. So perhaps empathy and compassion aren’t as weak as they sound.

As I look at the running shoes I’m wearing, which may well have been made in an exploitative Nike-like sweatshop; as I consider the carbon footprint of a holiday I’ve been planning for months, I hope others will do better than me at developing real empathy for our grandchildren. I’m hoping that others will change their behavior and spare me the cost. At the same time, I’m forced to realize that this makes me part of the problem. And that may be an important step in developing the real empathy I will need to create my own change.

(originally published in Global-is-Asian, 2011)

If World Bank predictions come true, we face the return of a 2008-type financial meltdown, soaring food prices, and millions in Africa dying if they do not receive urgent assistance. Ten years ago, the world was focused on a different set of issues, primarily, the tragedy of 9/11. The event left thousands dead and mil- lions more traumatized. Today we have a good idea of how multiple leaders failed to respond effectively to the 9/11 crisis and, hopefully, those lessons will guide our current leaders as they navigate the dangerous times ahead.

(reprinted from 10th Anniversary of 9-11, in Global-is-Asian)

In times of crisis, it is natural for human beings to regress to a child-like state. When a child falls on the floor and grazes her knee, she may cry out, “Mummy and Daddy, where are you? Help me!” And if they do not help swiftly, the child may lose control and throw an inconsolable tantrum. When a nation is in a state of fear, it makes the same cry for help to its leaders. If leaders do not respond swiftly by feeling our pain, calming us down, and giving us promises of future protection, they face the rising fear and desperation of their people and run the risk of losing of their respect and, ultimately, their authority. After witnessing a child fall, I saw her parent instruct her to spank “the bad, bad floor” – so that the child would feel strong and vindicated for the pain caused by her fall. While the act seems silly, leaders frequently provide similarly useless plans of action aimed at satisfying the population’s need to feel in control – even though the response may have no other positive effect, or worst still, be expensive and deadly. This may seem a tad far-fetched but the events after 9/11 quickly come to mind.

In the wake of the attacks, America was frantic. Americans could not believe they were no longer safe and demanded a powerful response from their leader. George W. Bush gave them the clearest show of power a president could: he declared a War on Terror. The war on Afghanistan that ensued was fought apparently to give consolation to the American people and bring peace to Afghanistan. Ten years on, with more than 40,000 reported deaths (and many unreported deaths according to Wikileaks) and an estimated cost that runs into the hundreds of billions, America’s longest war to date could be described as an unmitigated disaster. Bush’s retaliation seems to have been a classic case of a very big spanking of the floor. It had the desired effect of galvanizing the nation behind a cause to help the populace feel strong and proud again, while temporarily shoring up support for the then still-new administration of Bush Jr. In hindsight, the war was a knee-jerk response to a problem that demanded a far more sophisticated approach.

Rudolph Giuliani, the mayor of New York at the time of the attacks, did a magnificent job in giving people what they wanted, but he failed to exercise any real leadership. Before the attacks, his career was in the doldrums. He had three months left of his term as mayor, he had dropped out of the US senate campaign, his race relations with the people of New York were in a poor state, and he had just used the TV to tell his wife that he was divorcing her. When the attacks occurred, he quickly went to the scene of the events. He gave people the sense that he felt their pain and assured them that normality would soon return to their lives. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to do any- thing. We will get the bad guys” was part of his message. And it was the kind of soothing message we all want to hear. Before the end of his term, it was said that Giuliani had more political capital than anyone in the US had for over a hundred years. He certainly had a lot more of that than his president. Unfortunately, despite his remarkable achievement, he did little to promote the real, necessary changes that the US needed to face.

He failed to use the crisis to encourage people to examine what changes the US might need to make given clear evidence it was out of step with other parts of the world. It is not clear what that conversation might have revealed. By jumping into the limelight and saying to people what they wanted to hear rather than what would have actually benefited them in the long run meant his nation lost the opportunity of using the crisis to change in a substantive way. I am not saying that his calming presence was unhelpful. It was important – but it was not enough. If he had pushed for change, he would have lost some of his popularity – no one wants to be told they have to make changes. He did not want to jeopardize his chances of becoming president – an ambition he never realized due to other factors. Giuliani squandered the vast political capital he had and became focused on personal gain instead. He tried to extend his term as mayor, squashed an investigation into why New York was not more prepared for what had occurred, and wrote a book on leadership.

This tendency to find useless technical fixes for problems that require challenging, nuanced work is the most common mistake of leaders in crises. But the alternative requires moral courage – the guts to push people to change for the better – even when it hurts. There are indeed no easy answers to how we are to handle the looming crisis. For a start, leaders would do well to take a leaf out of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s book. Singapore’s former Prime Minister practices meditation as a means to stay collected and center himself. What better way to prepare for the times ahead?

(reprinted from an article I wrote in Global-is-Asian 2011)

Browsing for advice from the estimated 50,000 leadership books, you could end up dizzy. How does one choose between irresistible top titles like: “The 21 Irrefutable Laws”, “Six Steps to Transforming Performance” and “Seven Key Principles of Effective Development”? It’s hard not to think, “if only I could master those tips, I’d be really successful.” While there may be an infinite number of nuances, successful leadership basically boils down to three key skills: task management, people management, and most significantly, personal management. Personal management is the cornerstone for the other two. Weaknesses in this area are responsible for the vast majority of all leadership derailment. It is so important that some of the oldest documents on human psychology systematically describe the key ways personal management fails. One of the most clear and comprehensive of these is from the 2500-year-old teachings found in Buddhism on The Five Hindrances. For application to modern management, I have described them here as six factors. By being sensitive to our tendencies to fail in these, we may be able to avoid joining the list of the dethroned. At the very least, we will be more self-aware.

The first two factors lie on the “desire” continuum; greed (too much desire for something) and hatred (too much desire not to have something). Tabloids love to report on cases of greed derailing a leader. The press around US Congressman Anthony Weiner’s recent upload of photos of his bulging underwear on Tweeter eventually forced him to resign. And given the many other recent scandals related to “greed” for sexual attention, one might be forgiven for thinking it all ends there. But hatred is also a cause of derailment. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was accused of having such antipathy for Iraq’s prime minister, “the monster” Saddam Hussein, that he believed “beyond doubt” that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction despite there being very little evidence for any. He brought Britain into a war and, as a result, he was forced to resign.

The next two reasons are on a continuum of “energy”: sluggishness (too little energy) and agitation (too much energy). Burnout, exhaustion, and depression are classical examples of too little energy. Too much energy is equally damaging; the leader who is jumpy, restless, and worried drives people crazy. We now know moods can be physiologically more contagious than the common flu. The moods of leaders are particularly infections because we all tend to focus on our bosses more than on other people. That “exposure” affects our minds and bodies. If leaders are sluggish or agitated they will neither be effective at their tasks nor at appealing to the people who work with them.

The final two reasons are on the continuum of “resolve”: insecurity (too little resolve) and dogmatism (too much resolve). If leaders do not have confidence in themselves or their direction, why should anyone else have confidence in them?To maintain the confidence of their followers, successful leaders embody clarity of purpose and a willingness to adapt to new circumstances. A significant reason for Singapore’s success as a nation is related to Lee Kuan Yew’s nimble ability to respond to changing circumstances while moving towards his goal of national financial prosperity. As one civil servant put it, “Lee Kuan Yew almost obsessively reassessed situations with a view to changing his course of action if needed.”

Too much resolve, however, can produce inflexible overconfidence and the perception that new ideas are a threat. An extreme example is violent fundamentalism. However, more subtle variants of dogmatism are much more dangerous. Leaders become unconsciously wedded to a plan of action and fail to respond to new information; their followers become means to an end; andultimately those followers turn away feeling used and disrespected. In the Buddhist texts, dogmatism is a manifestation of attachment (greed) to a direction. Given our culture, the connection to greed may not be readily apparent. Also, subtle dogmatism is without doubt the most important factor in leadership derailment; therefore, it may be valuable for managers to regard it as a separate factor.

I experienced a classic example of this in modern governance while observing a senior civil servant of a neighboring nation. He felt his service worked “well enough” but had “a few issues”. They included losing bright young officers faster than any other service in the government, low morale, and a high incidence of stress-related health problems among senior officers. He was confident that the current system “should” work and he was afraid of ruffling the feathers of his colleagues by making changes. In the hopes of getting support for his non-action, he ordered a slew of different consultants’ reports. All pointed to the same dangers ahead. Nevertheless, he insisted on keeping the status quo and his inability to adapt is causing his service to continue to decline.

(reprint of an article I wrote for Global-is-Asian 2011)

Successful leaders have three things in common: a clear, inspiring vision that resonates with other people; the emotional intelligence to inspire people with a sense of connection to their cause; and the self-confidence to handle the hostility of people who do not believe them.

Acclaimed leadership guru and psychoanalyst Manfred Kets de Vries, found that the primary drive for leadership is to compensate for emotional injuries experienced earlier in life. The allure of status, money and the illusion of invulnerability that comes with power is intoxicating to almost everyone. To someone who has experienced helplessness and a lack of self-worth during the formative stages, attaining leadership can be a deep raison d’être.

Studies show that a disproportionate number of men in senior leadership positions grew up having poor relationships with their fathers but good relationships with their mothers: for example, Bill Clinton, whose father died before his birth; Jack Welch, whose father was a train conductor and was largely absent; and Winston Churchill, who barely spoke with his father.

Several researchers suspect that they developed their leadership skills to compensate for their fathers’ failings or absence and to displace their fathers as the ‘man of the house’. The findings on women in leadership is less conclusive, in part because, fewer women hold leadership positions in business and politics than men, and in part because, the data regarding women who have been studied is more complex. While some women have powerful and supportive mothers, others emulate those characteristics in their fathers. Several women in senior leadership roles grew up acting more like their father’s favorite son than daughter.

Many aspiring leaders unconsciously focus on compensating for earlier experiences just to hear, ‘you’re great’, on a regular basis. Unfortunately, these external accolades rarely bring the desired reassurance. For example, soon after becoming one of the youngest Nobel Prize winners, a client of a colleague had a mild stroke. His mother chided him, ‘You’re just as much of a loser as your father. He had a stroke at your age’. Despite being one of the brightest minds in his field, he fell into a significant depression characterized by questions of self-worth. He had tried to heal himself of old psychological wounds by getting praise for his accomplishments as a scientist, but that medicine simply didn’t work and left him mentally and physically ill.

Even when leaders hear what they want, the effect is short-lived. In the unconscious hope that a bigger ‘fix’ will bring a more substantial cure, they use their increasing power to surround themselves with yes-men and dependent personalities who will shower them with the praise they seek. They also create an environment where they feel they are in control. Their self-awareness and empathy for others fade as the focus increasingly shifts to ‘me’.

Effective leaders need to be able to accept the disagreements and bruises to their egos that come naturally with power and position. The medieval kings of Europe used court jesters to check their egos. The jester’s job was to criticize the king and say what others don’t dare to. Thomas Freidman, one of the most popular journalists today, was asked during his stay at the Lee Kuan Yew School how he kept his ego in check. He replied, ‘I have a wife!’. While he drew a lot of laughter from his remark, many leaders echo Friedman with statements like, ‘My spouse is the only one who is honest with me. Without that criticism to correct me, I’d look like an idiot’. In the absence of checks, leaders start to believe what they are told and they graft their egos to their leadership role. So when their leadership is challenged, they feel a threat to the very core and they may respond with disproportionate hostility.

Balancing the drive and determination of healthy levels of narcissism, with the humility to serve others is a rare skill. Leaders have a great challenge as they may be in positions to receive the praise we all crave but that makes egos grow in unhealthy ways. It is of those few who succeed that Lao Tze, author of the Tao Te Ching, wrote about, ‘When the great leader is done and the work is finished successfully, the people will say “this all happened naturally”.’

(reprint of an article I wrote for Global-is-Asian 2011)

On 10 December 2008, Dr. Jonathan Marshall shared with the NUS community his use of trancework for mental resilience. The forum was presented by the NUS Development Office and the Department of Psychological Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. The forum was chaired by the department’s Head, Prof Kua Ee Heok.