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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Eloy Anello, Moral Leadership, bahai-library.com.
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“MORAL LEADERSHIP”
ELOY ANELLO
© EBBF, 2001
Saturday 27–10-2001
This is a transcript of the lecture as it was presented at the conference
and has not been edited for content or grammar.
*****
It truly is a pleasure to be here. I was here physically yesterday, only partly mentally though
because I had come a long way – I crossed the big pond, then through Europe to get here, and
it truly is an exciting event that I am able to participate in.
I will begin. I’ve prepared a few notes and I would like to read them to you. My discourse on
the subject – it’s very short. And then I would like to show you a few transparencies that I use
in my training in the area of moral leadership. And then after that I guess we will do what we
all do best and interact and ask questions and try to figure out why moral leadership is so
important in the realm of business and promoting economic and social development.
If you don’t mind I’d like to sit down to read this to you. I liked the ‘de mores’ style of
presentation yesterday. It was very calm and relaxed and I’d like to follow on from that.
I was asked to talk to you about moral leadership and the role of business in enhancing the
prosperity of humankind. People who work in business are people who are committed to
developing virtues and whom have strong core values based on ethics and moral concerns.
And this tends to enable them to climb in to positions of authority and trust. If we can find
ways to encourage these people to explore with us the dimensions of moral leadership and
they can see themselves being empowered personally and professio nally, and because they are
leaders already they can see how they can empower their people, then moral leadership can
become an important area for both training and development of human resources. This, I
believe, could then become a significant contribution in bringing into the leadership equation
the much-needed moral dimension that is currently lacking in today’s business world. People
who work in the business world are, by nature, constructors of society. Through the
application of their entrepreneurial talents they can create business organisations that can
generate wealth.
Abdu’l-Baha states that:
“Wealth is praiseworthy in the highest degree if it is acquired by an individuals own efforts
and the grace of God in commerce, agriculture, art, and industry, and if it be expended for
philanthropic purposes. Above all, if a judicious and resourceful individual should initiate
measures which would universally enrich the masses of the people there could be no
undertaking greater than this, and it would rank in the sight of God as the supreme
achievement, for such a benefactor would supply the needs and ensure the comfort and the
well being of a great multitude.”
This is a remarkable statement on business. The acquiring of wealth for the purpose of
enriching the masses, to supply the needs and ensure the comfort and well being of great
multitude. This is a powerful statement for guiding Bahai- inspired efforts and for instilling,
with a sense of purpose, the noble effort of generating wealth and prosperity for all
humankind. The quote continues with these final words of encouragement and exhortation for
moral and social responsibility, a subject that we have been listening to and learning much
from in the past few days.
“ Wealth is most commendable providing the entire population is wealthy. If, however, a few
have inordinate riches while the rest are impoverished, and no fruit or benefit accrues from
that wealth, then it is only a liability to its possessor. If, on the other hand, it is expended for
the promotion of knowledge, the founding of elementary and other schools, the
encouragement of art and industry, the training of orphans and the poor - in brief, if it is
dedicated to the welfare of society - its possessor will stand out before God and man as the
most excellent of all who live on earth and will be accounted as one of the people of
paradise.”
So, how do we get business, folks, to turn in this direction? To use their entrepreneurial
capabilities to the promotion of an ever-advancing civilisation that is conducive to the
common good? The challenge is how to transform the current mentality that prevails the
business world, which seeks to satisfy only the profit motive without adequate consideration
of environmental and social concerns. How to get business to look at what Robert Rubenstein
said yesterday and all of our other guest speakers have referred to up until now as the ‘triple
bottom line’? Is excruciating pain the only way to get us to a clear and transparent
consideration of this imperative, to see the bottom line as much more than profit on
investment? True wealth is that which is generated by quality profits. This I mean profits
which are sustainable, meaning ecologically and socially sustainable over generations.
Quality profits require, aga in, a balance sheet which tabulates the quantitative results and
impacts but also the importantly considers the qualitative impacts of our wealth generating
strategies on our social and environmental landscapes. To do this is nothing short of being
respons ive to the moral imperative of exercising justice and fair play to all people and to all of
nature. It is in essence, as I see it, a best practice of moral leadership.
In thinking about this I have come up with one helpful way that I have found in working with
development and educational organisations that I’ve been involved in, and one way is to look
at their institutional roles and then define the capabilities needed to define these roles. So for
example, what is business’s primary role in society, and what is society’s role in promoting
human development and learning. In the ‘Prosperity for Humankind’ document there is a very
clear and concise role given to business, which is the following:
“The most important role that economic efforts must play in development lye’s in equipping
people and institutions with means through which they can achieve the real purpose of
development. That is laying the foundations for a new social order that can cultivate the
limitless potentialities latent in human consciousness.”
When I think of this for a moment I become deeply motivated to want to figure out ways in
which the resources I generate as an individual - mostly human capital, not too much financial
capital unfortunately – can be used to help develop the potentialities of human consciousness.
And then I think about all the resources that others generate and how these, if there were
enough justice and equity, could be used to raise human consciousness to level where people,
institutions, and communities can think and act inter-dependently in response to their issues
and problems which is really the goal of human development and sustainable learning, action
learning.
I also will talk a bit about the institution I come from – Nur University. And Nur University in
its efforts to educate and train new businesses leaders has developed a Bahai- inspired
conceptual framework of moral leadership, which I have been graciously invited, by the
EBBF to, present you today. The conceptual framework, which consists of six essential
elements and eighteen capabilities, have been extensively promoted through training courses
throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and just recently in India. Primary
participants, or beneficiaries of our training have been public school teachers, personnel of
civil society organisations, municipal governments, public health workers and technical staff
within a variety of public and private institutions. In Latin America we have incorporated the
moral leadership framework into our MBA program and we have found great receptivity
among our students and prominent members of the business community. The framework of
moral leadership, which I will briefly present to you today, is the fruit of many colleagues and
represents systematisation of the characteristics of individuals who have exercised moral
leadership in world history and are particularly exemplified in the life of Abdu’l-Baha, a
nineteenth and twentieth century figure who was considered to have, in words of Stamford
University’s President, in 1911,
“Walked the mystical path with practical feet.”
I might add here a personal observation, and especially pertinent I believe to the youth, I think
this definition of combining the spiritual with the practical is how I visualise an exemplary
business person who aspires to be successful in today’s world. It should be noted here also
that each of the elements of the moral leadership framework and its capacities are amply
substantiated by the Bahai writings, and especially systematised by a masterful work written
by Abdu’l-Baha entitled ‘The Secret of Divine Civilisation’ in which he describes the
conditions of the learned of society and the role they play in promoting an ever-advancing
civilisation.
As I present to you this outline of the conceptual framework and read to you I don’t think
there will be much more time than to familiarise you with the names of the eighteen
capabilities and where they are pointing to in regards to knowledge, skills, attitudes and
qualities. And I will read them, but we’ll go into little more depth on the elements of the
conceptual framework – there are six. But I would like for you to assist me in reflecting how
we might adapt this model and program to the European business context. This is a context
which is new to me and I think application has to be done by those, as the Turkish saying says
‘a man can not really speak of truth unless he has one foot in the stirrup’ and I think that you
all have at least one foot in the stirrup in regards to European business.
Nur University would greatly appreciate your insights and comments in how we might present
our proposal to your associates. In speaking briefly with George, he has assured me that this is
an important topic on the agenda of the EBBF at this present time, and I hope we will have
the opportunity in the next few days to further discuss this at length with him and other
members. Your reflections, therefore, will be very timely in pushing the idea to its next level
of application within the European context.
I’d like to stop there with the reading of my introductory message, and I’d like to show you a
few slides that I hope will stimulate the kind of discussions we all want to generate with this
topic.
Trying to summarise moral leadership (this is a copy of the one hundred and eighty nine page
manual by the way) but the theme is so broad and the topics and all the spin-off that have to
do with moral leadership are so extensive that it’s very difficult to summarise this in to a forty
minute presentation. It reminds me of what Abraham Lincoln said when he was elected
president; he went to the White House after leaving his home in Illinois. He was a farmer and
was a simple man they say, and he went off to the White House to be the president. On a
Sunday he was feeling very nostalgic as he was walking through the gardens and so he
decides to write to one of his old friends back home and he gets out a whole bunch of paper
and a feather pen, and he starts writing away, just pouring his heart out that he’s missing the
farm, missing his friends, and he writes this real huge letter – like six or seven pages. Then at
the very end he says goodbye and then he says ‘P.S Dear Friend, I wish I could have written a
shorter letter but I don’t have the time.’ And really preparing this summary is very hard to do.
First of all, it’s very hard to find the time, so I’m going to try to be brief, but I recognise that
I’m probably going to … well, hopefully I’ll generate more questions than answers than I
could possibly give, and I guess that would be a good sign if we can do that, or if this can do
that.
One of the main structures of our training in moral leadership has to do with a methodology or
a process we call ‘transformational training’. And transformational training is about change
and it’s about getting us from point A to point B. We believe that this is a process and there
are stages in this process in this change of transformation – personal and collective. This is a
brief drawing. I’m sure that many of you who are in the field of education and training know
this concept. But it’s a structure. It’s a way we think about ourselves, it a way we think about
life, it’s the way we think about the eventual application of moral leadership, in a real context.
So, this idea that we all start from a point where we have concepts, we have knowledge, we
have attitudes, we have assumptions, we have beliefs, and we even have prejudices, and those
need to be unfrozen, or they need to be questioned, and they need to be looked at very
critically. And so we start of by preparing those that attend our courses, our workshops, our
seminars, our MBA’s – in whatever context we’re teaching and learning about moral
leadership. We start out by getting people prepared to question their own thinking – what
Peter Singe would call ‘the mental models’ we all have - about the subject (in this case of
leadership, and the moral dimension of leadership). So if we compare this stage of our
thinking with the sort of rigid ness, the structure, of an ice cube, we start questioning and
introducing new concepts that work kind of like how the heat would work to ice – it starts to
melt, or unfreeze the coldness and the rigidity of that structure. So then when we get a
structure that is very fluid – it’s almost a non-structure. It’s in a state of transition. This is the
moment of change, it is a time of movement – going form the old to the new, but we don’t
know what the ‘new’ is yet so we’re defining that by questioning what we know it’s not – in
other words where we’ve come from, our mental models, our mental structures and ways of
thinking about things that are no longer conducive or applicable to the worlds situation and to
our own evolving state of being. Once we get those beliefs and prejudices and assumptions
and attitudes unfrozen, and we can start moving the liquid of our thinking into a new
structure. Some like the term ‘re- freezing’, others don’t too much because why do we have to
go back and be cold again some say. But the idea is here that we have to put our thinking into
some kind of structure that will serve the purpose of guiding action and we can test it out for a
time and see how well it works in context as we look at specific applications. So that’s is
some new form and it’s definitely a form which needs to be consistent with reality, with the
current thinking, and it needs to be evolutionary – that is it needs to be changing constantly as
we introduce new challenges and concepts to it. If you can think then of that structure in a
training context then I think this will help to see how we introduce more leadership. This is a
quote, universally known - if somebody knows whom the author is, and I’d like to know. I’ve
used it for a long time, but I don’t know who the author is. Nevertheless, it’s a great quote and
to me it says ‘ there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose moment has come’ (Unsure
suggestion from audience that it might be Einstein). It’s Einstein…? Well, whoever it’s by he
knew that ideas are what move change. This whole idea - and Dahl, of course, was addressing
this perfectly yesterday when he was describing really what cognitive psychology has been
telling us for a long time, and I think cognitive psychology is going to have a rebound with
this and is going to have another better moment with this than when it tried dot convince us of
this in the sixties and seventies - but really it is how we think about ourselves and how we
think about our world, what we think our perceptions are, what our mental models of the
world are that determine our behaviour. The reality of our being, and this is substantiated in
the Bahai writings, is our thought, and the human mind is where we generate thought. I know
that in the Bible there is a quote that says ‘As ye thinketh, so ye are’. So, thought has a lot to
do with how we’re going to bring about change. And if we can work on our thought processes
and on our thinking then we may be able to move towards action, which is more consistent
and more applicable. And in the realm of leadership this is absolutely necessary.
Now mental models, I said, were beliefs, concepts, attitudes, assumptions, prejudices formed
during childhood and adolescence: How they serve to interpret reality and direct our action,
they limit our thinking and acting as they have not been examined. That’s one of their
characteristics and one of the reasons why they need to be examined. One of the reasons why
they need to be examined is because they have not been examined, they are mostly
unconscious notions about reality, and then we act on those notions that are really not founded
on independent investigation. As long as a person remains unconscious of his or her mental
models, it is impossible to change them. Another assumption. This idea here that our ideas or
our thinking produces ideas or mental models, the way we perceive reality, produces
behaviours or conducts and attitudes, and these produce results in groups. If our concept of
leadership is a paternalistic concept of leadership, then our behaviours and attitudes will also
be paternalistic and we will disempower the potentialities of human consciousness in the
groups we work with and so the results will produce people that are basically dysfunctional
because we have not been able to empower them.
The mental models will be looked at in this way: we will put a mental model here - lets say
we will look at authoritarian leadership as a mental model. What is the underlying reasons,
beliefs, concepts that motivate that kind of leadership? We will look at these questions – what
are the assumptions of this mental model? What beliefs sustain this mental model? What
concepts support this mental model? We would be doing this all in the context of the de-
freezing phase of change.
We would then start when some of these mental models about leadership, before we actually
get in to presenting our proposal for moral leadership, we would talk about how these models
of mental leadership have created the… and really the participants in training, come up with
all the different causes and effects of these mental models that are produced - the
dysfunctional society that we live in.
We would then be talking about change. This is a quote that I like to use personally from
Herr Veseviokes who has said that before status quo was the norm and change was the
exception, now status quo is the exception and change is the norm. We move people towards
the recognition that change is absolutely necessary – later we will see that it becomes a moral
imperative, but at this point we’re talking about the necessity for change. We’ve been talking
about the behaviours, attitudes, knowledge, concepts that disempower change, and now we
want to move towards looking at the alternatives. One of the things about presenting moral
leadership in the framework, unless we go through some of this preparation in getting people
to move in a participative way towards the idea of change – changing themselves and then
being agents of change for society or institutions, we will look at, in preparation for that and
presenting the moral leadership framework, we will work with people on concepts of this as
well. This is from Arthur Schoppenhower who, I think, very brilliantly said that
‘All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed; second it is violently opposed;
thirdly it is accepted as obvious’.
This is a quote, which in 1987, the World Health Organisation came out with very
disappointed over it’s evaluation of the ‘health for all’ program which was trying to set up
primary health care systems throughout the world in developing world countries. And it’s not
all that difficult to set up primary systems, but nevertheless the World Health Organisations
attempts in most countries failed. So this is taken of their evaluation of that program – ’health
for all’ – and they say that it is not through lack of scientific knowledge, nor through lack of
appropriate administrative models or for lack of financial resources, but rather through lack of
moral leadership at all levels was attributed to failure of that cause – the lack of moral
leadership.
Now what we want to do when we get in to looking at the alternatives to the dysfunctional
mental models, for example these I just mentioned a few of them earlier, but these are the
dominant or prevailing mental models about leadership, can be systematised into four or five.
We also include democratic leadership, (but we do a presentation of that separately because
we have found that there are a number of strengths we would like to build on and use as a
segway to get to moral leadership) but these are definitely the old mental models that we’re
all familiar with. We’ll look at those, as I said people will work on these mental models and
look at their causes and effects in terms of behaviours, attitudes, and then other effects in the
outer circles - how this leadership effects the groups or the organisations they work with.
Now, we’re trying to move from the breaking, the questioning and melting down of these
mental models. We like to think of what we’re doing as transforming the mental models into
new conceptual frameworks, and these would be a few definitions of what we say would be
mental frameworks. They are consciousness of our mental model. A consciousness of our
mental model allows to examine them and see their inconsistencies. Questioning, reflection,
and acquiring knowledge helps us gradually construct conceptual frameworks – they guide
our learning and our action. Without this kind of learning, transformation cannot occur.
Again what we’re doing here is working with a concept of training that we call
‘transformational’ and so we’re really after change, we’re really after application, we’re not
after refining our current thinking, or mental models, or current practices and trying to figure
out how we can polish and make them better – that’s a technical function which we can get in
to once we have decided what kind of leadership and where we want to go with that
leadership once it’s established. Conceptual frameworks need to be consistent and evolve with
growth and change.
So, this would like something like this – we’d work on old mental models then would come
up with the first element of a transformed mental model or come up with the first value or
principle of a new conceptual framework. I will present to you right now this conceptual
framework of moral leadership. These are the six elements, again, in training, we allow for
time working with groups with people to go through each one of these. We look at there
characteristics, we look also at what kind of behaviour and attitudes and conduct these
elements or values produce in organisations, in communities and even within the individual
and personal development and growth.
The first one is service to the common good. This is one that I’ve been hearing talked about a
lot in this conference and you’re hearing more and more this come up. I think it was Dahl
who mentioned yesterday, that (talking about the work ethic) people in organisations if they
can see how what they do is of service to the social or common good, then they become very
inspired and they become very enthusiastic and encouraged, and they want to do that. And
this is one of the motors, the great forces behind the moral leadership framework is this first
element of service to the common good. In Ecuador I worked with a group of Afro-
Ecuadorians, a group of Africans that were taken to Ecuador as slaves, and these were public
school teachers. They came up with this definition after a moral leadership workshop. They
looked at traditional leadership as those mental models I showed you earlier; ‘seeks to
dominate and control others so that they will serve the ones in charge’. ‘Moral leadership
seeks to dominate and control self or ego, so that it is free to serve others’. They came up with
this definition and I’ve showed this all over the world. I showed it in Africa after going there
twice this year doing extensive training there with NGO’s and educational institutions, and
this quote really moves a lot of people. So basically looking at this first element of service to
the common good, we would say that these styles or behaviours of leadership are centred, this
whole thinking - the mental models are centred and are based on the ego, on self interest, on
serving ones self or ones group. Transformation of that is oriented towards service to the
common good, service to the social good, the leader here in an egocentric leadership
paradigm is on top and all of his or her follows are below to serve him or her, and in this
concept service is what enables or empowers a leader to really provide attention to and
interest in what the group is seeking. So the leader is looked at as one who is able to be at the
service of others.
The second one here is investigation and application of truth. Basically, this here would look
something like this. We look at it as a twin moral responsibility to investigate truth and then
to apply truth. When we talk about truth here we’re really talking about these two dimensions
of truth - the contingent truth (how things are), and the ideal truth, which is based on
principles and values (how things are to be). And investigating truth has to take into
consideration both these dimensions. Application of truth is the other dimension of this twin
moral responsibility. Often times truth meaning reality or, like I say, the way things are now
or the way things are to be, what our aspirations are telling us things aught to be, what our
vision and what our ideals are telling us things aught to be, there are often times investigated
but not applied. In order for moral leadership to be effective it would have to be
indispensable. These two functions, in truth are inseparable – that’s what I wanted to say.
I like to show this one – it helps to wake people up! This poor guy is out in the desert and he
comes to a sign after he’s been walking along thinking that this was his salvation - you know,
for miles ahead he saw this sign - and he finally gets to it, has no water, is starving, and this
sign tells him ‘at this moment you are precisely here’. Well, this is what we often do, this is
the way we often treat truth and our investigation of things, of reality. We investigate were we
are, we investigate the contingent, or the here and the now, and we convince ourselves that we
are here, that we do not have the power to change much and that we have a lot of limitations
and we convince ourselves that we are really incapable of bringing about change. Now, the
reason that that happens is because where we are precisely cannot be determined unless you
have a point of reference to which you are referring. So how can we determine where we are
if we do not know where we want to be, where we want to go? And so it get s a little
philosophical but the idea here is that, really, vision of where we would like to be, where we
aught to be, the vision that is driven by our values and our principles, and by the ideal truths
that we are seeking to someday develop in ourselves and in society - unless that’s established
this makes no sense, it has no meaning. So if this sign said ‘you are precisely here which is
three kilometres north-east of the next oasis’ then that would be very encouraging for this
poor guy, because he would see where his ideal future laid, and then he would get motivated
and stimulated and would go reaching off in that direction to reach his desired future – water.
So this is the thinking behind the idea of truth being both contingent and future.
The next idea here is about personal transformation and social transformation. This is really
the purpose of moral leadership – when we get right down to it this is what moral leadership
really is about. Service to the common good is an orientation, an orientation that breaks with
the paradigm that leadership is for control and to dominate. Investigation and application of
truth really tells us, and we’ve looked at the different moral leaders in history and really they
were people who when they spoke had done their research before they spoke. They knew
what they were talking about, they’d investigated truth independently, they were free from
prejudice, they were free from blind imitation and they did the investigation of truth, but they
didn’t just investigate the way things are, they looked at the way things aught to be and they
created a vision. Their vision inspired us to follow them because that vision was based on a
thorough investigation of truth and not just based on some dream that they had. Personal
transformation and social transformation, in addition to being a commitment of moral
leadership, is really the purpose of moral leadership and it really is impossible to imagine the
application of moral leadership unless we begin with ourselves. So personal transformation is
really at the heart of social transformation, unless one is able to change and willing to change,
it is in a process of almost constant learning and change, it is almost impossible to imagine
that one could ever exercise lasting influence and change in ones group or ones society or
institution. So really, the dynamic force of example is at the heart of this concept and it begins
with one’s own commitment and sense of purpose for change.
The next is the necessity of transcendence. Transcendence here basically has two dimensions
to it. One is this dimension that Einstein spoke of (or at least it was an adage that was
attributed to Einstein); that one cannot solve a problem with the same mentality that created
the problem, and really in leadership we’re always constantly coming upon problems that
when we all try and jump in and solve the problem with the same mentality we’re no t even
aware of this because mostly it’s our mental models, which is jumping in a and trying to solve
problems – grabbing the bull by the horn so to speak, and just dealing with this problem face
on. Often times what we’re doing is we’re interpreting the problem, first of all, from a
paradigm or a way of thinking that created the problem itself – so we really can’t extract
ourselves from the problem long enough to look at it from a new perspective. Transcendence
gives us that new perspective. Transcendence is being able to play on the playing field and at
the same time sitting up on the stands. So you can see the whole field, you can see the system
before you, you can see the patterns that are at work and you can understand the problem
from a holistic perspective. Once you’ve seen that and you’ve done that in your mind you’ve
transcended and been able to see that way, you can return to a problem and provide insight
and fresh perspective which often times brings a fresh breeze of understanding about a
problem and then people rally around that and you can start working towards significant
change. But the other dimension of that is, of course, our commitment to values that are
transcendental or values that are of great purpose or nobility, and often times in the heat of a
discussion, or the heat that’s generated from tension produced from problem solving, it’s
often our capacity to remember those values that we’re committed to, those principals and the
vision of what we’re working for to establish that enables us to transcend those difficult
moments and to recommit ourselves and it also brings us an inner tranquillity because we’re
understanding where we’re going and in the beginning and that is very important for
transcendence.
The next element is the essential nobility of man, or the essential nobility of human nature (it
think we should e saying it to be more gender-sensitive). Essential nobility of the human
being: I think there are so many things that were said today that brought this out – but actually
this belief or conviction in the essential nobility is what we feel absolutely necessary for
moral leadership development because if this were not the case… - we look into all the
different conceptions that have existed historically about the human being and we break
people up into groups and have a really good discussion about this one, but essentially what
we’ve always come to as a conclusion is that unless there is this essential nobility in the
human being, and the at the human nature is essentially one of goodness and nobility, that all
this other development would have no purpose. Service to the common good really couldn’t
exist because it would be a contradiction. Investigation and application of truth would be
meaningless. Personal and social transforma tion would also be impossible to really bring
about unless we have this essential conviction human nobility. Transcendence would not be
possible because that requires the human spirit to rise above the baser nature and the lower
nature of man. So we look at this and there is a quote that I’d like to share. Again it’s taken
from the Bahai writings and as I said earlier that this is a Bahai- inspired conceptual
framework and this one here, by the Founder of the Baha Faith, Baha’u’llah, talks about
education for empowerment. And He said:
“Regard men as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education, can alone, cause it to
reveal it’s treasure and enable mankind to benefit there from”
This is a particularly applicable quote when working with educators and we have worked
much with educators. But I think that looking at the human being as a mine rich in gems of
inestimable value is really pointing to this essential nobility in the human being.
And to end with: I look at this last one as an imperative as the possibility for moral leadership
development and the possibility for seeing some kind of significant transformation and result
would depend on the exercise of capabilities. When we talk about capabilities or human
capacity, we’re talking about these four elements or components. When we are able to
exercise capacity or human capabilities, if we’re able to build capacity by putting in practice
capabilities for personal and social transformation, we take our concepts, we take our qualities
(which really are the values and the virtues that we have identified) and attitudes and skills
then we have capacity. So a capacity is the combination or the synergy of these four
components. And I’d like to end by, like I said earlier I wouldn’t be able to do much more
than to read to you, the eighteen capabilities that the moral leadership framework is based on,
and I will start - now that you have an operational definition of what we’re talking about when
we say capacity is again these four elements – concepts, qualities, attitudes and skills. So if
we look at first of all capabilities that contribute to personal transformation we’ve identified
seven of those.
Maybe there isn’t enough time to read all eighteen of these, so maybe we could read one or
two of them – maybe someone else, a woman’s voice to help balance all of this, could read?
(Lady’s voice is barely audible) investigating self and weakness without involving the ego;
self motivation … involving conceptual framework…the ability to take initiative in a creative
and …way; the capability to endeavour to overcome obstacles in the achievement of goals;
the ability to oppose one’s lower fashioned and eccentric tendencies… capability to manage
one’s affairs and responsibilities with rectitude of conduct based on moral and ethical
principles; and the last on the list, the capability to think systemically in the search for
solutions.
So those are the capabilities that we would put under the personal transformation area (or
concern) and these would be the capabilities that contribute to better inter-personal
relationships: The capability to review ones thoughts and actions with love, the capability to
encourage others and to bring joy to their hearts, the capability to participate effectively in the
process of consultation in group decision making, the capability to be a loving and responsible
member of a family, the capability to create and promote unity in diversity. Ok, so these then
would contribute to inter-personal relationships.
The last one would be the capabilities that contribute to social transformation: the capability
to create a vision of the desired future based on shared values and principles and to articulate
it clearly and simply so that it inspires in others a sense of commitment towards fulfilment,
the capability to understand relationships of domination and to contribute to their
transformation into relationships based on a reciprocal sharing and mutual service, the
capability to contribute in the establishment of justice, the capability to commit oneself to the
process of empowering educational activities, the capability to serve of institutions in society
in ways that assist their members to develop and utilise their talents and capabilities in service
to mankind, the capability to perceive and interpret the meaning of present day social
processes and events in the light of a … perspective.
So I would just like to close with this last statement I have written here. Now after seeing that
as a very brief and quick presentation of moral leadership, albeit full of imperfections and
possibly of just too short to really get into it in any significant way, nevertheless I can imagine
that any open minded executive or business man or woman would not see the benefit of
promoting this kind of leadership in their company. The principle challenge for us gathered at
this meeting will be how we introduce these concepts and how we show their practical
applications in benefit of business and social project without losing too much economic
benefit for the company in the long run. I would like to quote with a quote from Steven Karvi
and another from Abdu’l- Baha respectively.
“The lesson of history is that to the degree people and civilizations have operated in harmony
with correct principles, they have prospered. At the root of societies decline are foolish
practices that represent violations of correct principles”
And, lastly, from Abdu’l- Baha;
“The honour and distinction of the individual consists in this: that he become a source of
social good”
Thank you very much.
Yes, mostly in seminars. We are a post- graduate school. Nur University for a good ten years
was offering moral leadership training for the business centre, small industries and business
people across the board, small medium and large organisations. Yes, mostly through
seminars. Of course this can also be introduced for technical systems that a company might
want to look at its own training program and see how these principles, these concepts, these
capacities could be applied to strengthen, enhance, enrich their own training program. I think
it works very well as a human resource development and a leadership education program in
that it not only has contents that are very challenging and stimulating to apply for better
business practice, but it also, our program in its entirety, has a lot of methodology and
techniques and processes that we take people through h in a learning environment and
stimulating a lot of participation and dialogue so that people really take ownership of these
concepts and begin to apply them because of their motivation because they have bought into it
because they basically have participated in a lot of this in the construction of what I was
presenting. It’s hard to see that in a presentation like this, but we really do get down to
employing participative methodologies and interactive teaching/learning techniques and
technologies that really are empowering for learning. So that’s why I say it is both an
education and a development program and some of that development can be encouraged and
oriented and guided through technical assistants – we might do consultancies with an
organisation that wants us to figure out how to motivate the human resources, how to get
people to be more centred on ideals and how to get people to move in a consistent way
towards the fulfilment of the institutions vision. We have also been involved in a lot of
strategic planning with businesses as well, helping them if a strategic planning really has to do
with this whole contextual analysis, and then visioning and establishing a shared institutional
vision, then coming up with the mission and then identifying guiding principles for the
institution and then really coming up with a framework of the process of development for the
institution and then through this tri-dimensional analysis of context, process and vision, you
come up with the strategies that can guide an institution that can really be the strategic plan
for that institution for five or ten years in the future. So we have worked with moral
leadership concepts in some of our methodologies for getting people to work in groups on
their strategic plans. But mostly you’re right – mostly we do training, seminars, short courses,
it depends on the organisation. Sometimes we will do long courses. We have just completed a
Masters degree in educational leadership, which was based on the moral leadership modules.
This is module number one. We have sixteen other modules that accompany this for the full
course, which could be offered as a Masters degree, and we’ve done that in Ecuador where we
offered this as a Masters degree to teachers. But again your question is about private
enterprise, private business, and I think that training is a place to start with because the
training is very empowering and is very, as I say transformational. People come to the
workshops, often sceptical, saying ‘what is this moral leadership, is it some kind of
inquisition, is it some kind of religious thing?’ – people come with a mental model and
concerns and worries about what we mean by moral leadership, but as we begin to work with
them and create a non-threatening environment and get people to really think deeply about
their own mental models concerning leadership and the moral or ethical dimensions, and then
we move into those other stages, so real transformation starts to take place. Organisations that
go through that kind of training will always ask for more, or will want a larger course. As an
example of this; I trained a sugar cane co-operative in Santa Cruz, Bolivia they came to one of
my courses on this and the top executive management team came – there were eight of them –
and the CEO was there as well all and all the managers of the units were there. They came,
they went through the course along with other participants (so I think there were about twenty
five in all) and they were so pleased and happy of what had taken place inside them – their
own transformational process – that they went back and decided that this was applicable for
the whole institution so they sent sixteen of their line managers to the course and so we gave
it again to the sixteen middle management professionals there. So the training is good to start
with – people to get very enthusiastic about it and interested in it because of what they go
through.
We don’t have any official training resources in Europe now. We want to talk with EBBF and
others. We’ve done some courses. Doctor Illeno was one of the co-authors of the manual, was
just in Geneva two weeks ago. In fact there are some people here who were at his workshop
and he gave a four-day workshop on moral leadership. He was supposed to come by the way
but he asked me to come to replace him, and he was supposed to be here and he really wanted
to come but, anyway…he did that course, and other courses have been given at different times
in different places. I think at Landegg. Anyway, we’re supposed to talk about how we might
be able to do moral leadership training there and more moral leadership training at different
levels. But that’s about it. There’s no real Nur University representative. Is that what you
mean by resources? (answer comes back ‘yes’ from audience member).
(Voice of another man) A task force, which at the present time is applying the same
moral leadership concept, the same slid es, in Bosnia and they’re working primarily with
NGO’s and apparently two of our members are involved there – Caroline Suwicky from
Geneva and also Shervin Seteray from Luxembourg. There’s one other – John Webber who
spoke at the ISSAC conference with me on that same subject. And in fact we are trying to get
two or three ISSACers to follow that same course in Bosnia with the thought that if, in fact,
that is the effective way to develop young ISSACers or ex-ISSACers then perhaps we can
extend that programme with them and in more comprehensive and vastly expanded way in
some location. So there’s a lot of synergy.
…from Carolina. She worked with us at Nur for a few years and she returned (she’s originally
from Geneva) to Bosnia, and I understand she’s doing a great job there.
(Audience member) It’s very interesting and very important what you have to say, but
can you say something more about unfreezing, because surely that’s the greatest problem,
isn’t it? I would imagine you would have to use some kind of maybe team/group challenge. I
think we would have to have a challenge like September 11th to wake us up to our real moral
lead. I’d like it if you could say a little more about your unfreezing technique.
Well you’re right about it being very challenging and it’s one of the areas that I get the most
out of every time I’m involved in a workshop. I know that some trainers like to go there real
quickly and get out of there and get into the exploration and the discovery phase (which is the
second phase), the mo vement and change phase, and looking for the alternatives that
apparently we’re all… I mean, some trainers will say to me that ‘we all know that we don’t
want to stay there too long dwelling over, or lamenting over our mental models and the way
things are and the way things used to be’, but I don’t think we’re always so conscious of the
way things are and the way things used to be until we start putting our ideas out on the table.
And I think it’s important that we start looking more within ourselves personally. I use some
techniques (I have a few slides here that maybe we could talk about separately in a medium
among ourselves - I could show you some specific techniques), but I would like to address
mostly the idea behind the technique here. That is that until people start to personalise these
mental models of leadership that have truly disempowered and created all these dysfunctional
relationships and communications among people in organisations, until we start looking
inside personally it’s not as significant to do that part of the de- freezing. As long as the enemy
is outside then it’s not that significant – people don’t really see the need for change. But when
you can create an environment that gets people to look inside and address themselves when
they’re thinking about authoritarian thinking and style of leadership, or when they are
thinking about how they are paternalistic, or how they are not- it-all sometimes or express
attitudes of superiority or how they are manipulative at times and if you get enough people in
a group to look inside and deeply question the mental models that are there inside themselves,
again in a non-threatening way and no-one is pointing fingers at anyone else (there are some
techniques again, to make sure that doesn’t happen). If it’s an empowering environment
enough people will go there and feel safe enough to go there and look at how a lot of our
problems, a lot of the mess we’re in, (in terms of human relationships and communication
styles among ourselves and how, because of these preconceived notions we have of human
nature and of the human being in general… so it’s very important, I think, in order to get to
the second phase, to be able to have invested well in the first phase, to get people to look
deeply within and see how the y’re contributing to the dysfunctionality of leadership practice
(as it currently is), is exercised in the world around us; in our families, our society, in our
organisations. But there are some very specific techniques that I could talk to you about
separately.
(Comment from audience member) A little while ago we gave a moral leadership course in
Bosnia in a Muslim populated town and we had some Surf people attending this workshop.
The situation was tense in the beginning and we were a bit afraid about how these individuals
could relate to each other especially as it’s very much interactive and work groups and
people are encouraged to experience moral leadership themselves and I think that actually
this is the turning point of the whole concept. I think moral leadership makes things seem so
obvious to us once we hear it very tangible and it’s very logic. So after the first day hearing
about the concept and experiencing them selves the leadership styles that …(recording ends)
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
“MORAL LEADERSHIP”
ELOY ANELLO
© EBBF, 2001
Saturday 27–10-2001
This is a transcript of the lecture as it was presented at the conference
and has not been edited for content or grammar.
*****
It truly is a pleasure to be here. I was here physically yesterday, only partly mentally though
because I had come a long way – I crossed the big pond, then through Europe to get here, and
it truly is an exciting event that I am able to participate in.
I will begin. I’ve prepared a few notes and I would like to read them to you. My discourse on
the subject – it’s very short. And then I would like to show you a few transparencies that I use
in my training in the area of moral leadership. And then after that I guess we will do what we
all do best and interact and ask questions and try to figure out why moral leadership is so
important in the realm of business and promoting economic and social development.
If you don’t mind I’d like to sit down to read this to you. I liked the ‘de mores’ style of
presentation yesterday. It was very calm and relaxed and I’d like to follow on from that.
I was asked to talk to you about moral leadership and the role of business in enhancing the
prosperity of humankind. People who work in business are people who are committed to
developing virtues and whom have strong core values based on ethics and moral concerns.
And this tends to enable them to climb in to positions of authority and trust. If we can find
ways to encourage these people to explore with us the dimensions of moral leadership and
they can see themselves being empowered personally and professio nally, and because they are
leaders already they can see how they can empower their people, then moral leadership can
become an important area for both training and development of human resources. This, I
believe, could then become a significant contribution in bringing into the leadership equation
the much-needed moral dimension that is currently lacking in today’s business world. People
who work in the business world are, by nature, constructors of society. Through the
application of their entrepreneurial talents they can create business organisations that can
generate wealth.
Abdu’l-Baha states that:
“Wealth is praiseworthy in the highest degree if it is acquired by an individuals own efforts
and the grace of God in commerce, agriculture, art, and industry, and if it be expended for
philanthropic purposes. Above all, if a judicious and resourceful individual should initiate
measures which would universally enrich the masses of the people there could be no
undertaking greater than this, and it would rank in the sight of God as the supreme
achievement, for such a benefactor would supply the needs and ensure the comfort and the
well being of a great multitude.”
This is a remarkable statement on business. The acquiring of wealth for the purpose of
enriching the masses, to supply the needs and ensure the comfort and well being of great
multitude. This is a powerful statement for guiding Bahai- inspired efforts and for instilling,
with a sense of purpose, the noble effort of generating wealth and prosperity for all
humankind. The quote continues with these final words of encouragement and exhortation for
moral and social responsibility, a subject that we have been listening to and learning much
from in the past few days.
“ Wealth is most commendable providing the entire population is wealthy. If, however, a few
have inordinate riches while the rest are impoverished, and no fruit or benefit accrues from
that wealth, then it is only a liability to its possessor. If, on the other hand, it is expended for
the promotion of knowledge, the founding of elementary and other schools, the
encouragement of art and industry, the training of orphans and the poor - in brief, if it is
dedicated to the welfare of society - its possessor will stand out before God and man as the
most excellent of all who live on earth and will be accounted as one of the people of
paradise.”
So, how do we get business, folks, to turn in this direction? To use their entrepreneurial
capabilities to the promotion of an ever-advancing civilisation that is conducive to the
common good? The challenge is how to transform the current mentality that prevails the
business world, which seeks to satisfy only the profit motive without adequate consideration
of environmental and social concerns. How to get business to look at what Robert Rubenstein
said yesterday and all of our other guest speakers have referred to up until now as the ‘triple
bottom line’? Is excruciating pain the only way to get us to a clear and transparent
consideration of this imperative, to see the bottom line as much more than profit on
investment? True wealth is that which is generated by quality profits. This I mean profits
which are sustainable, meaning ecologically and socially sustainable over generations.
Quality profits require, aga in, a balance sheet which tabulates the quantitative results and
impacts but also the importantly considers the qualitative impacts of our wealth generating
strategies on our social and environmental landscapes. To do this is nothing short of being
respons ive to the moral imperative of exercising justice and fair play to all people and to all of
nature. It is in essence, as I see it, a best practice of moral leadership.
In thinking about this I have come up with one helpful way that I have found in working with
development and educational organisations that I’ve been involved in, and one way is to look
at their institutional roles and then define the capabilities needed to define these roles. So for
example, what is business’s primary role in society, and what is society’s role in promoting
human development and learning. In the ‘Prosperity for Humankind’ document there is a very
clear and concise role given to business, which is the following:
“The most important role that economic efforts must play in development lye’s in equipping
people and institutions with means through which they can achieve the real purpose of
development. That is laying the foundations for a new social order that can cultivate the
limitless potentialities latent in human consciousness.”
When I think of this for a moment I become deeply motivated to want to figure out ways in
which the resources I generate as an individual - mostly human capital, not too much financial
capital unfortunately – can be used to help develop the potentialities of human consciousness.
And then I think about all the resources that others generate and how these, if there were
enough justice and equity, could be used to raise human consciousness to level where people,
institutions, and communities can think and act inter-dependently in response to their issues
and problems which is really the goal of human development and sustainable learning, action
learning.
I also will talk a bit about the institution I come from – Nur University. And Nur University in
its efforts to educate and train new businesses leaders has developed a Bahai- inspired
conceptual framework of moral leadership, which I have been graciously invited, by the
EBBF to, present you today. The conceptual framework, which consists of six essential
elements and eighteen capabilities, have been extensively promoted through training courses
throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and just recently in India. Primary
participants, or beneficiaries of our training have been public school teachers, personnel of
civil society organisations, municipal governments, public health workers and technical staff
within a variety of public and private institutions. In Latin America we have incorporated the
moral leadership framework into our MBA program and we have found great receptivity
among our students and prominent members of the business community. The framework of
moral leadership, which I will briefly present to you today, is the fruit of many colleagues and
represents systematisation of the characteristics of individuals who have exercised moral
leadership in world history and are particularly exemplified in the life of Abdu’l-Baha, a
nineteenth and twentieth century figure who was considered to have, in words of Stamford
University’s President, in 1911,
“Walked the mystical path with practical feet.”
I might add here a personal observation, and especially pertinent I believe to the youth, I think
this definition of combining the spiritual with the practical is how I visualise an exemplary
business person who aspires to be successful in today’s world. It should be noted here also
that each of the elements of the moral leadership framework and its capacities are amply
substantiated by the Bahai writings, and especially systematised by a masterful work written
by Abdu’l-Baha entitled ‘The Secret of Divine Civilisation’ in which he describes the
conditions of the learned of society and the role they play in promoting an ever-advancing
civilisation.
As I present to you this outline of the conceptual framework and read to you I don’t think
there will be much more time than to familiarise you with the names of the eighteen
capabilities and where they are pointing to in regards to knowledge, skills, attitudes and
qualities. And I will read them, but we’ll go into little more depth on the elements of the
conceptual framework – there are six. But I would like for you to assist me in reflecting how
we might adapt this model and program to the European business context. This is a context
which is new to me and I think application has to be done by those, as the Turkish saying says
‘a man can not really speak of truth unless he has one foot in the stirrup’ and I think that you
all have at least one foot in the stirrup in regards to European business.
Nur University would greatly appreciate your insights and comments in how we might present
our proposal to your associates. In speaking briefly with George, he has assured me that this is
an important topic on the agenda of the EBBF at this present time, and I hope we will have
the opportunity in the next few days to further discuss this at length with him and other
members. Your reflections, therefore, will be very timely in pushing the idea to its next level
of application within the European context.
I’d like to stop there with the reading of my introductory message, and I’d like to show you a
few slides that I hope will stimulate the kind of discussions we all want to generate with this
topic.
Trying to summarise moral leadership (this is a copy of the one hundred and eighty nine page
manual by the way) but the theme is so broad and the topics and all the spin-off that have to
do with moral leadership are so extensive that it’s very difficult to summarise this in to a forty
minute presentation. It reminds me of what Abraham Lincoln said when he was elected
president; he went to the White House after leaving his home in Illinois. He was a farmer and
was a simple man they say, and he went off to the White House to be the president. On a
Sunday he was feeling very nostalgic as he was walking through the gardens and so he
decides to write to one of his old friends back home and he gets out a whole bunch of paper
and a feather pen, and he starts writing away, just pouring his heart out that he’s missing the
farm, missing his friends, and he writes this real huge letter – like six or seven pages. Then at
the very end he says goodbye and then he says ‘P.S Dear Friend, I wish I could have written a
shorter letter but I don’t have the time.’ And really preparing this summary is very hard to do.
First of all, it’s very hard to find the time, so I’m going to try to be brief, but I recognise that
I’m probably going to … well, hopefully I’ll generate more questions than answers than I
could possibly give, and I guess that would be a good sign if we can do that, or if this can do
that.
One of the main structures of our training in moral leadership has to do with a methodology or
a process we call ‘transformational training’. And transformational training is about change
and it’s about getting us from point A to point B. We believe that this is a process and there
are stages in this process in this change of transformation – personal and collective. This is a
brief drawing. I’m sure that many of you who are in the field of education and training know
this concept. But it’s a structure. It’s a way we think about ourselves, it a way we think about
life, it’s the way we think about the eventual application of moral leadership, in a real context.
So, this idea that we all start from a point where we have concepts, we have knowledge, we
have attitudes, we have assumptions, we have beliefs, and we even have prejudices, and those
need to be unfrozen, or they need to be questioned, and they need to be looked at very
critically. And so we start of by preparing those that attend our courses, our workshops, our
seminars, our MBA’s – in whatever context we’re teaching and learning about moral
leadership. We start out by getting people prepared to question their own thinking – what
Peter Singe would call ‘the mental models’ we all have - about the subject (in this case of
leadership, and the moral dimension of leadership). So if we compare this stage of our
thinking with the sort of rigid ness, the structure, of an ice cube, we start questioning and
introducing new concepts that work kind of like how the heat would work to ice – it starts to
melt, or unfreeze the coldness and the rigidity of that structure. So then when we get a
structure that is very fluid – it’s almost a non-structure. It’s in a state of transition. This is the
moment of change, it is a time of movement – going form the old to the new, but we don’t
know what the ‘new’ is yet so we’re defining that by questioning what we know it’s not – in
other words where we’ve come from, our mental models, our mental structures and ways of
thinking about things that are no longer conducive or applicable to the worlds situation and to
our own evolving state of being. Once we get those beliefs and prejudices and assumptions
and attitudes unfrozen, and we can start moving the liquid of our thinking into a new
structure. Some like the term ‘re- freezing’, others don’t too much because why do we have to
go back and be cold again some say. But the idea is here that we have to put our thinking into
some kind of structure that will serve the purpose of guiding action and we can test it out for a
time and see how well it works in context as we look at specific applications. So that’s is
some new form and it’s definitely a form which needs to be consistent with reality, with the
current thinking, and it needs to be evolutionary – that is it needs to be changing constantly as
we introduce new challenges and concepts to it. If you can think then of that structure in a
training context then I think this will help to see how we introduce more leadership. This is a
quote, universally known - if somebody knows whom the author is, and I’d like to know. I’ve
used it for a long time, but I don’t know who the author is. Nevertheless, it’s a great quote and
to me it says ‘ there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose moment has come’ (Unsure
suggestion from audience that it might be Einstein). It’s Einstein…? Well, whoever it’s by he
knew that ideas are what move change. This whole idea - and Dahl, of course, was addressing
this perfectly yesterday when he was describing really what cognitive psychology has been
telling us for a long time, and I think cognitive psychology is going to have a rebound with
this and is going to have another better moment with this than when it tried dot convince us of
this in the sixties and seventies - but really it is how we think about ourselves and how we
think about our world, what we think our perceptions are, what our mental models of the
world are that determine our behaviour. The reality of our being, and this is substantiated in
the Bahai writings, is our thought, and the human mind is where we generate thought. I know
that in the Bible there is a quote that says ‘As ye thinketh, so ye are’. So, thought has a lot to
do with how we’re going to bring about change. And if we can work on our thought processes
and on our thinking then we may be able to move towards action, which is more consistent
and more applicable. And in the realm of leadership this is absolutely necessary.
Now mental models, I said, were beliefs, concepts, attitudes, assumptions, prejudices formed
during childhood and adolescence: How they serve to interpret reality and direct our action,
they limit our thinking and acting as they have not been examined. That’s one of their
characteristics and one of the reasons why they need to be examined. One of the reasons why
they need to be examined is because they have not been examined, they are mostly
unconscious notions about reality, and then we act on those notions that are really not founded
on independent investigation. As long as a person remains unconscious of his or her mental
models, it is impossible to change them. Another assumption. This idea here that our ideas or
our thinking produces ideas or mental models, the way we perceive reality, produces
behaviours or conducts and attitudes, and these produce results in groups. If our concept of
leadership is a paternalistic concept of leadership, then our behaviours and attitudes will also
be paternalistic and we will disempower the potentialities of human consciousness in the
groups we work with and so the results will produce people that are basically dysfunctional
because we have not been able to empower them.
The mental models will be looked at in this way: we will put a mental model here - lets say
we will look at authoritarian leadership as a mental model. What is the underlying reasons,
beliefs, concepts that motivate that kind of leadership? We will look at these questions – what
are the assumptions of this mental model? What beliefs sustain this mental model? What
concepts support this mental model? We would be doing this all in the context of the de-
freezing phase of change.
We would then start when some of these mental models about leadership, before we actually
get in to presenting our proposal for moral leadership, we would talk about how these models
of mental leadership have created the… and really the participants in training, come up with
all the different causes and effects of these mental models that are produced - the
dysfunctional society that we live in.
We would then be talking about change. This is a quote that I like to use personally from
Herr Veseviokes who has said that before status quo was the norm and change was the
exception, now status quo is the exception and change is the norm. We move people towards
the recognition that change is absolutely necessary – later we will see that it becomes a moral
imperative, but at this point we’re talking about the necessity for change. We’ve been talking
about the behaviours, attitudes, knowledge, concepts that disempower change, and now we
want to move towards looking at the alternatives. One of the things about presenting moral
leadership in the framework, unless we go through some of this preparation in getting people
to move in a participative way towards the idea of change – changing themselves and then
being agents of change for society or institutions, we will look at, in preparation for that and
presenting the moral leadership framework, we will work with people on concepts of this as
well. This is from Arthur Schoppenhower who, I think, very brilliantly said that
‘All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed; second it is violently opposed;
thirdly it is accepted as obvious’.
This is a quote, which in 1987, the World Health Organisation came out with very
disappointed over it’s evaluation of the ‘health for all’ program which was trying to set up
primary health care systems throughout the world in developing world countries. And it’s not
all that difficult to set up primary systems, but nevertheless the World Health Organisations
attempts in most countries failed. So this is taken of their evaluation of that program – ’health
for all’ – and they say that it is not through lack of scientific knowledge, nor through lack of
appropriate administrative models or for lack of financial resources, but rather through lack of
moral leadership at all levels was attributed to failure of that cause – the lack of moral
leadership.
Now what we want to do when we get in to looking at the alternatives to the dysfunctional
mental models, for example these I just mentioned a few of them earlier, but these are the
dominant or prevailing mental models about leadership, can be systematised into four or five.
We also include democratic leadership, (but we do a presentation of that separately because
we have found that there are a number of strengths we would like to build on and use as a
segway to get to moral leadership) but these are definitely the old mental models that we’re
all familiar with. We’ll look at those, as I said people will work on these mental models and
look at their causes and effects in terms of behaviours, attitudes, and then other effects in the
outer circles - how this leadership effects the groups or the organisations they work with.
Now, we’re trying to move from the breaking, the questioning and melting down of these
mental models. We like to think of what we’re doing as transforming the mental models into
new conceptual frameworks, and these would be a few definitions of what we say would be
mental frameworks. They are consciousness of our mental model. A consciousness of our
mental model allows to examine them and see their inconsistencies. Questioning, reflection,
and acquiring knowledge helps us gradually construct conceptual frameworks – they guide
our learning and our action. Without this kind of learning, transformation cannot occur.
Again what we’re doing here is working with a concept of training that we call
‘transformational’ and so we’re really after change, we’re really after application, we’re not
after refining our current thinking, or mental models, or current practices and trying to figure
out how we can polish and make them better – that’s a technical function which we can get in
to once we have decided what kind of leadership and where we want to go with that
leadership once it’s established. Conceptual frameworks need to be consistent and evolve with
growth and change.
So, this would like something like this – we’d work on old mental models then would come
up with the first element of a transformed mental model or come up with the first value or
principle of a new conceptual framework. I will present to you right now this conceptual
framework of moral leadership. These are the six elements, again, in training, we allow for
time working with groups with people to go through each one of these. We look at there
characteristics, we look also at what kind of behaviour and attitudes and conduct these
elements or values produce in organisations, in communities and even within the individual
and personal development and growth.
The first one is service to the common good. This is one that I’ve been hearing talked about a
lot in this conference and you’re hearing more and more this come up. I think it was Dahl
who mentioned yesterday, that (talking about the work ethic) people in organisations if they
can see how what they do is of service to the social or common good, then they become very
inspired and they become very enthusiastic and encouraged, and they want to do that. And
this is one of the motors, the great forces behind the moral leadership framework is this first
element of service to the common good. In Ecuador I worked with a group of Afro-
Ecuadorians, a group of Africans that were taken to Ecuador as slaves, and these were public
school teachers. They came up with this definition after a moral leadership workshop. They
looked at traditional leadership as those mental models I showed you earlier; ‘seeks to
dominate and control others so that they will serve the ones in charge’. ‘Moral leadership
seeks to dominate and control self or ego, so that it is free to serve others’. They came up with
this definition and I’ve showed this all over the world. I showed it in Africa after going there
twice this year doing extensive training there with NGO’s and educational institutions, and
this quote really moves a lot of people. So basically looking at this first element of service to
the common good, we would say that these styles or behaviours of leadership are centred, this
whole thinking - the mental models are centred and are based on the ego, on self interest, on
serving ones self or ones group. Transformation of that is oriented towards service to the
common good, service to the social good, the leader here in an egocentric leadership
paradigm is on top and all of his or her follows are below to serve him or her, and in this
concept service is what enables or empowers a leader to really provide attention to and
interest in what the group is seeking. So the leader is looked at as one who is able to be at the
service of others.
The second one here is investigation and application of truth. Basically, this here would look
something like this. We look at it as a twin moral responsibility to investigate truth and then
to apply truth. When we talk about truth here we’re really talking about these two dimensions
of truth - the contingent truth (how things are), and the ideal truth, which is based on
principles and values (how things are to be). And investigating truth has to take into
consideration both these dimensions. Application of truth is the other dimension of this twin
moral responsibility. Often times truth meaning reality or, like I say, the way things are now
or the way things are to be, what our aspirations are telling us things aught to be, what our
vision and what our ideals are telling us things aught to be, there are often times investigated
but not applied. In order for moral leadership to be effective it would have to be
indispensable. These two functions, in truth are inseparable – that’s what I wanted to say.
I like to show this one – it helps to wake people up! This poor guy is out in the desert and he
comes to a sign after he’s been walking along thinking that this was his salvation - you know,
for miles ahead he saw this sign - and he finally gets to it, has no water, is starving, and this
sign tells him ‘at this moment you are precisely here’. Well, this is what we often do, this is
the way we often treat truth and our investigation of things, of reality. We investigate were we
are, we investigate the contingent, or the here and the now, and we convince ourselves that we
are here, that we do not have the power to change much and that we have a lot of limitations
and we convince ourselves that we are really incapable of bringing about change. Now, the
reason that that happens is because where we are precisely cannot be determined unless you
have a point of reference to which you are referring. So how can we determine where we are
if we do not know where we want to be, where we want to go? And so it get s a little
philosophical but the idea here is that, really, vision of where we would like to be, where we
aught to be, the vision that is driven by our values and our principles, and by the ideal truths
that we are seeking to someday develop in ourselves and in society - unless that’s established
this makes no sense, it has no meaning. So if this sign said ‘you are precisely here which is
three kilometres north-east of the next oasis’ then that would be very encouraging for this
poor guy, because he would see where his ideal future laid, and then he would get motivated
and stimulated and would go reaching off in that direction to reach his desired future – water.
So this is the thinking behind the idea of truth being both contingent and future.
The next idea here is about personal transformation and social transformation. This is really
the purpose of moral leadership – when we get right down to it this is what moral leadership
really is about. Service to the common good is an orientation, an orientation that breaks with
the paradigm that leadership is for control and to dominate. Investigation and application of
truth really tells us, and we’ve looked at the different moral leaders in history and really they
were people who when they spoke had done their research before they spoke. They knew
what they were talking about, they’d investigated truth independently, they were free from
prejudice, they were free from blind imitation and they did the investigation of truth, but they
didn’t just investigate the way things are, they looked at the way things aught to be and they
created a vision. Their vision inspired us to follow them because that vision was based on a
thorough investigation of truth and not just based on some dream that they had. Personal
transformation and social transformation, in addition to being a commitment of moral
leadership, is really the purpose of moral leadership and it really is impossible to imagine the
application of moral leadership unless we begin with ourselves. So personal transformation is
really at the heart of social transformation, unless one is able to change and willing to change,
it is in a process of almost constant learning and change, it is almost impossible to imagine
that one could ever exercise lasting influence and change in ones group or ones society or
institution. So really, the dynamic force of example is at the heart of this concept and it begins
with one’s own commitment and sense of purpose for change.
The next is the necessity of transcendence. Transcendence here basically has two dimensions
to it. One is this dimension that Einstein spoke of (or at least it was an adage that was
attributed to Einstein); that one cannot solve a problem with the same mentality that created
the problem, and really in leadership we’re always constantly coming upon problems that
when we all try and jump in and solve the problem with the same mentality we’re no t even
aware of this because mostly it’s our mental models, which is jumping in a and trying to solve
problems – grabbing the bull by the horn so to speak, and just dealing with this problem face
on. Often times what we’re doing is we’re interpreting the problem, first of all, from a
paradigm or a way of thinking that created the problem itself – so we really can’t extract
ourselves from the problem long enough to look at it from a new perspective. Transcendence
gives us that new perspective. Transcendence is being able to play on the playing field and at
the same time sitting up on the stands. So you can see the whole field, you can see the system
before you, you can see the patterns that are at work and you can understand the problem
from a holistic perspective. Once you’ve seen that and you’ve done that in your mind you’ve
transcended and been able to see that way, you can return to a problem and provide insight
and fresh perspective which often times brings a fresh breeze of understanding about a
problem and then people rally around that and you can start working towards significant
change. But the other dimension of that is, of course, our commitment to values that are
transcendental or values that are of great purpose or nobility, and often times in the heat of a
discussion, or the heat that’s generated from tension produced from problem solving, it’s
often our capacity to remember those values that we’re committed to, those principals and the
vision of what we’re working for to establish that enables us to transcend those difficult
moments and to recommit ourselves and it also brings us an inner tranquillity because we’re
understanding where we’re going and in the beginning and that is very important for
transcendence.
The next element is the essential nobility of man, or the essential nobility of human nature (it
think we should e saying it to be more gender-sensitive). Essential nobility of the human
being: I think there are so many things that were said today that brought this out – but actually
this belief or conviction in the essential nobility is what we feel absolutely necessary for
moral leadership development because if this were not the case… - we look into all the
different conceptions that have existed historically about the human being and we break
people up into groups and have a really good discussion about this one, but essentially what
we’ve always come to as a conclusion is that unless there is this essential nobility in the
human being, and the at the human nature is essentially one of goodness and nobility, that all
this other development would have no purpose. Service to the common good really couldn’t
exist because it would be a contradiction. Investigation and application of truth would be
meaningless. Personal and social transforma tion would also be impossible to really bring
about unless we have this essential conviction human nobility. Transcendence would not be
possible because that requires the human spirit to rise above the baser nature and the lower
nature of man. So we look at this and there is a quote that I’d like to share. Again it’s taken
from the Bahai writings and as I said earlier that this is a Bahai- inspired conceptual
framework and this one here, by the Founder of the Baha Faith, Baha’u’llah, talks about
education for empowerment. And He said:
“Regard men as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education, can alone, cause it to
reveal it’s treasure and enable mankind to benefit there from”
This is a particularly applicable quote when working with educators and we have worked
much with educators. But I think that looking at the human being as a mine rich in gems of
inestimable value is really pointing to this essential nobility in the human being.
And to end with: I look at this last one as an imperative as the possibility for moral leadership
development and the possibility for seeing some kind of significant transformation and result
would depend on the exercise of capabilities. When we talk about capabilities or human
capacity, we’re talking about these four elements or components. When we are able to
exercise capacity or human capabilities, if we’re able to build capacity by putting in practice
capabilities for personal and social transformation, we take our concepts, we take our qualities
(which really are the values and the virtues that we have identified) and attitudes and skills
then we have capacity. So a capacity is the combination or the synergy of these four
components. And I’d like to end by, like I said earlier I wouldn’t be able to do much more
than to read to you, the eighteen capabilities that the moral leadership framework is based on,
and I will start - now that you have an operational definition of what we’re talking about when
we say capacity is again these four elements – concepts, qualities, attitudes and skills. So if
we look at first of all capabilities that contribute to personal transformation we’ve identified
seven of those.
Maybe there isn’t enough time to read all eighteen of these, so maybe we could read one or
two of them – maybe someone else, a woman’s voice to help balance all of this, could read?
(Lady’s voice is barely audible) investigating self and weakness without involving the ego;
self motivation … involving conceptual framework…the ability to take initiative in a creative
and …way; the capability to endeavour to overcome obstacles in the achievement of goals;
the ability to oppose one’s lower fashioned and eccentric tendencies… capability to manage
one’s affairs and responsibilities with rectitude of conduct based on moral and ethical
principles; and the last on the list, the capability to think systemically in the search for
solutions.
So those are the capabilities that we would put under the personal transformation area (or
concern) and these would be the capabilities that contribute to better inter-personal
relationships: The capability to review ones thoughts and actions with love, the capability to
encourage others and to bring joy to their hearts, the capability to participate effectively in the
process of consultation in group decision making, the capability to be a loving and responsible
member of a family, the capability to create and promote unity in diversity. Ok, so these then
would contribute to inter-personal relationships.
The last one would be the capabilities that contribute to social transformation: the capability
to create a vision of the desired future based on shared values and principles and to articulate
it clearly and simply so that it inspires in others a sense of commitment towards fulfilment,
the capability to understand relationships of domination and to contribute to their
transformation into relationships based on a reciprocal sharing and mutual service, the
capability to contribute in the establishment of justice, the capability to commit oneself to the
process of empowering educational activities, the capability to serve of institutions in society
in ways that assist their members to develop and utilise their talents and capabilities in service
to mankind, the capability to perceive and interpret the meaning of present day social
processes and events in the light of a … perspective.
So I would just like to close with this last statement I have written here. Now after seeing that
as a very brief and quick presentation of moral leadership, albeit full of imperfections and
possibly of just too short to really get into it in any significant way, nevertheless I can imagine
that any open minded executive or business man or woman would not see the benefit of
promoting this kind of leadership in their company. The principle challenge for us gathered at
this meeting will be how we introduce these concepts and how we show their practical
applications in benefit of business and social project without losing too much economic
benefit for the company in the long run. I would like to quote with a quote from Steven Karvi
and another from Abdu’l- Baha respectively.
“The lesson of history is that to the degree people and civilizations have operated in harmony
with correct principles, they have prospered. At the root of societies decline are foolish
practices that represent violations of correct principles”
And, lastly, from Abdu’l- Baha;
“The honour and distinction of the individual consists in this: that he become a source of
social good”
Thank you very much.
Yes, mostly in seminars. We are a post- graduate school. Nur University for a good ten years
was offering moral leadership training for the business centre, small industries and business
people across the board, small medium and large organisations. Yes, mostly through
seminars. Of course this can also be introduced for technical systems that a company might
want to look at its own training program and see how these principles, these concepts, these
capacities could be applied to strengthen, enhance, enrich their own training program. I think
it works very well as a human resource development and a leadership education program in
that it not only has contents that are very challenging and stimulating to apply for better
business practice, but it also, our program in its entirety, has a lot of methodology and
techniques and processes that we take people through h in a learning environment and
stimulating a lot of participation and dialogue so that people really take ownership of these
concepts and begin to apply them because of their motivation because they have bought into it
because they basically have participated in a lot of this in the construction of what I was
presenting. It’s hard to see that in a presentation like this, but we really do get down to
employing participative methodologies and interactive teaching/learning techniques and
technologies that really are empowering for learning. So that’s why I say it is both an
education and a development program and some of that development can be encouraged and
oriented and guided through technical assistants – we might do consultancies with an
organisation that wants us to figure out how to motivate the human resources, how to get
people to be more centred on ideals and how to get people to move in a consistent way
towards the fulfilment of the institutions vision. We have also been involved in a lot of
strategic planning with businesses as well, helping them if a strategic planning really has to do
with this whole contextual analysis, and then visioning and establishing a shared institutional
vision, then coming up with the mission and then identifying guiding principles for the
institution and then really coming up with a framework of the process of development for the
institution and then through this tri-dimensional analysis of context, process and vision, you
come up with the strategies that can guide an institution that can really be the strategic plan
for that institution for five or ten years in the future. So we have worked with moral
leadership concepts in some of our methodologies for getting people to work in groups on
their strategic plans. But mostly you’re right – mostly we do training, seminars, short courses,
it depends on the organisation. Sometimes we will do long courses. We have just completed a
Masters degree in educational leadership, which was based on the moral leadership modules.
This is module number one. We have sixteen other modules that accompany this for the full
course, which could be offered as a Masters degree, and we’ve done that in Ecuador where we
offered this as a Masters degree to teachers. But again your question is about private
enterprise, private business, and I think that training is a place to start with because the
training is very empowering and is very, as I say transformational. People come to the
workshops, often sceptical, saying ‘what is this moral leadership, is it some kind of
inquisition, is it some kind of religious thing?’ – people come with a mental model and
concerns and worries about what we mean by moral leadership, but as we begin to work with
them and create a non-threatening environment and get people to really think deeply about
their own mental models concerning leadership and the moral or ethical dimensions, and then
we move into those other stages, so real transformation starts to take place. Organisations that
go through that kind of training will always ask for more, or will want a larger course. As an
example of this; I trained a sugar cane co-operative in Santa Cruz, Bolivia they came to one of
my courses on this and the top executive management team came – there were eight of them –
and the CEO was there as well all and all the managers of the units were there. They came,
they went through the course along with other participants (so I think there were about twenty
five in all) and they were so pleased and happy of what had taken place inside them – their
own transformational process – that they went back and decided that this was applicable for
the whole institution so they sent sixteen of their line managers to the course and so we gave
it again to the sixteen middle management professionals there. So the training is good to start
with – people to get very enthusiastic about it and interested in it because of what they go
through.
We don’t have any official training resources in Europe now. We want to talk with EBBF and
others. We’ve done some courses. Doctor Illeno was one of the co-authors of the manual, was
just in Geneva two weeks ago. In fact there are some people here who were at his workshop
and he gave a four-day workshop on moral leadership. He was supposed to come by the way
but he asked me to come to replace him, and he was supposed to be here and he really wanted
to come but, anyway…he did that course, and other courses have been given at different times
in different places. I think at Landegg. Anyway, we’re supposed to talk about how we might
be able to do moral leadership training there and more moral leadership training at different
levels. But that’s about it. There’s no real Nur University representative. Is that what you
mean by resources? (answer comes back ‘yes’ from audience member).
(Voice of another man) A task force, which at the present time is applying the same
moral leadership concept, the same slid es, in Bosnia and they’re working primarily with
NGO’s and apparently two of our members are involved there – Caroline Suwicky from
Geneva and also Shervin Seteray from Luxembourg. There’s one other – John Webber who
spoke at the ISSAC conference with me on that same subject. And in fact we are trying to get
two or three ISSACers to follow that same course in Bosnia with the thought that if, in fact,
that is the effective way to develop young ISSACers or ex-ISSACers then perhaps we can
extend that programme with them and in more comprehensive and vastly expanded way in
some location. So there’s a lot of synergy.
…from Carolina. She worked with us at Nur for a few years and she returned (she’s originally
from Geneva) to Bosnia, and I understand she’s doing a great job there.
(Audience member) It’s very interesting and very important what you have to say, but
can you say something more about unfreezing, because surely that’s the greatest problem,
isn’t it? I would imagine you would have to use some kind of maybe team/group challenge. I
think we would have to have a challenge like September 11th to wake us up to our real moral
lead. I’d like it if you could say a little more about your unfreezing technique.
Well you’re right about it being very challenging and it’s one of the areas that I get the most
out of every time I’m involved in a workshop. I know that some trainers like to go there real
quickly and get out of there and get into the exploration and the discovery phase (which is the
second phase), the mo vement and change phase, and looking for the alternatives that
apparently we’re all… I mean, some trainers will say to me that ‘we all know that we don’t
want to stay there too long dwelling over, or lamenting over our mental models and the way
things are and the way things used to be’, but I don’t think we’re always so conscious of the
way things are and the way things used to be until we start putting our ideas out on the table.
And I think it’s important that we start looking more within ourselves personally. I use some
techniques (I have a few slides here that maybe we could talk about separately in a medium
among ourselves - I could show you some specific techniques), but I would like to address
mostly the idea behind the technique here. That is that until people start to personalise these
mental models of leadership that have truly disempowered and created all these dysfunctional
relationships and communications among people in organisations, until we start looking
inside personally it’s not as significant to do that part of the de- freezing. As long as the enemy
is outside then it’s not that significant – people don’t really see the need for change. But when
you can create an environment that gets people to look inside and address themselves when
they’re thinking about authoritarian thinking and style of leadership, or when they are
thinking about how they are paternalistic, or how they are not- it-all sometimes or express
attitudes of superiority or how they are manipulative at times and if you get enough people in
a group to look inside and deeply question the mental models that are there inside themselves,
again in a non-threatening way and no-one is pointing fingers at anyone else (there are some
techniques again, to make sure that doesn’t happen). If it’s an empowering environment
enough people will go there and feel safe enough to go there and look at how a lot of our
problems, a lot of the mess we’re in, (in terms of human relationships and communication
styles among ourselves and how, because of these preconceived notions we have of human
nature and of the human being in general… so it’s very important, I think, in order to get to
the second phase, to be able to have invested well in the first phase, to get people to look
deeply within and see how the y’re contributing to the dysfunctionality of leadership practice
(as it currently is), is exercised in the world around us; in our families, our society, in our
organisations. But there are some very specific techniques that I could talk to you about
separately.
(Comment from audience member) A little while ago we gave a moral leadership course in
Bosnia in a Muslim populated town and we had some Surf people attending this workshop.
The situation was tense in the beginning and we were a bit afraid about how these individuals
could relate to each other especially as it’s very much interactive and work groups and
people are encouraged to experience moral leadership themselves and I think that actually
this is the turning point of the whole concept. I think moral leadership makes things seem so
obvious to us once we hear it very tangible and it’s very logic. So after the first day hearing
about the concept and experiencing them selves the leadership styles that …(recording ends)
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