At this Aspen Seminar for Leaders session exploring the question of what makes a modern leader, the picture painted was of someone who is not merely a conveyor of values, a consensus and team builder, and an inspirer of trust, but also of someone who respects the rules and other people, who has a strategic vision that is not untempered, who knows how to acknowledge mistakes and can make an honest assessment of defeat, and who is able to embody an idea of the future and can rally the hearts and minds of followers around this. A leader for today’s world – it was said – is someone tailored to handling complex situations in a globalized society, and above all, someone who is collective-minded rather than self-focused, in recognition of the fact that leadership is defined in relation to others. Indeed, collective identities are being shaped in different ways today than they were in the past, and this change has caught many a leader off guard.
It is not enough – it was stressed – to be a person of even exceptional qualities to be a leader, nor merely someone who can arouse emotions and enthusiasm, since charismatic leadership can only work in the short term, leaving no lasting mark. A leader should inspire “enthusiasm”, but it must be “a reasoned enthusiasm”. Moreover, a true leader does not chase consensus, but builds it, and to do so must have a well-defined and solid core of values, a rich inner life and a great deal of courage, in order to become an example viewed as worthy of following.
Only thus can a leader inspire trust, the participants noted, making it possible to discern in him or her the very values advocated. Being credible entails being able to heal the painful rift between elites and the masses that is still very prevalent today, and whose origins have been lost in the mists of time. It was further observed that, in the West, society has gone from a concept of “relative self-interest” – that is, maximizing one’s own interests without doing so to the exclusion of others – to a notion of “absolute self-interest” – or acting as if one were alone, as if others did not exist. In recent years, this has culminated in an overhyped emphasis on the power of self-belief, and a consequent vision that sees society as divided into winners and losers. It was felt that a true modern leader must get beyond all this, by once more fostering a crucial sense of cooperation that can hold together segments of society otherwise doomed to erupt into conflict or to fall into gradual extinction. Moreover, globalization calls for the knowledge of “others” that it brings with it to be greeted with wisdom and receptiveness, as should the bearers of that knowledge. Political leaders in Italy can look especially to the Constitution for assistance in this difficult task, an approach the seminar participants unequivocally agreed should be followed.
Being a leader in the age of globalization was also seen as requiring an understanding and knowledge of how to use the internet, and an ability to harness the great power of social networks. In politics first and foremost, there are no longer electoral campaigns in which the internet does not play a key role. This means that leaders have become “transparent”, with the way they operate, their proposals and even their mistakes coming under constant scrutiny. It was suggested, however, that on the web, the bulk of communication is essentially with one’s own followers or constituency, so that one is effectively preaching to the converted rather than seeking to sway the skeptics. Thus, although important, the internet cannot be used as the only yardstick, whether in politics, where leaders must also be able to go against the current and make the weight of their – albeit sometimes unpopular – ideas felt, or indeed in business, where a series of negative posts about a company’s product does not on its own call into question the product or even the company itself. This is not however to say that an online reputation is something that a politician or businessperson can afford to ignore.
At this point, discussion turned to the question of whether the internet represents the model for socialization in the new century. Several participants felt not; indeed, according to some, those who are constantly on social networks are effectively out of the socialization loop. The use of Facebook and Twitter was seen as nothing more than a spirited delivery of “monologues proclaiming the triumph of the self”, fragmenting any “push towards the ‘We’ collective” under a guise of purported friendship. Twitter might well be abuzz late of an evening with tweets on the most popular TV shows, but those in attendance at the seminar were at pains to stress that social contact cannot be confined to this kind of interaction, characterized as it is by too little effort and too much ease, and without any of the exertion involved in conducting interpersonal relationships.
There were however those who pointed out that 1 billion people on Facebook are under the age of 22. This new and undeniable reality is impossible for a leader to hide from, miss, ignore, forget or even lose interest in: whilst many leaders are still analog, the world’s youth today is digital. From this stems the need for a change of model and paradigm. It was suggested that in order to rethink the concept of leadership, it might be useful to look back to the Age of the Enlightenment, with its learned and wise men banding together and coming up with new and successful models, such as the Encyclopedia. Clearly, the imperative is to ensure that content is not lost: communication has meaning when substantiated by content, and especially if underpinned by a memory of the past. Indeed, a real leader builds the future bearing firmly in mind what has gone before.
It is for this reason too – it was felt – that education plays such a crucial role, particularly if the Aristotelian virtue of wisdom is to be achieved. In this regard, calls were made for an overhaul of the current training and education model, to eradicate the mistakes of the past, including poor management of university autonomy, a lack of continuing education, the formation of disciplinary “bubbles” (humanities versus science) instead of cross-disciplinary exchange, and the low level of interaction between the university sphere and industry.
In conclusion, the participants urged for all the foregoing to be accompanied by serious efforts not only to stimulate generational turnover (and this, clearly not so as to consign anyone to the “scrapheap”), but also to build inclusive societies with a high level of exchange and support between generations.