Learning
to lead
By WAYNE ANDERSON
Story ran on Tuesday, May 15 2001
"
Russia is Finished: The Unstoppable Descent into Social Catastrophe and Strategic
Irrelevance," a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, examines the rule
of lawlessness that is the result of a failure of leadership. This is a topic
of some interest to me since The International Center for Psychosocial Trauma
at the University of Missouri-Columbia has done some leadership training in
former communist countries, with law enforcement officers in Russia and students
in both Bulgaria and Bosnia.
The center started out working only with trauma. We added leadership training
when the center’s director, Arshad Husain, a child psychiatrist from
the University of Missouri-Columbia Medical School, was asked to develop a
program for the American University in Bulgaria. Since then we have been running
an ongoing program on leadership with a group of 40 students from Bosnia. Although
these are small-scale training programs, they raise some serious questions
in my mind about the condition of leadership in former communist countries.
*Why does leadership style need to change in former communist nations?
First, former communists I’ve met talk a lot, but they don’t seem
to know how to make a plan of action. When I first began visiting Bosnia in
1995 to help run workshops, I was dismayed by the ability of the leaders to
talk at length about a problem and never end up with any point-at-able action
that could be taken to solve the problem. It was almost as if talking about
the problem had been the solution. I pointed this out on several occasions
by asking, "What are you specifically going to do? That is, I don’t
see any plan of action." All I got in answer were blank looks as if my
question itself was meaningless.
Second, they can no longer control their citizens’ access to information.
Under the old system, which was basically a dictatorship, the control of information
was important. Part of this caution related to the protective stance the government
took during the Cold War to prevent its citizens from getting information that
would confuse them about the condition of their economy from the rest of the
world.
There are now many sources of information available, and to have complete control
they would have to keep their nations free of all modern technical advances
such as cell phones, copy machines, the Internet and, perhaps most important,
CNN and MTV. Despite government control, people now find ways to build satellite
dishes and tune into CNN. An enlightened public can’t be led in the old
style.
*
How do you introduce new leadership concepts when all of the old models have
been dictatorial?
Leadership under communism had a set of beliefs that was doomed from the start
but that allowed officials to stay in power long after the futility of their
beliefs had become evident. It was delusional of them to believe we can have
a modern society devoid of social rank and ownership of personal property.
Their theory was that competition created duplication and was therefore wasteful.
Once entrenched, the leadership would not admit to making any wrong decisions,
and they made many of them. To admit to errors would be to lose status, and
loss of status could mean off to the salt mines.
Execution, Siberia or hospitalization for mental illness were common means
to deal with opposition beliefs. These methods effectively killed off all new
ideas and innovation. Outside influences are now forcing changes and corrections,
but leaders still in the old mold are not able to respond intelligently.
