Leadership - is it relative?

A comment today that I heard in a panel discussion this evening with a FTSE 100 Chairman led me to wonder whether we all mean the same thing when we talk about leadership. In his view, the leadership he was talking about - the leadership that is real in his world - is running a FTSE 100 company. In discussion with a group of emerging women leaders, he went on to ask who really wants to be a leader. Because leadership was lonely; at the very top there is no-one to consult with; the decisions are all yours, with advice from others that is very often biased. Thousands of lives can depend on your decision. His comments generated some fiery discussion, particularly from those who thought he was fundamentally trying to put women off leadership as he saw it. His intention he said was almost the opposite; in fact, as an orphan, at boarding school and through his life he had been groomed for loneliness, and hence was able to cope with life at the top. I found the whole exchange a fascinating human insight into the world of the sort of person I rarely meet, but often talk about. And whilst it sounded like it was far from a joyous experience, it was one from which all can learn, about the real challenge of life at the top and coping mechanisms if you see the space you want to step into, but know you were not groomed for. The exchange also led me to ponder what a leadership heirarchy might look like, particularly if you took as the starting point the leadership of a FTSE 100 organisation, and how aspects of leadership might cascade from there if we saw leading companies as the pinnacle.

Could a soft power partnership between Parliament and the People finally change our democracy?

At a packed room in SOAS tonight, Young Fabians and Fabian women came together to talk about Revisioning our democracy. It was a fascinating debate, with discussion around women in politics, hard and soft power and lessons from Abroad. Brazil has a fascinating experience of democratic spaces that operate outside of formal political structures; spaces in which citizens come together to make or veto decisions; spaces, as they were described, with "teeth". What was interesting is the fact that the democratized culture of Brazil is in someways a conseqence of the fight against oppression, that equalised the nation. It was an engine of injustice from which new and power sharing democratic structures emerged. It did lead to the question as to what might end up being the deep drive for change in Britain; the position of unempowerment or disempowerment that collectively results in a united move for change and consensus on new models of democracy. But perhaps that wont be our evolution. Perhaps the haves and the have nots in terms of power are too split and disunited in our society to lead us to have a journey like Brazil into a new democratic reality. It might well be that the Fabian inevitability of gradualness is how our change comes about, perhaps with a little radicalism inserted from the women and youth. For coverage of the discussion, visit www.next-left.org.