Leadership, liberty and the crisis of authority

The reason why Aristotle's insight is crucial today is because practical wisdom helps leaders face uncertainty and judge what needs to be done. It is only through the act of judgment that uncertainty can be transformed into risks that can be managed through calculation. Most importantly, it is through practical wisdom that leaders gain the confidence to deviate, when necessary, from the script and exercise discretion.

The heart of the problem of leadership is also one of the paradoxes of our times: Although we continually demand effective leadership, we organise public life in such a manner as to make its exercise very difficult. There are powerful institutional barriers to exercising discretion and judgment. Sometimes it appears almost as if much of the public sector and sections of commerce have become a discretion-free zone. Individual initiative is continually subjected to the tyranny of paper trails, risk assessment documents, codes of practice written to a template, and micro-mangers.

From a bureaucratic perspective, the proliferation of rules is seen as 'best practice'. From a wider future-oriented humanist perspective, such rules convey suspicion about people's capacity to judge and lead. It prefers the guidance provided by a manual to the leadership of someone prepared to initiate and judge.

Exercising discretion is discouraged because it is perceived as too risky. Yet discretion – based on tacit knowledge acquired from experience and on best available knowledge – is the only way to manage uncertainty. Through acts of judgment, uncertainty is transformed into a problem that can be confronted and managed. In turn, our capacity to judge develops through experience, and as with every endeavour, the more varied and extensive its practice, the better we get at cultivating the virtue of phronesis.

The final point about leadership is intimately linked to gaining authority. In every walk of life, a leader is an authoritative figure. However, society seems to have a problem with authority and invariably sees it as something to be restrained and controlled. That's one reason why Western societies have become so obsessed with making rules. Instead of cultivating authoritative leadership, we one-sidedly rely on rules explicitly designed to penalise taking initiative.

Most of us complain about the corrosive consequence of society's addiction to regulating economic and public affairs. However, a far more insidious form of regulation is the less visible tendency to formalise daily encounters, including inter-personal affairs. This juridification of everyday life discourages taking responsibility, using discretion, and making judgement calls. It is as if the managers of public and private institutions have read Aristotle and decided that their mission was to abolish the exercise of phronesis. In effect, they have created a culture that discourages people from assuming the responsibilities associated with leadership.

That is why we need to confront the current process-driven culture with one that is hospitable to risk-taking and the freedom to experiment and explore. Winning cultural support for the value of initiating and cultivating the virtue of phronesis is essential for resolving the current crisis of leadership. Such a project requires many attributes, but above all, it requires taking our freedoms far more seriously.