Course Pages
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​​4. Leading with Integrity
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​5. The Nature of Leadership
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Leadership - Section 3
Understanding Others
You and Others
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​In section 2 you were asked to think about yourself.
If you went through most of the questions in the exercises
you hopefully have a better understanding of yourself.
There is a lot to be said about you, a lot which went into you becoming you.
If you were to write your autobiography in detail
and broke your life story into the different categories of your experience,
it would be rather complex and lengthy.
you are a whole world in and of yourself.
You are simply you.
As time passes, your story grows and expands.
Every second of every day you experience the world in a unique way.
Every year contains over 30 million seconds.
By the time you reach 32 years of age, you have experienced over 1 billion seconds.
Each second, each moment of your life, is experienced by the ‘you’ that is continuously inside,
in a way that is unique to you.
Even those moments you experience with others are still unique to you.
Your individualistic experience can be as simple as a geographic perspective.
If you are watching the same event,
but you are standing to the north of what you are looking at
and someone is standing to the south,
even in close proximity to each other, you see the event differently.
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Sometimes, understanding your individual experience can be very complex.
There are a lot of things that go into making you, you.
Fully knowing another, even someone close to you, can be very challenging.
Understanding someone removed from you is incredibly difficult.
Imagine the differences in perspective and understanding between
a 70-year-old man, who lived his whole life in a small town in the United States,
and a 20-year-old woman, who lived her whole life in a big city in China,
as they watch the same event unfold on television.
Each ‘sees’ and interprets the world through the lens of their own unique experiences.
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Yet as different as they may be, they still have many, many things in common.
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The Challenge (or Problem)
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In reflecting on your own life, you will find elements of self-interest and bias.
Every human being has them.
Every living thing has them.
To be alive means that you are bias toward, and care for, yourself and your continuing survival.
You, like every living thing, are a product of a historic chain of existence.
Each individual life is a product of a particular chain of existence or line of life,
which forms a type of bias, or natural tendency to be drawn to,
bias toward the group within which that individual life exists.
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These are facts of all life, neither good nor bad, but rather simply the way the world exists.
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Good or bad are found in how you or I act, and react, to our natural bias.
We humans are unique in how we create the moral good and bad in the world.
We create good and bad, individually and collectively.
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Every living thing is a part of a chain of existence going back to the origins of life.
You have parents, who had parents, who had parents, and so on.
Think about how you came to be.
Just going back through recorded human history,
you can be traced back thousands of years and connected to hundreds of people.
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The modern scientific study of human origins takes us back millions of years.
Modern biology traces the origins of life on earth back billions of years.
You can trace your lineage back to the first spark, or sparks, of life on earth,
up through an evolutionary chain through all kinds of living things, to the first humans.
Someone in your family tree was alive when the pyramids were built, the Roman Empire ruled
and every other series of historic events we know about in recorded history.
Someone or something in chain of your existence, your life-line was alive
when the first creatures crawled from the ocean onto land,
and survived the extinction of the dinosaurs
and was a part of the evolutionary chain leading to you, here, now, today.
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You exist because, since the beginning of time,
something, and then someone, survived and procreated
Self-interest and Leadership
In serving the interest of others, you also serve your own interest.
Most of the time in life, when you are formally or informally leading others,
you will be a part of the group.
Generally, as events unfold, there will be a need for others to lead the groups you are in,
as part of the dynamic interplay of people in life.
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Leaders keep their own interests, and the interests of their followers, in balance.
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Every human being needs other human beings in order to exist, survive and prosper.
Every person is a leader, in leading their own life.
To follow another is to lead yourself to the same cause as the one you are following.
Every human wants to continue existing, to survive, prosper and flourish.
This fact is the foundation of moral leadership and must be at the heart of leading.
You choose to follow a leader. That is what creates the leader. You put leadership into another.
During your life you will have different people in charge of the situations you find yourself in.
You will have teachers responsible for your classroom, managers supervising you
or others in charge of you in a wide variety of situations.
A teacher or manager can be a leader,
if they work in the best interests of those who are under their control in a situation.
However, someone supervising or responsible for a group is not automatically a leader.
It is acting ethically,
trying to act in the best interest of those under a person’s jurisdiction for a period of time,
which makes a person a leader
because that is why followers put their trust in them,
or rather, why followers confer leadership on another.
To lead one person, a few people, or a large group, means that every individual follower
chooses to lead themselves to the cause put before them by the leader.
Followers would freely choose to go where the leader is taking them,
because it is in the follower's best interest.
Everyone is self-centered.
You must look after your own interests in order to survive.
It is as simple as eating, drinking and caring for your health.
Of course, self-interest is more complex than just the basics of survival.
You lead your life.
The ultimate goal of every individual person is their own personal happiness and flourishing.
However, for any individual to flourish,
those around them, in particular the ones they love, need to flourish.
(In the Starting Course we discuss what it means to be happy, to flourish, and the need for everyone to flourish in order for the individual to flourish and be happy. In that course we also dig deep into the notion that the world happens to only one person at a time.)
Leaders are part of the group, and they must have the same self-interest as the followers,
as relates to the group goals.
humans are very diverse in their interests.
Happiness and flourishing can be comprised of different things for different people.
So it can be very difficult at times to understand the interests of others,
particularly in a very diverse group.
Leadership is found in the ethical effort to understand the diverse interests of followers
and to honestly try to fulfill those interests.
Just as your experiences, the millions of moments you have lived, are unique to you,
so too, the moments of others are exclusive to them.
No one can see through the eyes of another, even if they have walked in their shoes.
Everyone needs to be aware of their own biases and to consider the perspectives of others.
This is at the heart of morality and critical to leadership.
Bias
The interrelations between living things are complex.
Human emotion and thought add a further level of complexity to this interaction.
There are many ways to explain our bias toward our own kind, or someone similar to us.
I like to use a simple, somewhat silly, evolutionary example.
Imagine that my brother and I live in a cave with my family and clan,
thousands or millions of years ago.
Not far from our cave is a den of bears. I am young and not too bright.
We go out hunting one day and upon my return,
I see my clan at the entrance to one cave and the bears at the other cave.
I have no bias, or preference for beings that look like me,
so, one day I randomly decide to go to the bear den.
I do not live to reproduce.
My brother is drawn toward the group that look like him, or is bias toward them,
and returns to the clan cave.
He lives to reproduce.
As human culture and society developed, in the hunter-gather stage,
this scenario would play out as more groups of people developed.
It is part of animal instinct, and humans are animals.
When the agricultural revolution began, and civilizations began to develop,
this group bias carried on and carries on to this day.
Groups join together to survive and try to prosper and flourish.
A critical part of leadership self-awareness is to know something about your own bias.
It is important to understand that others may feel as strongly about their beliefs
as you do about yours.
A Christian, born and raised in a devoutly Christian family, in a Christian country,
would hold very strong, deep beliefs about God.
A Hindu, born and raised in a devoutly Hindu family, in a Hindu country,
would hold equally strong, yet somewhat different, deep beliefs about God.
One of the greatest challenges of leadership
is how to manage the leader's self-interests, with the needs of followers.
Understanding others similar to us is difficult enough,
but the challenge becomes even greater with individuals very different from us.
To overcome this challenge, we need to learn about and understand others.
This is critical for leadership.
Leadership means to work for the best interest of all your followers.
Diversity
The United States, where I am from, is a relatively diverse nation.
However, we still live within certain cultural boundaries,
sometimes captured in the notion of a melting pot.
In other words, part of our culture is to try to blend diverse people into one.
However, we are barely 5% of the world population.
All humans now live in an ever shrinking, interconnected, global community
in which relationships are constantly challenged by the differences between us.
Ethnic, cultural and religious traditions, gender and language barriers,
as well as conflicting personal interests
often lead to misunderstandings and sometimes to violence.
It has always been, and continues to be,
a global challenge for a group of people to be able to hold on to their values and beliefs
when interacting with other groups,
and to find, and work for, the common good.
We now want to explore some of the ways in which individual people, groups and cultures
are different and offer a few suggestions for finding common ground
to help us all flourish as a global community.
In other words, one of the most important things we are trying to accomplish
is to learn how to work and play well together through moral leadership.
I have stated that leadership must be ethical.
Ethics is the study of human morality,
or what people believe is right and wrong or good and bad.
There are universal moral principles which apply to every human being.
These principles can be applied in many different ways, in varying circumstances.
They are real and necessary for human happiness, survival and flourishing.
“We are citizens of the world, and the tragedy of our time is that we don’t know this.”
Woodrow Wilson, US President during World War I.
“In our present state of affairs, the very survival of mankind depends on people developing concern for the whole of humanity, not just their own community or nation.”
The Dali Lama
Morality is our creation.
It is simply about getting along with each other, being happy and flourishing.
You and I, all of us need ethics because we are social animals.
We need to live and work in harmony.
Fear
Often when people discuss the problems humans have in getting along,
they think of things like greed, envy, lust or many of the other things we often call vices.
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However,
fear is at the root of most of the challenges we have in getting along together.
What are some of our fears?
What are you afraid of: death, the dark, getting hurt, pain, hunger, loneliness, or rejection?
One of the most important fears in the world of ethics,
and dealing with diversity,
is fear of the unknown.
Diversity is one of the greatest problems we have in getting along with each other,
and, at the same time, it is also one of the best things about life.
It is a major cause of fighting and problems
and one of the best things about the world.
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Diversity is difference, variety, dissimilarity, and variance between people or things.
Variety is often called the spice of life.
Imagine if everyone was the same. How boring a world it would be.
People are different.
All people are different.
No two are exactly alike.
We fear the unknown.
Other people can be, and often are, unknown.
We don’t really know if someone is the same as us,
even someone as close as a sister or brother.
So, this creates a challenge for each of us.
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Think about the world inside of you and our inner thoughts and feelings.
How do you know for sure if anyone else thinks or feels exactly like you do?
You can never get inside someone else’s head or heart.
People only know what you tell them about you or what they see you do.
How often do you share your innermost thoughts? Can you even express them clearly?
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What you/we know about a person is what they reveal to you or the world.
On a personal basis, for most people, this can be a minor or a major challenge,
depending on their relationship with another person.
However, on a large scale, this challenge can cause serious problems,
particularly when we perceive that other people are very different from us.
They look different, talk differently, have different customs, religious beliefs and priorities.
We often fear others.
The more dissimilar they are, the more unlike we are, the further from our world they live,
the more unknown they are, the more we fear them.
This fear of the unknown can be attributed to evolution, just as our bias can.
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Imagine again that thousands or millions of years ago my brother and I live in Africa,
among wild animals. At night we often hear unknown sounds.
They frighten me, and I either run or hide when I hear them,
my brother has no fear, he is not frightened by the unknown sounds.
he does not run or hide.
One of the unknown sounds is a lion hunting.
I run, hide and live to reproduce, and he does not do either.
Fear is one of the keys to the survival of our species.
It is an instinct which is seen in most animals, when they flee from a predator.
In humans it has become more than just a powerful instinctive reaction,
it has become a strong emotion, which,
when connected with our thoughts and imagination,
causes many problems between individuals and groups of people.
Throughout human history
nations and civilizations have risen and fallen in the shadow of the other,
the enemy,
who is different from us,
unknown,
and to be feared.
Often, there is nothing that brings a group together more than a common enemy.
It is us against them.
We find our courage in facing the enemy
and overcoming our fear of them or things unknown about them.
Those seeking power know how to use our fears to their advantage to gain and maintain power.
We think the other person, or group, is different from us.
Indeed, every other person, or group, is a little different from us.
Is this a reason to fear them?
Why do we fear them?
Is it because we don’t know fully what they are like,
what they might do to us, or want from us?
We are all different to only small degrees.
We are all much more alike than we are different.
Yet we seem to focus on the small differences,
rather than the large similarities.
We have some differences in the way we behave,
and many generally similar behaviors
We have some different ethnic, cultural and religious traditions
yet we all have theses traditions.
There are differences in gender and language,
yet we all have gender and language.
Sometimes we have conflicting personal interests,
but we all have personal interests.
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Your First Exercise - Diversity
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The world is very diverse. We all have very different backgrounds.
Some are similar to us, and others are extremely different.
We use the word paradigm to describe something which is so ingrained in us
that it is hard to see the world from a different perspective.
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Think of someone you know, or imagine someone, very different from you,
maybe someone born in a mountain village in China, a slum in India,
wealthy part of New York, the suburbs of California,
or somewhere in Iraq, Siberia, Africa, Japan, etc.
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Use your example of a person in a very different situation than you.
It does not need to be a specific person,
but someone who might have been raised totally different than you.
This will require you to define certain characteristics of yourself,
related to your upbringing
and then think of the opposite.
Discuss the following:
(As in the other exercises, I would encourage you to answer the questions out loud,
or even to tell someone you know about yourself in this context.
If you are so inclined, you can write some of the answers.)
How are you different from this other person?
How can your differences make you a better leader?
How are you similar to this other person?
How can your similarities make you a better leader?
What can, or do, you do to be more understanding of diversity?
Try to list some specific steps or ideas,
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Culture
As individuals we are all unique.
However, we can form into groups around certain commonalities.
These things which people have in common, and which bring them together,
are very broadly and loosely captured under the umbrella of culture.
Culture is behavior particular to humans,
that are characteristic features of everyday life
shared by people during a specific time period and generally in a certain area.
The culture a group forms around can range from the set of shared attitudes,
values, goals, and practices of an institution or organization,
to the values, conventions, or social practices associated with an informal social grouping.
People can come together around language, ideas, beliefs, customs, codes, institutions,
tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, social forms, racial characteristic, religion,
and many other elements.
Our cultural values and behaviors are built very deeply into us.
It is more than simply what we learn, it is how we live from the first moments of our life.
It is impossible for us to step outside of ourselves to somehow see what makes us tick
from an objective point of view.
There is no objective, perfect view of the world from nowhere, without cultural bias,
as some think the word ‘objective’ implies.
However, there are ways to understand our differences and the challenges of getting along.
It is very difficult, if not impossible,
to be able to understand all the different cultures in the world.
However, what you can do is be aware or cognizant of your own culture,
and how it affects you,
and then always keep in mind that the culture of others affects them in the same way.
Thus, the first step in understanding others is to understand ourselves.
You and I, and every human being is, in a manner of speaking,
a product of our DNA, upbringing and environment.
We are who we are through nature, nurture and experience.
In leadership, you need to be aware that there can be significant differences among cultures.
It is important for you to try to understand, in general,
the different cultures in the world, how they were shaped, and how they affect people.
In particular, when interacting with another person, always remember,
their upbringing and environment may have been very different than yours.
However, what is equally important is to understand
one thing which we have in common with every other human being,
that is the fact that our cultures shaped each of us.
a person who you believe is very different from you, unknown to you,
has been shaped in the exact way you have been shaped.
They were born into a culture, not of their choosing,
and during their upbringing,
they were shaped by their environment
and their individual experiences of their culture.
Every human is, in large part, a product of their culture.
Every time you interact with another person you need to keep these facts of life in mind.
No matter how similar you are to another person, you are unique.
No matter how different you are to another person,
the one thing you have in common with them, and with every human being,
is that you are a product of your unique nature,
the way you were nurtured
and the things you have experienced in the millions of moments in your life.
Every human being is a product of their unique nature,
the way they were nurtured
and the things they have experienced in the millions of moments in their life.
The deepest beliefs you hold dearest to your heart
may be very different from those another person holds dear.
You need to recognize that they hold their beliefs, deeply and dearly,
just as you do, and for the same reasons you hold yours as you do.
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However,
and this is very important:
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there are things which are absolutely true
true for every human being
no matter their nature, nurture or experience.
There are objective, absolute facts, in the social and moral universe,
just as they exist in the mathematical and scientific community.
Every objective fact in the universe is experienced subjectively,
one person at a time.
You and I, every human being
develops our beliefs from our nature, nurture and experience.
Beliefs which you hold, which a person holds,
that closely match, mirror, or relate to the objective facts in the universe,
are true.
This applies to ethical facts just as it applies to scientific facts.
We do not know exactly how gravity works,
but it exists
and actions and ideas which are consistent with the principles of gravity
are true.
No one knows exactly how love and care for others works,
but it exists,
and actions and programs that are consistent with the principles of love and care are true.
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In this next section we will discuss some of the things which pull us apart,
some of the things we have in common
and how we can overcome some of the problems humanity has in getting along.
Keep in mind that formal leaders can solve problems or amplify problems.
Remember, everyone is a leader
in both leading their own life and because we lead and follow each other
in the cultural dance of society.
It is important to open your mind and heart to understanding yourself and others​​​.
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Understanding Differences
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It is very difficult to understand the experiences of others.
When interacting with anyone
we all need acknowledge that we can never fully know what their life was like
but we need to try to imagine what it is like in someone else’s shoes.
Everyone has challenges in life.
​Louis Armstrong was born in 1901 in dire poverty,
in the United States, in south amidst intense racism.
It would be hard to imagine what his troubles were like.
Trying to understand someone is the first step in leading​
Next is developing a sense of empathy.
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Empathy is critical to leadership.
Empathy is more than simple understanding,
it is being aware of and
being sensitive to,
the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another.
You or I may not be able to fully share someone else's feelings or experiences,
try to imagine what it would be like to be in another person's situation
at the point in their life, when you encounter them.
You can never fully grasp what it was like to have walked in another person's shoes
but to be a leader, you need to acknowledge and try to understand
their life,
the nature they were born with,
the kind of nurturing they had
and their experiences in life.
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There are many things that separate people and cause us to fear the other.
Our fear of the unknown makes us suspect people who are different from us.
The fear of others makes it difficult to get along together.
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We have difficulty in imagining what it is like to live in someone else’s environment.
Sometimes we project our beliefs onto others.
Sometimes we stereotype people, based on what we think their world is like,
based on our own experience with others who we believe are similar to them.
We create a standardized mental picture of what someone else’s world is like in general,
often based on insufficient information about the other person or group of people.
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There are many ways to look at the differences humans have
in their nature, nurture and experience,
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Cultural differences
Some general cultural differences are in gender relations, the perception of authority,
individualism versus communitarianism lifestyles, family structures,
diet or religious practices or dress.
​Gender relations, has to do with the roles of men and women in the society
and there can be big differences.
The perception of authority is the different way we look at our politicians,
as well as our parents, teachers and other with power over us.
Individualism versus communitarianism
is about the notions of how people work together.
Family structure differs in many places and is related to how we deal with
the nuclear family versus the extended family.
Religious practices differ not only in the beliefs of individuals and groups,
but how they deal with other religious and nonreligious groups.
Communication Differences
There are a wide variety of differences in language,
and even within a related language group, dialects and jargon can differ greatly.
There are hundreds of languages, thousands of dialects.
There are also differences in communication style, such as volume, tone, and speed.
Some of the subtleties of a language related to volume, tone, speed, inflection,
and where you put your emphasis can be tremendous.
Many people who try to learn a language are often surprised when they travel
to the country of origin of the language and try to speak to people.
Non-verbal communication is equally important to understand.
There are broad differences in gestures, posture, proximity,
eye contact, body movements, and general body-language.
Temporal Issues
The concepts of time and its relative value can differ in very subtle ways.
It can be as simple as normal daily work hours,
the sense of urgency in how quickly something needs to be done
or the economic value of time.
Differing concepts of time can run deeper,
such as the differences in the religious belief in reincarnation,
that a person has many lives to get it right,
versus the belief that you only have one shot at it, this life.
Economic, Class and Education Differences
Economic differences can be focused on the global,
such as the wealth of a nation,
or the personal level as to the value we place on money and personal wealth.
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This arena also contains what is traditionally considered class differences,
and the perspective a person of wealth has,
versus the middle economic group, versus the bottom tier.
Educational differences can be vast and very challenging.
Differences can be systematic,
such as the belief that the higher the education the higher the class.
However, this area also presents unique challenges at the individual level.
It can range from differences brought about by literacy and reading levels,
to the challenge of communicating with others
who don’t have access to some of the concepts.
Simple ideas about the solar system or universe, foundational scientific principles
or beliefs about biology and human nature can vary widely.
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​​Short Exercise
How are your communication, conflict-resolution,
and decision-making behaviors or tendencies
influenced by your perceptions of the
gender, race, ethnicity, family practices,
or other characteristics of others in a group?
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What experiences will help you expand your openness to others?
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​​​​What We Have in Common - Physically
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Our bias towards those who appear similar to us
has caused tremendous human suffering over the years.
This bias is so deeply ingrained in the human psyche
that even with all of what has been discovered about human similarity,
we still struggle globally and locally with diversity.
We know now that many human characteristics, physical, mental and emotional,
are built into us at birth.
Most of our nature is in our DNA.
Through nurture and personal growth,
there are many things about ourselves which can change.
What is amazing is that, at the base-pair level,
your DNA, your genome, is 99.9 percent the same as all other humans.
We are 99.9% the same.
This is also true when we consider other aspects of ourselves.
We are very similar physically, mentally and emotionally,
and these human similarities have always been apparent.
If we think about how much we have in common
it is so much more than the differences.
At our core we are much more alike than we are different.
Many of our differences are superficial and insignificant.
I have always enjoyed asking my classes how many different races are there?
Often it is a lively discussion,
but occasionally one of my students will know.
There is only one race, the human race.
One problematic area is the differences in the color of human skin,
which is a minor and superficial difference between people.
Imagine if some people had
2 or 3 heads or hearts,
5 or 6 arms or legs,
completely different digestive systems,
blood made of entirely different fluids,
bones made from wood,
or needed to breathe in methane rather than oxygen.
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We are all very, very much alike
Depending on how much detail you want to break the human body into,
you find the ratio applies.​
You are 99.9% like all other humans.
We all have
cells, bones, brains,
teeth, tongue, ears, eyes, noses, mouths
hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers,
digestive systems, blood systems, nervous systems,
arms, legs, heads, toes,
and on and on and on,
down to the many similar types of cells, chemical elements, molecules and atoms.
There are rare humans born differently,
missing limbs or other parts of the human system,
but they fall within that .1% variation.
Race based on color is an artificial distinction
created to justify disparate treatment of certain groups
by other groups.
This has been obvious since the beginning of the agricultural revolution
and the domestication of animals.
Imagine you worked on a farm
and any cow that had any black on it
was separated from the white cows and discarded.
Imagine you go to a dog show,
and they had multiple categories of poodles,
where the black poodle, white poodle, and brown poodles were all judges separately.
The color variations in animals
has never been used as the primary distinction to separate species.
To go even further into the obviousness of the social creation of race distinctions,
even all the different breeds of dogs and cats are still dogs and cats.
Nationality is another human social creation often referred to as race.
Often, we refer to the modern place of birth to ascribe a nationality to a person.
However, we know that many of the modern nations
have only existed for a small span of time.
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For example, anyone attaching their race to European origins,
could use dozens of terms, based on the many reconfigurations of the continent, from the
present modern nation-state through the Roman Empire, and those before and after.
We are all human beings.
What We Have in Common - Socially
All human beings have problems and struggles.
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Often, we look at another and think they have it all, have no problems, have it made.
However, that is because of our lack of ability to fully know another.
As members of a global and local society, we all share in many of the same challenges.
All humans have economic problems.
We all need to make a living or provide for ourselves and those around us.
We all need economic goods.
The nature of the common needs was more apparent in the age of barter and agriculture,
which still exist around the world.
In the modern world we tend to say we all need money.
In various ways, we all have suppliers and customers, bosses and employees,
and others we must interact with to procure what we need.
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Being part of a global economy means that an economic downturn in one part of the world
affects jobs, prices, and retirement plans around the globe.
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Illness and disease strike everyone.
We all get sick, get some of the same diseases, and the same things cure us all.
Epidemics like Covid or AIDS affect us all
because of global travel and the economic impact of medical costs.
They can also affect us as we empathize with real human suffering
of thousands of orphaned children.
We all live on the same planet and are affected by the environment.
We all need sunlight, fresh water and air,
a safe place to live and food grown from the earth.
Our environment is what is around us, and we need the rest of the world to survive.
Our oxygen comes from the plants and trees, and all of our nutrition starts with plants.
No animals can convert sunlight, water and minerals into food products.
Without plant life we all die.
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Global warming is happening to all of us.
If not corrected, it could cause global weather patterns to change with them,
farming production and living patterns and mass migrations to higher elevations.
Human rights issues affect all of us because we are all human beings.
Every societal collection is and has been concerned with these
since the dawn of time in varying different ways.
The loss of human rights in one country leads to fear in the next.
Oppressed people in other parts of the world look for someone to change things.
When nothing happens, they look for someone to blame,
blame foreign companies or governments that are exploiting the poor
and sometimes respond with violence.
As parents in a Third World country watch their children die of starvation,
their powerlessness leads to frustration, despair and sometimes violence.
The rest of us, comfortable and well fed,
feel guilty or we blame the victim. Not caring dehumanizes us.
These troubles then spill over onto their neighbors,
or onto those wealthy countries that appear uncaring and unresponsive.
The result is often terrorism, or all-out war.
In recorded human history there has rarely been a time without war.
Wars affect everyone, and as we have witnessed in recent years,
war now has global ramifications.
Our problems are not all that we have in common with each other.
Humans share in the beauty and good in our humanity.
We have common values that exist across all cultures throughout time.
Some of these human values which are universal are
Love
Tolerance
Truthfulness
Responsibility
Fairness
Respect for Life
Unity
We all seem to want these and consider them valuable to varying degrees.
Humans also have common needs, things we all want and need, such as
Basic requirements for living
Security, freedom
Family, children, companionship
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We all share in certain basic feelings and emotions, such as
Fear, anger, sadness
Love, joy
Loss of loved ones
We are all very much alike.
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Short Exercise
Think about two other people you know well.
What do you have in common with them?
What is different about them?
How would they describe you?
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Leadership Responses to Diversity
We all are self-centered
and have a bias toward those we are familiar with and who surround us.
One very simple way to deal with our own need to be self-centered and our bias
is to simply be aware of it,
keep in mind that others are the same
and that we are all 99.9% alike.
Our 99.9% similarity is physically, mentally, emotionally, in our values
and in our social and environmental needs.
We have very common universal ethical principles around which we can communicate and act.
It is important that we do not judge and condemn others because they are different.
We need to take the time to understand why they are different.
However, we also do not want to simply accept that whatever our culture,
or another culture does, is right because it is what we do, or they do,
or because all cultures have a right to live as they choose.
We know from history that groups of people can form very very bad, destructive cultures.
We need to explore the universal values and principles we share,
and look for common ground, based on human rights.
We need to allow for a respectful two-way exchange of views,
a rational dialogue about matters of importance to us all,
but without succumbing to ethical relativism
or sacrificing universal ethical principles.
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There are universal ethical principles, of that we are 100% certain.
However, we need to acknowledge that none of us has perfect knowledge,
so at best,
we can reach a high level of certainty about what they are,
maybe even a 99.9% certainty.
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Some of the principles necessary for understanding others are
Inclusion (rather than exclusion)
Respect (rather than condescension)
Compassion (rather than indifference)
Cooperation (rather than competition)
You can apply this right here in your own backyard
with your friends, with strangers, at work, school, everywhere in your life.
It is important how you treat others who are different from you.
Human beings are social creatures by nature.
Moral principles are derived from our shared experiences and values.
In order for us to be fully human,
we must be able to live and work well in a community.
If we try our best to be morally good in every encounter with another,
we will become ethical by habit,
and it will become instinctive, natural, to treat others well.
This will make us happy and help create a flourishing world.
One of the key principles is an ethic of compassion, inclusion and respect for all persons
without regard to gender, ethnicity, religion, skin color, or any other differences.
Treat others the way we would want all others to treat us if we were suffering or in need.
We should count all people as equals, nationally and globally.
Imagine yourself in the place of
the poorest or richest people,
sickest or healthiest people,
people who do not speak your language,
people with a different education than you,
people of all faiths and of no faith at all.
Everyone should be included, and everyone should be respected.
Many leaders, such as MLK Jr. called for an ethic of love.
He dreamed that we would someday see beyond our superficial differences
and come to love one another.
He preached to the marchers in the Civil Rights movement
that they were to love even their enemies,
the Dalai Lama in his book Ethics for the New Millennium,
has put forth a strong argument for an ethics of compassion.
According to Tibetan tradition,
all human beings share the capacity for hatred, fear, and violence,
but also for empathy, compassion, and loving-kindness.
Loving Others
It is important to understand others,
but it is through love that we are motivated to act to help others.
English requires a lot of extra words to clarify what we mean by the word love.
However, the Greek language has several different words for love which are helpful.
Here, in leadership, we use the notion found in the Greek word Agape,
which is a love for everyone as equal human beings,
love in its highest form.
wanting the best for others.
If you have not read much of the story of Mother Teresa, it is worth your time.
Her's is an amazing journey of leadership in the modern world,
and selfless service to the neediest of the world.
In this clip, she talks about the love of others, a key part of the art of leadership.
​Mother Teresa lived the love that she took from her faith
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Individually, we all need to try to make the right choices,
to treat others with non-violence, non-judgment, and compassion.
We need to understand that, in reality,
we are not separate individuals fighting for survival,
but interrelated and interdependent expressions of the same universal reality.
American Indian Dhyani Ywahoo
writes of the Sacred Hoop, the never-ending circle of life
that includes all living beings and the Earth itself.
Her's is also an ethic of inclusion, respect and compassion, which produces harmony.
All life is connected and interdependent;
therefore, all life depends on the wholeness of the Hoop.
Everyone and everything is included.
Each of us must develop the “caretaker mind,”
an awareness and sense of responsibility for how our decisions and actions affect
everything and everyone around us.
We must visualize the Earth and our relationships as they should be,
affirm that wholeness and harmony are possible,
and work to bring this vision into reality.
The Golden Rule gives us a good start on the principles of inclusion, respect, compassion and
cooperation, along with other moral principles that facilitate harmonious relationships.
This rule can be enhanced through the notion of loving your neighbor as you love yourself.​
What can you do?
You can study and learn about
the history of an ethnic group different from your own,
the perspective of women – or men on some of the major issues of our time.
the problems of the poor where you live,
the problems of the poor in a country in the Third World.
You can
Make friends with people who are different from you.
Ask them about their lives and listen with an open mind
Learn about a religion different from your own,
then visit their place of worship.
Participate in community-building activities
for people outside your own neighborhood.
Volunteer your time at a non-profit center
for the elderly, the disabled, abused women and children, or the homeless.
Listen to the music or read the poems and books
of artists who are different from you.
Practice open-mindedness
fairness, kindness, understanding, and agape.
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You can change the world!
the world happens to only one person at a time.
if you help one person, change the world for one person,
you change the whole world.
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​Please continue with me on this leadership learning adventure.
