This week I spent an afternoon with a wise friend discussing, amongst other things, leadership styles and principles. One aspect of our conversation centred around what skill set leaders need in today's cultural climate. Obviously there's a multiplicity of answers but a few tend to dominate the contemporary conversation: public presence, communication abilities, and the ability to get things done.
But these have not always been the dominate leadership traits, and perhaps looking to the past might provide some insight on a foudnational skill set for leaders today who work in fractured or volutneer-driven environments: the lost art of consensus building.
Take, for example, Sir John A. Macdonald. In 1885, he was bound and determined to see one of his projects, the Canadian Pacific Railway, move forward. There was only one problem - no one supported him in this dream. Not his finance minister, not his caucus, not the opposition. And to make matters worse, CPR president George Stephen came knocking on Ottawa's door again asking for a government bail-out as the incomplete railway teetered towards bankruptcy. Listen as author Christopher Moore describes the skill set brilliantly executed as the CPR story unfolds:
Macdonald knew the stakes. “The day the CPR busts, the government busts the day after,” one of his advisers put it succinctly. The money had to be found. If 1885 were 2012, that would have ended the crisis. Macdonald was the dominating political figure of his day and his re-elected government held a big majority. If Macdonald favoured the bailout, surely all he had to do was put the cheque in the mail. Isn’t that what a stable national majority government leader does?
Instead, for another six months, Old Tomorrow kept Stephen waiting while the railroad lurched toward bankruptcy. The problem was Macdonald’s caucus and cabinet had deserted him. They could not stomach throwing more money at the railroad. Cabinet colleagues said letting the company fail was better politics than saving it. Backbenchers from the Maritimes and Quebec demanded something in exchange: help for their own pet railroads. His own finance minister, Leonard Tilley, thought the government could scoop up the assets of the bankrupt CPR and finish the job itself. In short, Macdonald led a majority government but lacked the parliamentary votes for a bailout.
Macdonald did not discipline his dissident ministers of 1885. The colossus of Canadian politics did not drive skeptical backbenchers out of politics as a modern leader would. Macdonald lived by the rules of 19th-century Canadian Parliaments: a leader answered to caucus, not the other way round. If a prime minister could not assemble a majority of his own MPs behind him on an issue, he accommodated.
That ability to accommodate certainly contributed to his reputation as Canada’s “nation maker,” as Richard Gwyn brilliantly portrayed him. But perhaps Macdonald’s greatest skill was as a majority maker. In a recent Historica-Dominion Institute project to promote the celebration of “John A. Day,” we suggested that what kept Macdonald at the top during his extraordinary career was rarely the authority of single-minded vision. More often, it was his uncanny ability to pull together majorities in the House when none seemed to exist." (Maclenas, Jan 23, 2012, page 25)
For those in church leadership, this situation will ring all too familiar. There are boards, councils, deacons and various other volunteer groups to work with and under and for. There are staff members sometimes with competing visions or strategies who need to be brought towards alignment. Most contemporary leaders will default to using their positional authority to "get things done". But not Old Tomorrow (John A's nickname). He was patient and worked tirelessly at building consensus and helping people move towards alignment and vision through relationships and not coercion.
And his railway project? Well, the CPR was left unsure of it's fate until that May. "Then came the Metis resistance on the South Saskatchewan, and it was the unfinished railroad that rushed troops to the West. Suddenly the CPR could do no wrong. Caucus came around, and the votes were there. The last spike was driven six months later. John A. Macdonald looked like a genius. Again." (ibid).
What leadership challenge are you facing? Perhaps rushing towards action instead of taking time to build a strong consensus may win you this battle, but you might loose the war. Seems like Old Tomorrow just may have a powerful lesson for us still today.
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