There is no better time to take stock of European Leadership than today with everyone apparently pulling primarily for themselves.
If we believe the textbooks – and there are many – leadership is simply a matter of ensuring clarity of purpose and quality of relationships. But that is where the fairytale begins and ends: in the textbooks.
If the truth is to be told, leadership is all about navigating turbulent environments. It is complex. It is messy. And to add fuel to the fire, it involves people!
So a call for leadership across and from a continent as diverse as Europe is a call and a half.
Of the European continent’s approximately 50 countries, Russia is by far the largest in both terms of area and population: comprising 40% of the continent.
And while the major languages spoken can be reduced to English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian, we should remember that there are a total of 91 languages spoken by a population of ca. 949,452,000.
And as if 91 languages were not enough, European Leadership has added the languages of fear, impatience and avoidance.
Such languages are not the languages of leadership. These are not the languages of systemic thinking. These are the languages of tunnel vision.
What seems to happen when we take a small step and then another small step and then another step into the lands of fear, impatience and avoidance is that we lose sight of the big picture.
After the first step, we don’t pay a lot of attention until maybe we have gone a long way down a particular road. And then we look back. And we say: “This isn’t the road I meant to come down. What happened?“
It is incredible how far down the road we can actually get. And it is not that we are bad or mad. We are simply lost in our own tunnel vision.
From my perspective, the biggest issue facing European Leadership is its inability to think and act systemically. Leaders are missing the context. Tunnel vision rules most of the day.
The American philosopher and psychologist, William James, hit the nail on the head when he said: “My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.“
There is no denying that leadership in an environment of such complexity as Europe is messy. The question I ask myself is: “Does it need to get that messy?“
Leadership is all about listening: with its eyes, its ears, its intuition. Or is it? I might be completely wrong here.
But, if I’m not, then the key question which needs to be answered yesterday is whether European Leadership in Moscow, Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris and Rome is listening?
I’m not so sure.
photograph: Ssolbergj / commons.wikimedia.org
