Leadership contextualized

Perhaps as a keen student of history, the quest of mine is to enquire how leadership characteristics evolve in individuals.

Does a leader possess any unique skills that others do not have, or is it that Nature endows similar skill set to all humans? Some discover their skills set and put them to effective use while others remain unaware of this gift present within them.

I believe the environment, including the effect of the various eras of human history, gives impetus to the discovery of leadership.

The many types of events that unfold offer an opportunity to either respond to them or submit to them.

Intelligent individuals see these moments as a window of opportunity to exploit their inherent skills to override the challenges. They excel because they see the “events” as a propeller to bring forth hitherto latent and unutilised talent, skills and abilities.

The more I read history of WWI and WWII, the greater is my conviction that Winston Churchill would have never made to 10 Downing Street if it wasn’t the War. Alternatively at best history would have recorded him as an entertaining parliamentarian, who had a wit laced with arsenic acid.

It is always events that appear to overwhelm humanity. Individuals appear on the horizon as a result of a situation; it is equally a reality that most events are initiated by individuals.

In the swamp of history it is essential to sift through its mire to see and discover how much of that history has been a result of well-calculated, pre-conceived and pre-determined by the very individuals who were able to steer their respective countries, societies and nations from the negative fallout out of these self-created events.

Leaders display a certain mettle of a different nature when they remain unrelenting to take on an event. They dare themselves to succumb to the conditions of the present, here and now, they also have the ability of not succumbing or not getting intimidated by the uncertain deluge of the future.

In victory the leader gets instant recognition of approval of the people. In defeat, the need is to have the presence of a leadership that can with honesty of purpose and intentions pick up the society/ nations from the quicksand of embarrassment, discomfort, unease and humiliation.

The toughest call for any leadership is to deal with restoration of dignity, self- respect, poise and prestige. Let me contextualize this concept.

Upon the cessation of WWII, Germany was a wounded lion of Europe. A narrative had to be created to distinguish between Germans and the Nazis. To the general public the then world powers started to portray that Hitler and his cohorts were ‘Nazis’ and less of ‘Germans’.

The whole idea behind this thought had its anchors in trying to find and restore the legitimacy of the German nation.

A similar thing was done with Japan. For ensuring stability emperor Hirohito was made humble through surrender; but he wasn’t captured or tried for war crimes.

The recorded history tells us that when the Japanese rampaged through Manchuria and other parts of China and the Korean Peninsula, they did so ruthlessly. Millions of innocents were killed. In Nanjing alone, they dug up a grave to bury not the dead but the living as well.

In Germany, given the circumstances, of uncertainty, Konrad Adenauer, who was removed as the mayor of Cologne in 1938, was installed as the leader of a truncated Germany. The humility of his persona helped Germans to recover back their lost glory.

A similar situation arose in the sub-continent, when India successfully drove the wedge between West and East Pakistan, deep enough to create Bangladesh out of a united Pakistan. By all definitions we had ‘lost’ the war of 1971.

Z.A Bhutto regardless of his recognition as a demagogue, like Adenauer, restored the nation’s self-esteem and respect for both the people and the armed forces of the country. He justified the restoration of respect.

In a negotiated settlement with India he recovered more than 5,000 square miles of territory and brought back over 90,000 prisoners of war. ZAB in contrast from Konrad received very little political support in the rebuilding of Pakistan.

In spite of this double standard of the West, Bhutto remained consistently focused on rebuilding the nation — from the standpoint of physical infrastructure to lifting the spirit of the depressed nation.

The trumped up murder case that led him to the platform has not taken away from him the role he played to restore the nation’s confidence. Take the events of 1971 away, there is no Iron Lady, Indira Gandhi; there is no loser, General Yahya Khan; there is no father of the nation, Shaikh Mujeeb Ur Rehman; and there is no populist leader, ZAB.

However, Konrad Adenauer and Z A Bhutto were very different from each other. The earlier took the path of humility while the latter despite being a pronounced democrat remained a feudal within.

Undoubtedly, he was a people’s man but the results were different. Konrad preferred to live in obscurity till late 1950s while ZAB ended up on the gallows.

My well-read and highly imaginative father would invoke in me during my school years to conjure and imagine, the history of the subcontinent, if Akbar was to be reborn during Aurangzeb’s times or if Aurangzeb was to be ruling during Akbar’s time; further what would have been the shape of India (cultural and political) if Napoleonic forces had arrived to help Tipu Sultan win at Seringapatam.

The point here being it is the events that calls out for unique and distinctive qualities in a leader. The characteristics of a leader hence are dynamic and have to remain in step with the then relevant times. Qualities are only relevant to circumstances.

Leadership therefore is mostly a consequence of an event. There are many individuals who are recognised as leaders for reasons of being good in a given environment; these are ‘situational leaders’.

If Abraham Lincoln was placed in Britain of the WWII era and Churchill was played in the USA of the 1860s, handling slavery crisis —— both may very likely fail the test of basic leadership traits. It therefore follows that the placement of an individual on the continuum of human time scale will decide if a leader was good only for that era or could be classified as a good leader across all timelines of human history.

Leadership has to rise above the compulsions of the present to be able to visualise with clarity the unfolding future. Leadership that has a vision to pursue will entail to itself the needed training for the qualities required to respond to changed circumstances.

Politicians are leaders, they can fake statesmanship. It is attributed to Lee KuanYew that he once remarked, ‘anybody who thinks he’s a statesman needs to see a psychiatrist’. Leadership is relational to the time we live in.

The quality of leadership is representative to the specific historical situation. Leaders can be distinguished on the basis of whether they created events or did the events create them.

The tendency is to ignore the proximate cause that creates leadership and instead all credit is laid at the doorstep of individuals who are classified incorrectly as leaders.

In the tunnel of time, men will come, men will go, there will be a continuing alternation between war and peace, leaders will emerge and disappear, leadership styles will alter and change; in this milieu of human history, nobody can carry the appellation of being great or ordinary because the tide and ebb of events, will call for a distinct and different style of leadership. The leader of one era may cease to be a leader when cast into a different time zone. The context will determine the type of leadership that must prevail.

Corporate leaders like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg are typical to the present-day developments in technology particularly in IT and AI.

The morrow will mow this down and a new set of political and business leadership will arrive in their place. Leadership is time bound and hence has to be seen in the context of time, era and place.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025