The Creation of Better Leadership
History of Leadership
In my previous article “Is Democracy the Right Answer?”, I noted that leadership is one of our most fundamental problems in human societal management. The history of national leaders has often revolved around military backgrounds, religions or family lines. Many leaders came into power as a birth right or an association. When there was the occasional good leader, it was often said that good leaders are born leaders because you cannot train true leadership.
In more modern times with the popularity of democracy around the globe, many leaders have college degrees and are often quite intelligent, but still lack focused formal training and apprenticeship. We have even elected entertainers to leadership positions. For the most part, democracy has led to a diversity of leader types where most are wealthy or strongly supported by the wealthy. Yet none are explicitly trained on what is required and expected of a leader for the newer concepts of what leadership really is. They lack the well-rounded perspectives that are critical with the impact humanity is having on the planet today. As scientifically orientated as the world has become, we have yet to take a true scientific approach to seeking out and specifically educating and grooming children to become future leaders. In an overpopulated global world this is more important than ever before. Leaders need to see leadership from a very different perspective. They need to see themselves as leaders of the future of humanity, not leaders to maintain business as usual and to grow economies. Many communities are now restricting children to focus on one and only one sport to ensure we groom better professional athletes. Why wouldn’t we have a similar mindset for the leaders of our countries?
Leaders of nations have historically been pulled from the minuscule wealthy population often thought of as the “ruling class”. This has created a bonded connection between wealth and political power. This informal prerequisite of leaders being of or closely attached to wealth and power has become more an unofficial requirement. The ties with big business, banks, the economy and governments has become so blended that many question whether political leaders or business leaders are actually running countries. This trend has created an enormous gap between the wealthy and the middle class along with a dangerous neglect for the health of the planet and considerations for future generations. Modern leaders are locked into the concepts of continuous growth, consumerism and economic expansion with great disregard for the planet, resources and biodiversity. If this pattern does not change, our leaders will be guiding us to our demise while telling us we are moving toward utopia.
Humanity needs to abandon the ideas of kings, royal families, dictators, corporate titans, banking executives and even elected leaders who are not groomed from childhood. Wealth, political connections, military history, family heritage and campaign popularity contests should no longer dictate who becomes our leaders. It is time to apply science, logic, in-depth training and a long-term vision of humanity over short sighted ideas of growing profits, economic expansion and efforts to consume all arable land and resources for human use.
Children are Tomorrows Leaders
How do we make this transition from narrow-minded old-school leaders to true well-rounded leaders of humanity on our finite planet? Like everything else we do, we have to focus on the children. It will be very hard to find adults of today with the characteristics we need. They simply have not been educated for it. The schooling system must become the search ground and the testing and training platform for high potential prospects. There should be numerous tests done annually at every grade level to evaluate all students in every characteristic being sought. Each trait test result should be weighted and combined to create a single numerical score. By the 8th grade, the schooling system should be encouraging the top students to enter the government leadership program that is designed to focus education to hone the knowledge, skills and personality traits require to become leaders. Success will weigh heavily on how well the educational system is designed and implemented. There should be no biases in the selection of candidates, it should solely depend upon their testing results and their voluntary agreement to join the program. The system should be designed to fend off biases of wealth, social status, family relationships, political connections or any other influence that may corrupt the true diversity of the candidates.
The educational system should be nationwide and run from the first grade up through college where it should incorporate a cooperative education program with the government to give students a taste of the real world. Successful graduation from post graduate school should lead into a government apprenticeship program. From there, only successful graduates of this complete system will be allowed to run for government leadership positions.
Electing a New Breed of Leaders
The election process will not be independently funded but will be part of a government financed electoral system. Successful graduates are allowed to choose what positions they wish to run for. Their credentials will be posted on a government election web site where the public can view and evaluate them. The site will present their history of positions held, their successes and shortcomings. The site can be updated to show forward moving progress, but history cannot be removed. The site should also show trends of flip flopping on issues and success and failures at fulfilling campaign promises. There will be a questionnaire for the voters that will walk them through the current political issues. By honestly filling out the questionnaire, computer results will then give the voter a priority rating of how they align with each candidate on the issues to better ensure voter homework is properly done so they have the information they need to make a sound decision on who they believe to be the best candidate for the job.
This system will eliminate the concept of political parties and the poor practice of voting for a party member rather than the most qualified candidate. The default safety net for all of this should be that every candidate should have what it takes to be an outstanding leader by successfully completing the extensive education and grooming programs.
This system will take a proactive approach to seek out and groom a truly new breed of leaders, but the job cannot end with that. Leaders alone will not accomplish the required objectives to transition away from antiquated methods of societal management. New leaders will need new systems, processes, procedures, quality assurance and top security to fend off corruption and infiltration. The world we live in is full of diversity. There will be opposing individuals and organizations that will constantly be on the offensive to infiltrate and corrupt this system. So, the system needs to be designed with multiple levels of dynamic security that will prevent the infiltration of corruption and efforts to destroy or manipulate the system and processes.
Additionally, the concept of “power corrupts” must be addressed. The true strength and power of the systems of government should be designed into the system and processes, not the leaders. Leaders should come and go as maintainers, supporters and improvers of the systems. None of them should ever become or expect to become famous as a leader. This in itself is what feeds into the human weakness where power corrupts. The educational and grooming process should defuse the notion of fame and power from the minds of the candidates to leadership. The security systems of the system should also have dynamic methods of monitoring leaders to ensure this temptation is not present or ever pursued.
Many will question, wasn’t this the whole idea behind the creation of the United States of America? The United States is often referred to as “an experiment”. After about 250 years of testing, the defects in the system of the United States are showing and need to be addressed. It is about time we started addressing the bugs and update the code to produce a better version that the rest of the world may want to consider deploying!
For this article I have chosen not to delve into the details of specific characteristics needed for this new breed of leader or the detailed topics of learning that should be in the curriculum. Those should be addressed in the actual construction of the system itself. The intent was to convey the ideas, concepts and need for a transition away from old school leadership to a new and better paradigm of leading. We need to transcend to a way of running society that focuses more on the betterment of the longevity of the future of humanity rather than the detrimental short-sighted mindsets, biases and tendencies toward corruption that consumes current leaders.
