By Robert Clements
The incident I’m going to relate, actually happened, and left me a little concerned with those who wield authority and get furious with views that counter theirs: A teenage girl saw that her priest had done something to her father which bothered her. She was the niece of the priest, and her father the brother.
She had been in America when the mother of both the priest and her father passed away, also in America. The priest, who was the younger son, rushed to America to conduct the funeral, whereas her father who was not in the best of circumstances financially couldn’t go.
The priest, after the funeral, returned to India, but did not bother going across to see his elder brother to tell him about the funeral or in what circumstances their mother had passed away. He did not even try to spend time with his brother. His daughter, who knew her father was alone and grieving, wrote to her uncle the priest and told him that she his favourite niece was hurt that he couldn’t go across to his brother and spend time with him. “My father, your brother, is alone and grieving!” she wrote, “Uncle why don’t you just go across and spend an evening with him?”
There was an instant upheaval: The priest, instead of heeding his niece’s request, emailed her back, “How dare you write this to me?”
What he was trying to establish was that he was a priest, and she a mere girl, and that she did not have the right to express her views to him.
Hearing about this episode saddened me, because after that, the girl was not only disenchanted with her uncle, but also with the church, for having leaders with such small egos!
I’ve realized ever since that the greatest gift a leader can gift himself or herself, is to present oneself with a team who have the freedom to disagree with the leader.
“Sir, I don’t agree with your views!” is a statement one should welcome in a meeting, whether it’s government, corporate or religious. Because that disagreement is founded on a thought that has already been expressed by the leader, which means that the new thought or disagreement has started moving forward, and whatever comes out of that debate which follows, will be a deeper, wider and broader viewpoint, than originally expressed.
If there are ten people at the meeting, it is the collective intelligence of ten, instead of just one.
History books will tell you without hesitation that such combined thinking has always moved the world forward.
Rulers of yore whose advisors were ‘yes men’ soon found themselves on the streets or under a hangman’s noose. At some stage the ‘yes men’ realized that the only way to keep their heads from being dismembered was to cackle, ‘yes’ to everything the leader said.
A mistake we often make is to think a strong man is strong because he takes no advice but his own. On the contrary, that is a weak person. His insecurity makes him feel that any contradiction to his views is a personal affront.
“He is slighting me!” whimpers the so-called strong man to himself, most probably being reminded of incidents in his past, most probably childhood, when he or she was ridiculed for something they expressed or did.
The day they come out of that insecure feeling, the day, he or she is willing to just listen and agree or disagree later, is able to use debate to try and convince opponents, then that man or woman is on his or her way towards becoming a strong leader.
A strong leader will allow people the freedom to disagree. He will try to understand what is being said, and if not agreeing patiently explain his own plan in plainer terms, or start agreeing to what has been suggested.
A weak leader clamps down on those who disagree with him. They are so insecure, that any dissent about his views is taken as an affront. Most probably he was the little boy, who ran home crying, “Mummy the teacher doesn’t like me!”
“Why son?”
“She said my answer was wrong!”
A wise parent would have shown the child right there what the difference was in being liked, and being agreed to, “It’s not that the teacher doesn’t like you, but the teacher didn’t think your answer was the correct one son!”
We need to learn to accept the views of others. To find out how the greatest nation in the world reached that high pinnacle, one has only got to open one’s books of history and see debates, say those between Douglas and Lincoln that fashioned great thought.
To understand this even further, one has to accept that each of us is blessed by our creator with different gifts that mould our belief systems. A businessman who has come up by his britches, may feel that hard work is the only way to success and looks down on handouts and freebies, whereas someone who was helped with a scholarship or financial grant, will most probably have a compassionate heart to help the less fortunate as he was helped.
These two minds will collectively shape an idea that can better society. And if it’s ten minds; more ideas and a better design. All this comes through argument, debate and convincing.
But when a company or country starts curbing the freedom to disagree, then comes a quick and steady decline of that body.
“Sir, I don’t agree with your views!”
“Come to Delhi, sit with me, and let us listen to one another!”
That is the only way forward. Any other route spells disaster, as we are slowly seeing! First let’s start with press conferences where one learns to handle reporters and journalists with patience and understanding, and then one can learn to handle other views that will contribute in moving our nation forward!
We don’t want other cases like the priest and the teenager, do we?
The Author conducts an Online Writers Course. For more details send a thumbs-up to him on WhatsApp no: 9892572883.