Leadership Tolerance
A Core Leadership Competence for Building Sustainable Organizations
Sep 13, 2009
The first decade of the second millennium had been a period of revelation and enlightenment to the business world. Prominent political and business leaders and prestigious organizations were toppled by the resonance of a new consciousness. The turmoil, failure and destruction revealed that the greatest enemy to organizations and societies lurks in the form of abrasive leadership, characterized by extreme intolerance, greed and recklessness.
Discovering this so early in the new millennium is cause for celebration. Never in human history had the welfare of so many societies and organizations balanced so precariously on a knife’s edge. Yet never before had a solution been so close to hand. When we respect, apply and celebrate tolerance as a vital leadership competence it will resonate around the world with uplifting effect in all communities.
The Architecture of Tolerance
Tolerance is both a mindset and behavior. Firstly it requires patience and suppression of one’s ego and personal desires. Secondly it requires stilling of the evaluative mind and short-circuiting of the principles and values learned and internalized during a lifetime of selfishness.
When the mind, desires and ego are stilled the heart takes over as scrutineer. The pure heart is unattached and unemotional and the only credible judge of virtue and vice. The thought, idea, belief, value, person or group under review then gets a fair assessment. Tolerance neutralizes prejudice in any form, imparts openness to new insights and enables lateral thinking, the essential prerequisite of foresight.
The Passion for Excellence
By definition excellence is achieved by doing above and beyond what is required. It is not attained by simply improving, doing what is required or to settle for anything but the best.
For decades, the obsession with being the best and doing the best, ruled people’s lives in Western societies and organizations. Large populations of citizens and employees tolerated the obsession of prominent leaders with excellence and growth, intuitively humoring it and knowing that all obsessions, processes and systems were subject to limits to growth and optimization.
Wise people understand the difference between excellence and mediocrity. They know that anybody who accepts mediocrity – in school, in business or in life – is a person who compromises. They know that when leaders compromise, whole organizations compromise and degenerate into mediocrity. (Charles Knight).
Wise people also know that obsession with excellence and obsessively striving to break new records and to exceed monstrous goals carry within itself the seeds of burnout, degeneration and destruction. They understand that patience with continuously improving a service to people always assures the wellness of the organization.
Tolerance does not mean compromise. Tolerance is about engaging the views, principles and values of others, deemed legitimate by them, in co-constructing a best all round serving meaningful solution.
Compromise is about reducing or softening one's expectations in the hope of achieving that what one had set out to achieve – but reserving and favoring the original goal and hence inducing ambiguity and ambivalence in the design and pursuit of the vision. Tolerance rescinds all prejudice on the grounds of religion, gender, race or other people inspired differentiation and classification.
Wise people know that the goal of any organization, irrespective of whether it is a car manufacturer, bank, school or government, is to serve and to work towards creating meaning for people and the common good. Working towards meaning for people requires tolerance, patience and commitment.
People have had this insight for thousands of years. An unknown person once wrote “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Clearly former US President Abraham Lincoln understood the meaning of tolerance when he said “I do the best I know, the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me will not amount to anything. If the end brings me out all wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.” (Karvela)
The Need for Tolerance
Tolerance is continually required from leaders in various circumstances. In times of adversity, defeat, suffering, failure and unwanted change tolerance provides the space for hope, solutions and faith to emerge and take shape. When obsession, violence, seduction, hate and discrimination prevails, tolerance reveals the root causes, reduces the conflict and stress and sets the tone for reconciliation and harmony.
Sources:
Karvela, Katherine, Commitment to Excellence, Career Press, Franklin Lakes, NJ, 1998
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