(Published in Business Day – 11 February 2025)
Over five decades at work I have had plenty of management inflicted on me, while I inflicted it on others. But I have also had the opportunity as teacher, researcher, consultant, coach and business owner to observe so many extraordinary people.
While we can and should all adopt effective management practices, there’s no single silver bullet for greatness in management or leadership. Managing requires a highly complex set of nuanced activities that vary according to the personalities, experience, motivation and abilities of both those being managed and the manager, as well as the life-stage and socio-economic context of their organisation. That’s too complex to model, even if one’s intelligence is artificial.
But one factor does distinguish the best from all the rest, and that is how managers value human dignity. Great people manage others with grace.
Often that leads to better financial returns, but that is not the point. Mature leaders look after the interests of family, staff or compatriots, but also take responsibility for everyone else. “Win-win” is the only way to create a future in a crowded planet. When too many people lose, they rebel and everyone loses.
As a species we have gradually, slowly, agonizingly, been inching towards ways to live together happily and in harmony. This is absolutely necessary as we grow in population, use up natural resources, and improve the means to destroy ourselves.
In his 2009 book, The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin drew on history and science to argue controversially that we are fundamentally an empathic species, “homo empathicus”, on the cusp of an epic shift from the Age of Reason to the Age of Empathy. But empathy is in a race against what he called entropy, which threatens catastrophic climate change and the collapse of civilization.
In the fifteen years since that was published, entropy seems to have leapt back in front. Even the USA, the guarantor of human freedoms for over a century, has given in to the global pandemic of lies, cruelty, racism and military adventuring that earlier generations gave their lives to defeat in two world wars.
“Dyspathy” describes the opposite of empathy. Dyspathic people want to do others in. They love entropy. But when I look at my neighbours, colleagues, friends and family, I see caring people. All of them. Where are all these dyspathics? Basically good people have allowed small sets of dyspathic leaders to fool them into thinking they are the future. They aren’t. They are very much the past. We can claim the future back from this sad minority.
“Grace” is the word that describes how we do this. Divine grace describes undeserved forgiveness. Human grace in practice resembles what psychologist Carl Rogers called unconditional positive regard. It combines resolute honesty about failings with unconditional respect for the humanity of the other person – what in this continent we call ubuntu.
Managing by grace is far more than just a magical management method. It’s a wonderful way of being human, of fulfilling our human vocation and transcending the grubbiness around us. To love and be loved is the pinnacle of human achievement.
I’m for MEGA – Make Everyone Great Again. That’s not against anything. If anyone opposes it, well, that’s not great. We’ll work extra hard to help them become great again.
Jonathan Cook chairs Thornhill Associates.