Roundtable asks: What does it take to be a leader?
Tom Brokaw moderated the third annual Roundtable at Stanford, “Wanted: Courage, Compassion, and Character—Leadership for the 21st Century,” in Maples Pavilion on Saturday. The panelists were, from left, Jeff Raikes, Carly Fiorina, Anthony Kennedy, John Hennessy, Xavier Becerra, Kavita Ramdas and David Kennedy.
Tom Brokaw moderated the Oct. 11 Roundtable at Stanford.
Kavita Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women emphasized the role of “communities of leadership.” Congressman Xavier Becerra, right, said he defined leadership in terms of “courage” and “transparency.”
David Kennedy the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, was a panelist.
BY CYNTHIA HAVEN
Communicative, collaborative, courageous, compassionate, credible, with character, common sense, a reliable internal compass and the courage to push back against conventional wisdom when required.
All this, and more, characterizes a leader, according to the movers-and-shakers who spoke about leadership Oct. 11 at the third annual Roundtable at Stanford, moderated by Tom Brokaw of Meet the Press. However, Brokaw conceded at the outset of the forum, titled "Wanted: Courage, Compassion and Character—Leadership for the 21st Century," that the nature of leadership remains elusive: "It is not easily defined. It's not like a hard physics equation—X minus Y and you can come up with it. It really is very subjective."
Stressing "profound cultural differences" in the concept of leadership, Kavita Ramdas, president and chief executive officer of the Global Fund for Women, noted that American society has "disproportionately tended to emphasize the individual. So Microsoft becomes Bill Gates, Apple becomes Steve Jobs, HP becomes Carly [Fiorina]." She said, "We confuse the notion of hero with leader." Instead, she emphasized the role of "communities of leadership."
"The profound underlying success of true leadership is recognizing that we don't just lead by one person at a time, we lead in a collective endeavor," she said. Ramdas earned the first spontaneous round of applause when she said, "The best leaders recognize that there are leaders all around them."
Ramdas recalled an example in public housing in Chicago, where "welfare moms were the only people who had the courage to challenge the drug-dealing in their neighborhoods."
Carly Fiorina, '76, chairwoman and chief executive officer of Carly Fiorina Enterprises and an economic adviser to the McCain presidential campaign, also hailed female leaders "that no one has ever heard of." Fiorina cited "women who have been through extraordinary tragedy, mutilation, abuse, and who yet with no support have the courage and the hope to apply themselves to make a better world."
"It is difficult to lead surrounded by 80-plus of your colleagues," she said. "It is so much more difficult to lead when you are alone, and afraid, and in danger and in pain." She recalled one woman, in particular, "who having been abused in unimaginable ways, yet applied herself in a war-torn community to go and speak to her tribal elders to try and protect lives of the innocent children."
"The great promise of the 21st century is that we will have the tools to empower leaders of all kinds in all places," Fiorina said. "We are faced with problems of such extraordinary complexity and difficulty that we will have to let go once and for all of the notion that you have to look a certain way or be a certain thing or have a certain stature and title in order to lead. This is why I think this will be the greatest century in the history of humankind."
Several other speakers also challenged listeners to take a more global view of leadership. David Kennedy, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, noted, "We're emerging into an era when the whole concept of leadership is bursting national boundaries and taking on global dimensions." He said that the country best positioned to lead "still remains the United States."
"But the first order of business is to restore our credibility," Kennedy added. "You have to be believed to be heard."
Jeff Raikes, '80, chief executive officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, added that for technological and scientific innovation to take hold "requires a deep understanding of the country, the culture, the environment"—for example, the governance issues that might undermine change, or the delivery systems that might hamper the success of even a miracle vaccination. "The only way to succeed is to have that sense of humility, to feel and understand that in order to succeed in the mission, you're working as partners with the organization, the grantees, the NGOs, to ultimately serve the people."
Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, '58, of the U.S. Supreme Court said that the world of ideas, including such ideas as democracy, "must be concerned with the human condition."
He said that of 6 billion people in the world, more than 2 billion do not have adequate drinking water. Sub-Saharan women spend a conservatively estimated 16 billion hours a year—for some women six to eight hours a day—bringing water to the family. While we admire the images of "elegant, stately" African women balancing water jugs on their head, in fact "that weighs more than the luggage allowance at the airport," Kennedy said.
"We have to realize the fierce urgency of now," he said. "These people cannot wait—they will not and they should not."
"I don't think the DNA of leadership changes a whole lot" over generations, said Democratic Congressman Xavier Becerra, '80, JD '84, who represents California's 31st District. He defined leadership in terms of "courage, transparency—what I would call ganas," which he translated as "passion" or "hunger," but might more effectively be covered by the colloquial "gumption."
"Beyond the definition of leadership, do we really understand this new world of the 21st century we are asked to lead?" he said. "More to the point, do we actually understand in America who we are today?
"Too often, the people we call leaders in this country don't even know the people they believe they are leading," he said. "We have to get to the point of cracking that nut open."
Becerra added: "A dollar spent today on weapons of the world could do a great deal to help children. I would only need to ask you for one penny of that dollar to make sure that all the unschooled children, 120 million, could actually go to a classroom on a day-to-day basis. …
"I don't think most leaders in America understand what type of investment it would take to make sure that child is carrying a book instead of a weapon, which may one day be pointed against us. Do we understand what we are being asked to do by a whole different generation of people?"
The economic meltdown was not forgotten by the panelists, and Brokaw, in particular, said he was flattered by the audience turnout, "especially when I realize that for the price of admission of $10, you could have bought a controlling interest in any Wall Street financial firm or any bank in America."
Stanford President John Hennessy said that the events on Wall Street call into question our character. "We've become so excited about the opportunity to make money and focus on things other than the core integrity and values that we should have," he said. "Courage is a difficult thing in a time when there are hard questions to be faced up to."
We've seen leadership only "in spurts" during the crisis, Becerra said, recalling how legislators were told over the previous week that they "needed to infuse the financial services sector with $700 billion we don't have" after "we just reported a $500 billion deficit."
"Trying to legislate in a panic never is a good prescription for success," Becerra said. "You see efforts to try to stabilize, efforts to try to understand, efforts to try to protect" the taxpayers.
"It's clear that it was a lack of leadership that got us to this point," he added.
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