Capacity Day 2007: Leaders on Leadership

April 24, 2007—What blend of capabilities, skills and knowledge is required of a good leader? How can the international community best support leaders and institutions of leadership in developing and transition countries?  How does a national leader lay the groundwork for change? How can global knowledge about approaches to leadership be adapted to local contexts?

Thomas Timm,executive vice president, German Chamber of Commerce;  Guven Sak, managing director of TEPAV, Turkey;  Richard Shapiro, executive vice president, CEMEX; and John  Adair, fellow of the Windsor Leadership Trust listening to Henry Mintzberg, connected to the discussion by videoconference

A line up of visionary keynote speakers fueled the dialogue with ideas and concepts rooted in their experience: Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Xue Lan, executive associate dean of the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University in China, and Haja Nirina Razafinjatovo, minister of national education and scientific research in Madagascar. 

Discussants and commentators from civil society, the private sector, academia, think tanks and donor agencies included Peter Senge, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Emelia Arthur, British Council development partner of InterAction in Ghana, Henry Mintzberg, Cleghorn professor of management studies at McGill University and visiting scholar at INSEAD, General Lamine Cissé, special representative of the United Nations Secretary General in the Central African Republic, Jennifer L. Dorn, president and CEO of the National Academy of Public Administration, Annie McKee, co-founder of the Teleos Leadership Institute, and Graham Teskey, head of governance and social development, UK DFID.
 

General Lamine Cisse, U.N. special representative in the Central African Republic;  Rakesh Nangia, acting vice president, WBI;  and Juan Jose Daboub, managing director, World Bank

Speak to the Heart and the Mind
 
World Bank Managing Director Juan José Daboub kicked off the day with a short, energetic address: “Resources alone are not enough, and capacity in itself is a major constraint in many countries.

“The challenges faced by countries in their fight against poverty demand leaders who are committed to promoting the common good and who can build consensus around strategic visions, set priorities, and inspire others to deliver sustainable results,” Daboub added.

Adding a word of wisdom about the seemingly impossible hurdles development leaders often face: “Those who say it can’t be done should not interfere with those who are doing it.”
 
The first session spoke to the heart of leadership, with Johnson-Sirleaf talking about bringing Liberia, a fragile state where the World Bank is deeply invested, out of the despair of conflict and into hope: “There is an opportunity for leadership, for renewal and for reform. Change and transformation mean a fundamental break from the past, formulating a vision based upon new concepts and new structures.

“This requires leadership that is courageous, unafraid of risks, unafraid of criticisms or labels, unafraid to challenge itself and the members of the team that work with it, to be creative and innovative, to look forward to the future in a new environment,” Johnson-Sirleaf said. She insisted upon the importance of a participatory system, where strong leadership with a vision never loses track of the interests of the people.

Johnson-Sirleaf ended with a plea: It is crucial for leaders in post-conflict states to have the support of the international community in creating jobs for young people to prevent them from being once more recruited into conflict, thereby undermining progress.
 

Xue Lan, executive associate dean, School of Public Policy, Tsingua University

Leadership programs are being created throughout the country, and Xue explained that China had many innovative ideas to share and was attracting increasing numbers of foreign nationals to its programs. “China has been opening to the world very quickly,” said Xue. “International partnerships bring China experience and facilitate the reform process. We are hoping that through international programs we can learn from one another”
          
The discussion, led by participants from academia and the private sector, turned to the question of how to develop leaders, to which Henry Mintzberg,  responded that you cannot create a leader or a manager in a classroom but you can only enhance their skills, and the best way to do this is to bring leaders together so they can learn from one another.

Thomas Timm, executive vice-president and CEO of the German-Brazilian Chamber of Industry and Commerce São Paulo, added that in his view, best practice is one of the key concepts that young leaders need to be taught in our world. “Space needs to be created for leaders to reflect,” added Peter Senge.
 

Annie McKee, managing director, Teleos Leadership Institute

“You think about a problem today, you might find a solution, but tomorrow you will have to rethink the solution. You turn it around, you shake it up. If you can achieve that, you are a great leader, and that is the kind of leadership I see in our president,” Razafinjatovo added.

The minister explained that Ravalomanana had surrounded himself with a leadership team at the national level, which was working with the leaders of over 10,000 villages in order to understand their individual development needs.

Dean Williams of Harvard University, chief adviser to the president of Madagascar, went on to explain that it is the collaborative process between the national and the local, and the room the national leadership is creating for local leadership to grow that is bringing about progress.
 
Room for Growth
 
Stimulated by the idea presented in the first three sessions, participants made the fourth and last session the most interactive of them all, with many questions and comments from the audience.  Among the more controversial comments was the suggestion for the development of a “leadership index.” 
  
In wrapping up the day, Rakesh Nangia, acting vice president of WBI, noted that the learning from this event would allow us to develop a strategy for tomorrow.

Samuel Otoo, manager for WBI's global programs including its leadership program, summed up the day’s findings: “I think that the discussion shows that our three themes of leadership are very appropriate: vision, effectiveness and accountability.

Abdou Diouf, former president of Senegal

Under vision, people talked about the importance of connecting people, connecting with realities and the power to inspire, mobilize, and motivate, as well as the importance of being able to give hope and empowerment.

Under effectiveness, we talked about the ability to diagnose, prioritize, to recognize linkages, to implement, to focus on results. We talked about teams and networks, management and systems and incentives and rewards.

Under accountability, mention was made of values, and there were some discussions about the common good, the importance of trust, win-win as opposed to zero-sum, and the roles of the private sector and civil society as instruments for enforcing accountability and also their own accountability.
 
Going Forward

Otoo closed Capacity Day saying there were two types of agendas to consider going forward: improved communications between the clients demanding leadership services, the suppliers of such services and intermediaries or brokers such as the World Bank about the lessons of experience; and a stock-tacking or research agenda to determine the need for new initiatives to strengthen the focus on leadership in support of enhanced accountability and results in partner countries. 

“It’s clear we’ve raised a lot more questions than we’ve answered,” said Moira Hart-Poliquin, who led the WBI team that designed and delivered the event.  “But that was the goal—to surface new challenges, new ideas, and new opportunities. We have a lot to learn about the discipline and from each other.” 

For more information, access the Capacity Day website at  www.worldbank.org/capacity/leadership.

View the B-SPAN webcast coverage of Capacity Day.

Contributed by Alexandra Brunais, EXTCC and Moira Hart-Poliquin, WBI.