As India, enters its 54th day of lockdown, comparing notes with my friends there makes it clear how much a leader can determine the response to a situation. A School Principal friend of mine running an online workshop on educational leadership in India last week asked me to share some thoughts on the lessons in leadership that Germany’s chancellor Merkel had given during the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
As school leaders we have so much opportunity to share, demonstrate and model leadership in our communities, but when our students look out beyond the walls and see what passes for leadership in the world, they must wonder where the adults are that they will learn from after leaving school. We want our students to be critical, to question what is happening in the world outside their protected zones. This becomes particularly important in India, where society itself is so complex and barriers of caste, religion and social status have a huge impact on world view. As school leaders, it therefore becomes important to inculcate a disposition to look at the world objectively, to look beyond the rhetoric of the media and to develop a more scientific approach to establishing truth.
I have always found a lot of good material for assemblies, workshops and tutorials in the news, both local and international. The approach of drawing attention to hypocrisy, explicitly pointing out where peoples’ words and actions ran counter to our own shared values and citing examples of real heroism in the face of a majority view or an imbalance of power provided plentiful learning opportunities. For colleagues and students alike, school leaders should be spending some part of each day teaching leadership through what they say, what they write and, most importantly, what they do. As a leader, you only need to demonstrate hypocrisy, partiality or the wielding of position or title once to undermine your own capacity to lead… something of a schoolboy error that seems to happen all too often.
Leadership is an outcome of personal experiences
A leader provides vision and direction, their perspective influenced by their own life path, training and experience. Merkel’s leadership stands in stark contrast to many other’s on the world stage who have seen their influence and approval plummet as they have missed one opportunity after another to learn from their own scientists and the international community to protect and care for their citizens. Angela Merkel is a scientist; a physicist with a PhD. in quantum chemistry. She is comfortable reading, interpreting and, very importantly, evaluating and communicating what the data shows. She is also a collaborator, as many German politicians need to be. Since the late 1940s Germany’s states and federal government have often been led by coalitions which helps problems of a majority exercising power over a minority, that have led to horrors in the country’s fascist past, to be better avoided. This is perhaps why Germany politics seems dull compared to many other countries; there is a lot of discussion.
Comparing this to situations across the globe, we can see how each leader’s reaction to the same problem differs, based not only on their domestic context, but also their own education and experience of leadership.
Leadership is more than optics, rhetoric and news cycles.
Having spent the last four years in India before returning to Germany, it was refreshing to see that the news and political talk shows in Germany have not become trivialised or dumbed down by turning them into entertainment for a 30 second attention span. Of course there are internet news sites and online tabloids that use sensation and click-bait to attract visitors to their advertising and sponsors, but this is entertainment and celebrity, not something masquerading as news.
In a country like India where more people rely on WhatAapp and Facebook for their news, the business of fake news and inciting people through social media is hugely problematic; the mainstream media has to compete with this in an age of anger and outrage, which is no easy task. Although the German political landscape has parties and, like many countries in the world, has been experiencing its own resurgence of anti-immigration, nationalist, right-wing populist parties, the political discourse is very much around issues, ideas and outcomes. No debate ever becomes a forum for personal attack, no voice is ever raised to shout someone down, data and the science are valued for what they are, no one pedalling ‘alternative facts’ would be taken seriously.
Leadership is about leaving people and communities better prepared tomorrow than they are today. This is bigger than politics; it’s service
In India, the world’s biggest democracy, there is a gap between what democracy means and how it is practiced. Politics and leadership are too often about business and power rather than serving people. There are many domestic and international reports criticising the difference between the way the country has treated it’s rich and poor migrant citizens in the current crisis. Another important lesson for students here is that in other democracies such as Germany and New Zealand, politics and governance are clearly separated from business, the judiciary and the media. This has ensured that their democracies serve all their citizens; Germany wants its businesses and industries to do well, but not at the expense of the women and men who work for them. This has helped to keep Germany relatively free of corruption and lobbying.
Strength in unity; remind the people you lead that we are all in this together and have a responsibility to one another
Germany also takes its democracy seriously, with people understanding that their rights as citizens come with responsibilities. It was with reference to this that Merkel started her address to the nation on 18th March, the first such address since she came to office in 2005, talking about the response that was needed from everyone because this was serious and it affected everyone. She began by reminding people of the things that we have in common, “not since reunification…”, was an important reference to the country coming together again in 1989 following the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was followed by the explicit statement that Germany is, “a community in which each life and each person counts”.
With its federal model of 16 states and a central government, Germany and India have local and central leadership in common. Merkel talked about what the federal and local governments were doing to protect people from the economic, social and cultural fallout of the coronavirus; a recognition that this is not only about saving lives and the economy, but also about saving the idea of Germany.
She highlighted that the government was in on-going consultation with the experts from the country’s leading research institutes and that our job was to give them, and others like them around the world, the time to find a treatment or a cure without allowing our healthcare system to become overwhelmed.
Thank you; a much underused form of acknowledgement
After the statement of solidarity and the explanation of flattening the curve, she gave heartfelt thanks to the doctors, nurses and healthcare workers, acknowledging the work they do on behalf of us all and the difficulty they have to face at the moment.Merkel then thanked the supermarket workers manning the checkouts and restocking the shelves, “Thank you for being there for your fellow citizens and for keeping us all going”.
She then went into more detail about how we must protect one another and show each other we care by keeping our distance, but this did not mean that we would leave anyone to fend for them selves. Giving examples of people taking care of each other, of children using technology to keep in touch with their grandparents, and writing letters again, she reminded us that, like the supply chains to all supermarkets, the postal service was still working; the free flow of communication being another key to democracy.
Contrast this with asking people to bang their utensils and shower petals on hospitals; we need to help our students be able to make the distinction between leadership that is genuine from that which is dramatic.
Clear is kind; an example of daring to lead (after Brené Brown)
We tend to undervalue clarity in favour of certainty, even when we don’t know what the outcome will be. Being in charge comes with a great deal of responsibility and leaders often want to put on a brave face, even in the gravest of circumstances. Being brave is having the courage to tell the truth, be authentic and show vulnerability.
Merkel was clear about where to get our information from by reminding us to go to the government websites, being translated into many languages, for updates on the coronavirus and the requirements; we must not believe in rumours, “We are a democracy. We thrive not because we are forced to do something, but because we share knowledge and encourage active participation. This is a historic task, and it can only be mastered if we face it together.” Here she took charge of the information as well as the message itself, and because the trust has been established over years of taking governance seriously and recognising that there are things that are too important to be partisan about, like education, healthcare and academic research.
Merkel ended by saying, “The situation is serious, and the outcome uncertain. Our success will also largely depend on how disciplined each and every one of us is in following the rules. Even though this is something we have never experienced before, we must show that we can act warm-heartedly and rationally – and thereby save lives. It is up to each and every one of us to do so, without any exception.” Clear, kind and honest, underscoring the message with a reflection of the values that underpin the why; in a democracy we all have a role to play.
Speaking from a place of authenticity and values
Effective leadership is also about forming the empathetic connection with your audience, where the public at large trusts that you have taken the right decisions on their behalf.
When talking about the details of the lockdown, which she called “powering down public life as much as possible”, she acknowledged the things that we were temporarily losing… no events, no trade fairs, no concerts any more… no school, no university, no playing in the playgrounds… and recognised that these are invasive in our lives and in terms of how we see ourselves as a democracy. This is where she was able to link her own journey from a girl growing up in the former communist East Germany to the situation today, “Allow me to assure you that, for someone like me, for whom the freedom of travel and the freedom of movement were a hard-fought right, such restrictions can only be justified if they are absolutely imperative. These should never be put in place lightly in a democracy and should only be temporary. – But they are vital at the moment in order to save lives.” Germany is still highly protective of privacy and freedom, with no talk of apps or surveillance to track people, again, privacy and freedom were things that many Germans did not grow up with and they are highly prized.
Merkel went through the explanation all the way down to her ‘why’ as Simon Sinek would say; she took the country right down to the why that we all share, our core belief in the idea of democracy, which she would come back to at the end of her address.
Contrast good leadership with the opposite of leadership; sometimes it’s the counter examples that are more powerful
Elsewhere in Europe the Hungarian parliament had voted to give its president, Victor Orbán, the power to rule by decree and suspend the enforcement of certain laws until he decides to relinquish that power. While Merkel was acknowledging the electorate’s rights, Orbán was riding over them and has since demonstrated this to the country’s LGBGT community. In the US we see a leader who behaves like a monarch with his family members and friends given jobs for which they have no experience or qualification and who turns press briefings into campaign ads and infomercials for big-pharma and tech companies looking to make a killing on the back of this pandemic.
After reiterating that the government would do everything it can to protect businesses and jobs (there are very strong labour laws and workers rights in Germany) Merkel referred to some of the scenes on the news from supermarkets in other parts of the world, “I want to tell everyone going to the supermarket that bulk-buying makes sense; it always has. But only within reason. Panic buying, as if there’s no tomorrow, is pointless and, at the end of the day, shows a complete lack of solidarity”, again, reminding us that we are all in this together. While people were fighting over toilet roll in Australia and gun sales went through the roof in parts of the US, people in Germany were walking to the supermarket with one bag to get what they needed for the day… as they usually do.
Merkel’s leadership in this time of crisis, like that of Jacinda Arden of New Zealand and Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece, has helped set the stage for the successful handling and public response by not contributing more to the crisis with mixed messages, changes of mind, bluster and showmanship. When looking back on Covid-19 through a historical lens, there will be leaders in the world whose actions will have contributed to the needless deaths of tens of thousands of the people they were entrusted to serve. Hopefully some of the learning from this will be about the very nature of leadership and democracy.
