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Walls and Leadership Strategies
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Berlin, for me, was not the most comfortable place to be. Our guide would often point out chipped pieces in otherwise intact buildings where bullet holes were a remembrance of war, an ugly war that, in many ways, is still being fought wherever there is prejudice and those who feel they hold power over others.
We then spent time where markers on the ground represented the famous Berlin Wall. Our guide suggested we stand with both feet in the “East” as he talked about the troubles of the times. Then, like a wave coming to shore, we all moved to be in the “West” and he continued his monologue about how he saw the morality play of good vs. evil.
I wish it were that easy; one side the winner, the good one, and the other the loser, the bad one. With the 20th celebration of the wall that came tumbling down I am spending time considering what lesson, what take-away is there for us now.
In our "Total Leadership Connections" program we teach that the past is always in the present. A divided Germany is a great history lesson, a great experiment in economics and the concept of freedom. Here was, as Michael Hirsh points out (Newsweek Web Exclusive, Nov.2, 2009), the same German people from the same culture cut off from each other by a thin white line that eventually became a thick concrete wall. How did these people, in a rather random sample fare under two different regimes?
While what separated them was ideology and economics we need to understand more deeply why so many decided to flee to the West rather than to the East? Was the appeal solely about material things that were more available in the West? What were the other forces that made East Germany so different from West Germany?
Leadership development programs would do well with a module about the tensions that finally brought the wall down. I contend that the human desire for freedom is at the heart of the willingness for so many to risk their lives. This is a core lesson for all executive development seminars and we need to take the time to dialogue about the essence of freedom.
Freedom is so amorphous, so abstract, it seems impossible to teach, truly to understand. At its foundation there is a demand to discuss how to be responsible for one’s own life. It means a concerted effort to look at the ethics of freedom. Freedom is both about being an individual as well as being connected.
So, as we celebrate the tumbling down of the Berlin Wall, let’s think about what personal walls of fear, shame, domination, disrespect, and resentment we can tear down to experience a new, more united and effective way of working together. The theme of our leadership development program is “We are all connected and no one wins unless we all do”. This is essential thinking for all leaders when we consider what real and responsible human freedom is all about.
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