Leadership in transformation: the quest for consistency

Introduction into organisational ecology

Who is the strongest leader, if we try to compare Aung San Suu Kyi, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who has been under house-arrest for many years in Burma, with the person partly responsible for this, General Than Shwe, chairman of Burma's 'State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)'?

One controls virtually the whole country with an army and a mix of secret service agents and collaborators. The other has nothing and yet she seems invulnerable; she is seen by most people as the true leader and has millions who follow her without any coercion being necessary.

The only real weapon for leaders such as Aung San Suu Kyi, Mandela, Ghandi and the like, is consistency. Consistency is everything; it means never deviating from your basic values in order to make a dream come true or reach a goal. This is not the same as stubbornness; it is persistence at a level where everyone can see the consistency in what you stand for. Consistent leaders demonstrate a transparent predictability in behaviour that engenders trust. Dictators, such as the one in Burma, also show a certain degree of predictability, but that predictability is not transparent; it is riddled with secrets, embedded in structures, procedures, checks and power. To draw a comparison from the world of music: the latter plays music dictated by a metronome, the former plays from the heart. One sounds dead; the other lives.

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Peter Robertson 


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