I’ll start with the conclusion: the disagreeable things we see today in our social, political, and even professional lives, come from weak leadership. And I’ll try to explain what that means.

Throughout History

Leaders built empires, waged wars, reshaped nations, and rebuilt societies after a collapse. The constant in all this was the change itself. Life is changing to preserve itself. In this setup, a powerful leader is someone capable of both driving and navigating the change. Navigating it – as understanding where things are heading, what was and was not under their control, and driving it-  by exploiting and mastering what was under their control.

Great leaders always have a goal in mind. Whether it was conquering new land or elevating the daily lives of citizens through education and comfort, they held the big picture in mind and were able, through force or persuasion, to spread that vision until the people adopted it as if it were their own.

This worked out quite well over time, even in the second half of the last century, when the main goal was to rebuild our countries after the war and reshape world treaties and security.

Empty Goals and Hypersimplification

But then, things started to shift across the Western countries. After decades of peace and rising living standards, what meaningful goals were still out there to be set? What remains to be solved?

And so, we entered an age of solutions to non-existent problems. Leadership began to amplify minor or marginal issues and convert them into first-world problems. Diversity and all the debates around gender are a good example.

Today we live in a globalized world. Through social media, every problem is now a global problem. Of course, globalization brings its own genuine challenges: cultural identity, belonging to a common set of values, wealth distribution—not only within borders, but globally—climatic changes, security, and so on.

But these problems are extremely complex. Economics, too, has become extremely complex. Faced with this complexity, on one hand, and the new media pressure for fast reactions, on the other, leadership discovered that they could much more easily get our support through hypersimplification than by arguments and complex explanations.

That’s the main reason why, for some decades now, the main topics rolled out by our world leaders are just slogans:  climate change, the fight against terrorism, world peace, diversity, and inclusion of diversity. We must be either for or against them.  We are never encouraged to slow down and analyze what they truly mean or what consequences different approaches might have on our own lives.

Politicians recycle these topics endlessly, shifting energies and money as suited. They rarely offer a root-cause analysis of the problems they pretend to solve, or something close to a scientific approach. It’s just rhetoric. And it works so well! People are so keen to join these false disputes, they could spend a lifetime arguing with “the enemy”.

It’s Diversion, Not Diversity

To give you an example close to us, in Romania, people living in deep poverty –  those without enough money for a visit to the dentist, those unable to plan their lives for one week ahead, are asking politicians to ban migration and LGBTQ rights, although these are marginal issues in our society. At the same time, they never ask the same politicians the real question: “Why are we so poor?!”   The truth is, our politicians don’t know the answer, nor can they solve the poverty problem. But they figured out a way of not even having to talk about it anymore. Look, it’s the migrants stealing your wealth, it’s the gays threatening your traditions.

Today, gaining high office is not a consequence of one’s ability to solve complex problems, but an ability to gain support by diverting attention away from the problem. Of course, some may argue that it was always like that; rhetoric played an important role all the time. And it did! Most of the time, rhetorical skills made the difference. But it used to be just a differentiator between candidates and not the only skill available.

Nowadays, it’s not even rhetoric that matters, but some gray networks of interests with enough funds to manipulate public opinion. Propaganda wins the elections nowadays, not charisma or skills. We can see that with every set of public elections. Well, not exactly during the elections, we always see it after…

The new leaders, focused more on engineering public opinion than on setting and pursuing goals, often lack fundamental knowledge about what they lead: a country, a state, an institution, or even a company. They make decisions without understanding the consequences. And that’s why they need a whole bunch of other people to work hard to cover it, or sort it out somehow – it’s what we call a “fat administration“.

Professional Field

I see the same trend in the private sector. When it comes to corporations, I still think the “Peter Principle” (a satire at the time it was written),  is still the most accurate book on leadership and not a satire at all.

If we consider professional life, we often see people in leadership positions who should not be there. This is not just envy or resentment, it’s a reality. Ask anyone with over 5 years of experience in any field and you’ll find out they endured poor leadership at least once in their career. I came across a horrific survey stating 71% of American workers had to deal with bad management. That’s just insane!

And now think that most of the corporations are American; they are setting the tone in this global game. This means even if you are located in another part of the globe, under a different layer of management, that sad reality, if true, would still have an impact on your own development.

As a manager, I think one of the biggest responsibilities is to promote someone. Yes, we can say it out loud: promotions often happen for questionable reasons. Someone is nice, has been around long enough, knows the right people, or simply has seniority. Sometimes performance comes last. Sometimes values are shady.
Even when you fight for meritocracy, you may still end up promoting unprepared people—because, compared to those already promoted, they look better. You lower the standards just to correct the imbalance, and this might be equally wrong in the long run.

The Real Struggle

So, is it better to go with the flow,  stay mainstream, or insist on doing what’s right, even when it’s not easy? You’re not making many friends with the second option, I have to tell you.

I had the same questions as a child. In primary school, in our small village, grades were mostly good if you were from a “good family”. If not, you had to work. And I had to work hard.

I remember complaining to my mother about it, about life not being fair. I tried to persuade her that it would be ok for me to cheat, that it would be easier to get the grades, and that it would also be fair, since others were cheating as well, “by birth”. But she never gave in, not even a little. She insisted that I do what was right, no matter how hard or unfair it seemed. That being honest and trustworthy was more important than a grade.

As a child, I thought she was cruel, that she did not love me or protect me. Of course, I do not think that now. Looking back, especially when I have to make decisions that affect others, I realize my mother’s love was the hardest kind: to watch someone struggle and insist they should continue, because that’s simply the right thing they should do. Not fixing it, not making it easier, just witnessing that discomfort while having the bigger goal in mind.

But life is changing. My generation is not at all like my mother. We took the easy way.  We transformed struggle into entitlement. We’ve converted weaknesses into “features“. We taught ourselves that everyone has the right to be whatever they want, regardless of whether they are capable. Out of love, but also out of fear, we are shielding the children from any discomfort, telling them they deserve love and appreciation no matter how they behave. To spare them the painful struggles that made humanity progress, we lowered the standards so that everyone could reach them.

Needless to say, this is not a solution. This is in fact the seed of a far greater problem, one that could ultimately collapse our civilization.

Core Values

The more I think through it the more I realize it all comes down to values. Leadership books talk a lot about values, yet, in practice, values are the most neglected component when evaluating performance.

You may have a brilliant strategy, and it might work very well for a while, but without a solid foundation on values, it will collapse at some point.

But sticking to these values is not easy! That is why moral dilemmas exist, because personal responsibility is so hard. It is supposed to be hard. There is no shortcut.

Truth. Honesty. Trustworthiness. Responsibility. Compassion. Respect. Autonomy. Cooperation. These are the values worth seeking in any kind of leadership—political, military, social, or professional.

Today, we can sense a deep, but almost unconscious need for values. We see the rise of “sovereigntism” and “extreme conservatism” or any other “-ism“. Many fear them as threats to freedom. But life has its own ways of preserving itself. I believe this wave reflects this deeper need: a return to core values. I am not saying the outcome of these movements will be the recovery of those values—because it may well be the opposite, at least for a while. But this might be a necessary, and yes, a potentially painful step in the process.

To summarize: a strong leader must have a vision, and a strategy to make that vision real. The foundation of any strategy must be values.

Without vision, no strategy is possible. Without values, no strategy will last. And this is what we see around us today: the collapse of the world as we know it, and no clear vision of the future.

AI should be about the people!

A leader’s first concern should be the people. That is why we distinguish between managers and leaders. A manager looks after the best interests of the organization—company, state, or country. A leader cares for people. Not by lowering standards to comfort them, but by lifting them to meet those standards. Too often we forget that these roles—manager, mayor, deputy, president—are also leadership roles. And more than that, they are serving roles. They are not meant for personal gain but for the collective good. (It might sound like Marx but it’s not! – it goes more towards the idea of servant leadership – a modern concept with ancient roots).

As for the idea of change, let’s consider AI, because I think it can highlight how change concerns various leadership levels. AI is growing more powerful every day, fueling companies and transforming industries. It is fascinating and scary.

As a good manager, you want to adopt it, to increase efficiency and productivity. Who doesn’t want that?! But as a leader, you want your people to master and even build these tools. You want to see them using AI and not the other way around, right?!

As a ruler of a country, or state, or city, you want to make use of it, to stay on top, to keep up with reality. But as a leader, you also want to make sure citizens can still live decently, find jobs, afford a living, and not be reduced to slaves of these machines and of their owners.

As a teacher, you want your students to explore it but still be able to delimit themselves from it and think with their own minds.

And to achieve all this it means that on various layers of our existence, those in charge should have a vision, a strategy, and a strong trust in human values. They should deeply care for people, and as a result, people will follow.

In turn, what we often see is a lot of emphasis on efficiency and cost reduction, and almost nothing about the people’s best interests. Are we serving our people by winning this race? Are we serving our people by entering this race?

A Moral Crisis

I believe those who say that today’s crisis is a moral one are right. That’s probably also the hardest one we’ve faced. And unless we rediscover the courage to put values above convenience, this crisis could become humanity’s suicide.

We can start with as little as “doing what we said we would do” in every circumstance of our lives, and ask the same from others. What do you think? Can I count on you?