Leadership — East and West
Profound differences in Eastern and Western leadership traditions are compounded by the emphasis on humility and discretion in the East and on boldness and self-promotion in the West. This often has both sides coming together to agree in exaggeration of Western strengths. Needless to say, this is no longer to the West’s advantage.
Reaching back as far as their founding myths, there have been fundamental differences in the approach to leadership in the Christian West and the Confucian-Daoist East. This is nowhere more clearly foreshadowed than in contrasting stories detailing responses to great floods. In the biblical story Noah rescued his family but left his community of sinners to perish in the flood but in the history of the Xia Dynasty Shun and Yu tirelessly and selflessly organised their people to build canals and dykes to allow the whole community to survive.
Today, apart from the flood story, one can identify in East Asia a number of powerful but distinct and defining influences on leadership. These include Confucian ideals of education and administration, Daoist notions of consciousness and intuitive discipline, Legalist approaches to decisive authority, strategic practices of using service and knowledge, and a change philosophy that emphasises care, caution and humility. Elements of Western democratic and corporate leadership culture have also recently been absorbed, but often in unique ways that can be misleading.
In contrast, the West has inherited a much less secure collection of influences. These include the discredited notion of the Divine Right of Kings, the uncertain authority of a politicised and fragmented Church, a confusing conflict between messianic ideologies of Communism and Capitalism, a troubling faith in the benign qualities of scientific innovation,, the poorly understood but pervasive and aggressive influence or the corporation and the somewhat compromised ideals of democracy. Moreover, the West contrasts with the East in having displayed in recent centuries little disposition to learn from its counterpart.
Performance at the commencement of the 21st Century suggested superior leadership quality and performance in East Asia. If this judgement is correct, further pressure will mount on Western societies as they are likely to continue to be outperformed by East Asian rivals.