An Interview with Theodore Trefon

This month we sat down with Dr. Theodore Trefon.  He a Congo expert specializing in the politics of state-society relations and has devoted the past 25 years to Congo as a researcher, lecturer, author, project manager and consultant. He heads the Contemporary History Section of the Belgian Royal Museum for Central Africa and is Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Boston University Brussels.

Dr. Trefon

 Dr. Trefon, thank you for spending some time with me.  One of the topics that BU students in the MSL program tackle is the definition of the term "leadership." It is a concept that seems simple at first, yet grows more complex the more you probe it.  You have spent the past 25 years studying the politics and anthropology of state/society relations in Congo/Zaire.  With that breadth of experience, how have you come to understand what it means to be an effective leader?

The main problem facing Congo today is precisely the lack of responsible leadership. In a country where political authorities do very little for their constituents, when officials do just a little, they are venerated. But this is populism and not real leadership. There are few outstanding figures on the political landscape with vision, those who are able to bring an end to corrupt government, reduce poverty, solve the country’s security problems or improve the well-being of ordinary people. This would require the talent of being able to mobilize people around shared objectives, the power to deal forcefully and pragmatically with regional and international partners and the capacity to manage the macro-economic challenges facing what has unfortunately become one of Africa’s notoriously failed states. President Kabila does not have these leadership credentials; ex-dictator Mobutu had the charisma and flair of what is sometimes expected of an African ‘big man’ but he used it against the interest of the people; the first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated before having the chance to deploy his leadership skills.

 

The situational model of leadership focuses not only on the leader personally but also the context in which the leader operates.  In Congo Masquerade, you focus on the ingrained political culture of corruption among the Congolese elite.  What situational challenges do leaders (both within and external to the Congo) face in trying to improve the quality of life of the ordinary Congolese?  In other words, besides being a strong leader in and of himself, what must a politician know about the Congolese system in order to be effective?

After 32 years of dictatorship, violent conflict and machinations orchestrated by Rwanda and a very difficult – but still unsuccessful political transition towards democracy, everything on the state-building agenda is priority. Public health, education, road infrastructure, providing people with water and electricity, re-engineering public service provision, creating the enabling conditions for political participation, etc. are all priorities. But there is no master plan shared by the Congolese authorities and their international partners. While many programs appear to make sense at the theoretical level, implementation is a real problem. The country is also vast (the size of Western Europe) and diverse (in terms of distribution of natural wealth, ethnicity and population density). Managing a country that is fragmented in this way is an additional challenge. Probably the most important thing for a Congolese politician or international partner to bear in mind is the only thing that is predictable in Congo is the unpredictable.

How does the ordinary, everyday Congolese citizen view the leadership of his or her country? 

Congo is one, but plural at the same time. Again, the country is diverse and fragmented so it is impossible to expect a consensus on anything, let alone on leadership. This is a very hot question because presidential and legislative elections will take place at the end of November. Perceptions of political leadership in Congo have to be understood in terms of social issues. People are very frustrated by the lack of progress in the government’s development program known as ‘cinq chantiers’. There is a lot of justifiable grumbling about lack of water, electricity, roads and access to health services. Kabila has strong support in some provinces but faces heavy opposition in others. The fact that he was able to amend the constitution, to have a single round of voting instead of the two-round system is a distinct advantage for him so he is likely to win the elections. Winning the elections is one step, transforming it into legitimate authority based on respect and transparent negotiation is something else. People have become very skeptical about how much government can really do for them and have consequently come to rely on their own home-grown systems to survive. 
 

Students learn in class at BU about leader emergence, or how one individual rises out of the crowd and assumes a meaningful leadership role.  Often this emergence is due not only to the individual's traits, but to the perception of the individual by the others in the group.  Have you witnessed any instances where an otherwise ordinary individual rises up from the ranks and assumes a leadership role, no matter how small?

As people expect relatively little from government, new forms of social organization emerge. Congo, however, remains a very hierarchical society, perhaps something that is a spillover from Belgian colonialism. Religious leaders, civil society activists, traditional chiefs, diaspora representatives, successful businessmen and women and even musicians are leaders and opinion formers that political authorities have to deal with.

I know that everyone at BU Brussels is very happy to have you join the team.  Turning to your role at BU, what do you feel are the most important lessons that students can learn about leadership?  What new understanding and knowledge do you hope to pass on to them in your class?

I’ve devoted the past twenty-five years to Congo/Zaire as a researcher, project manager, professor and consultant. My approach is policy oriented and I have tried to narrow the conceptual gap between political science theories on development and state-building and a grassroots, anthropological understanding of very local-level social dynamics.

My course at BUB accordingly focuses on international development. Specifically, the discourses, practices, strategies, pitfalls, challenges - and when relevant - success stories of this vast agenda. I try to avoid over conceptualizing or theorizing about these issues because at the Master’s level, students seem to be more motivated by pragmatic examples and case studies. Are the Millennium Developments Goals attainable? How does micro-finance work? How do you carry out stakeholder analysis in the field? What are the links between access to natural resources and well-being? The main messages that I try to convey are one, development is a very complex issue so we have to be culturally sensitive and humble, two, be open-minded – bringing in the private sector in development strategies, for example, is something that I explore with students and three, be prepared for the unexpected – the role of social media in the Arab spring is a good case in point.

Thank you for your time, Dr. Trefon. 

The BUB Newsletter - October

Boston University in Brussels is pleased to introduce the second of our monthly newsletters.  Every month we will be taking an in-depth look at the events, people, and partner organizations that shape our BUB community.

This month we take a look at the book Congo Masquerade, by BU professor Theodore Trefon,  and discuss both transition from professional to student life and student to professional life (job hunting in today's economic environment).  Additionally you can find out more about our partnership with BeCommerce, e-commerce classes, and our entrepreneurial workshops series.

Contact us directly to be added to the newsletter distribution list, and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter as well!

Click on the image below to view the full newsletter:
note: this link will be active until November 5th, 2011.  To view older newsletters, contact us at brussels@bu.edu.

if clicking the image doesn't bring you to the newsletter, go to http://freepdfhosting.com/b7a71919d1.pdf

Charisma and the Leader

Today Bank of America announced it will be cutting 30,000 jobs.  This is due, in large part, to a problem with charismatic leadership in the organization.  Not only has B.o.A. suffered from the result of over-charismatic leadership, it is now feeling the consequences of lack of charisma at the top levels.

During the 2008 US financial crisis, Bank of America was doing alright.  A history of strong organizational structure and leadership had positioned it so that the brunt of the mortgage fallout missed it.  But the then-CEO Ken Lewis decided - in an act of hubris that could be considered over-charismatic - decided to purchase Countrywide.  This horrible decision led to organizational complexity and inefficiency, millions in bad loans, Lewis's departure, and eventually the drastic 30,000 person cut announced today. 

Lewis's charisma had contributed to his ability to push through the Countrywide deal (and his desire to show Wall Street just how powerful B.o.A. could be).  It was arguably the worst decision in the company's history.

Ken Lewis

Now the bank is paying the price for a paucity of charisma at the top ranks.  The current CEO, Brian Moynihan, is not showing enough charisma to convince investors that he is in control of the company.  Stock prices are down 50%.  This latest move can be seen in part as a way to send a signal to Wall Street that Moynihan will, in fact, be able to do what is necessary to turn the bank around. 

But one wonders if the drastic cuts would have been needed if Moynihan had possessed enough charisma to be able to charm investors into confidence.  On the other hand, perhaps the ability to charm investors is exactly what we want to avoid as we seek to get a clear picture of a company's financial situation.  No one claims that Wall Street is rational, after all.

Charisma is one of the personal traits that is examined in the study of leadership.  It appears when discussing the characteristics of transformational leaders.  It has been suggested as a legitimate alternative to traditional power structures (there are those who lead because of their position, and others who are carried into power on the momentum of their charisma).  Students see its influence in the Five Factor Model of Personality, where it influences surgency, dependability, agreeableness, adjustment, and intelligence.  Charisma is even important in the follower, as it is in the followers' eyes that a leader is seen as charismatic.

As the Bank of America case shows, there are positives and negatives to the charismatic leader, and the trait is only one of many that all interact to determine leader effectiveness.

Join our students in the study of this and many other aspects of leadership in our Masters of Science in Leadership program.  Contact us today to learn more.

The BUB Newsletter - September

Boston University in Brussels is pleased to introduce the first of our monthly newsletters.  Every month we will be taking an in-depth look at the events, people, and partner organizations that shape our BUB community.  Contact us directly to be added to the newsletter distribution list, and be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter as well!

Click on the image below to view the full newsletter:
note: this link will be active until October 8th, 2011.  To view older newsletters, contact us at brussels@bu.edu.

BU Brussels September Newsletter

Congratulations to the Class of '11!

Boston University Brussels's Class of 2011 graduated in style.  This marks the first class predominantly comprised of Masters of Science in Leadership graduates.  Others graduated with Masters of Science in Management and Masters of International Relations.

As we do not have room to post the dozens of happy pictures of the event, a few key shots are included below.  Congratulations and best of luck to the class of 2011!

Leadership Highlight: Dr. Anne Randerson and Japan Relief Efforts

One common theme in Leadership is initiative and agency.  Leaders are the ones who step in and motivate others toward action while everyone else is simply sitting back wondering "What can I do?"  Dr. Anne Randerson, a regular lecturer at our Masters of Science in Leadership Program, has recently stepped up to the plate to promote relief efforts for Japan.

Dr. Randerson received her PhD in Japan and studied extensively in the city of Sendai and in Fukushima prefecture, where she lived for six years.  In a strange twist of coincidence, her dissertation explored humankind's tenuous relationship with nature.  The timeliness and prescience of the subject was not lost on publishers, who have shown their interest in publishing her work.

Anne in Sendai with friends whom she still hasn't been able to contact

When the earthquake occurred, she scrambled to contact her friends and colleagues in the area.  While many are safe (but some who have lost their homes) there are still friends whom she can't locate despite extensive searching and networking.  In addition to these efforts, she took the initiative to organize fundraising and relief efforts in several unique ways:

1. Last week, Write for Tohoku, an ebook from Tokyo, just published two of her stories about Japan. It's on sale for $9.99 and 100% of the proceeds go to the Japanese Red Cross. You can see a preview of the book by clicking here.

2.  In 2009, Dr. Randerson created an 80-page book from photographs she took during her time in the country.  Scenes of Japan is currently on sale with all proceeds benefiting the Japanese Red Cross.  This collection was the focus of a solo exhibit at the U.S. Department of State European Media Center in Brussels in July, 2009.  Here are three samples of her excellent work:

Nature's Wonders in Fukushima

Japanese Clogs at the Zen Garden

Northern Japan

3. She has organized a charity auction to be held on May 27th at 7pm and all of the proceeds will be given to relief efforts in Japan (the list of which charities will be released shortly).  The invitation promises an evening of purpose and entertainment:

Please support Dr. Randerson in these efforts.  Often the emergence of leaders from the crowd occurs through agency; the person who stands up and says "I'll make the effort" is the one who is an inspiration for the rest of us.  Anne has stepped up.  Let's join the BU family in standing behind her to make a difference. 

 

The Coming Crisis in Leadership?

This week we're happy to feature an article by one of our upcoming graduates of the Masters of Science in Leadership program.  This content was recently posted in Stanton Chase's International Executive Newswire:
http://executivenewswire.com/2011/04/the-coming-crisis-in-leadership-by-andrew-kruger/ 

If you’ve been listening to the news lately, you may be wondering where all the leaders have gone.  Where are the Churchills, the Kennedys, the Ataturks, and the Welshs?  Now, more than ever, our countries and our companies need real global leadership.  And this might be the problem.  All this globalization might be pulling the rug out from traditional models of effective leadership.
Leaders frame reality for others.  They perceive events and then interpret them for their followers in a way that motivates action.  Currently the US government is on the verge of a shutdown.  If you ask a Republican leader why, he will frame the event in terms of the failure of Democrats to rein in spending.  But when you ask a Democratic leader, he may blame the other side for stonewalling any compromise.  Each is trying to convince as much of the population as they can to see things their way.  I think it’s the only reason Sunday morning news shows exist.

Leadership researchers Smircich and Morgan concluded that a person emerges as a leader in large part “because of their role in framing experience in a way that provides a viable basis for action, e.g., by mobilizing meaning, articulating and defining what has previously remained implicit or unsaid, by inventing images and meanings that provide a focus for new attention, and by consolidating, confronting, or changing prevailing wisdom.”

This concept can be seen as the distillation, or basis, of many of other leadership theories.  It explains the leader-follower relationship by underscoring why followers do or do not accept another as a leader (does the leader’s narrative work for them in creating meaning from what they see?).  It underscores Leader-Member-Exchange (LMX) theory, as the management of meaning by the leader influences the perceptions of organizational justice of the follower (the leader’s effective use of narrative in explaining why justice occurred will affect the follower’s perception of such, and subsequent depth of relations between the two).  Even the “great man” theory and other trait- and behaviour-based leadership models lean on this framework: does the leader have what it takes to effectively create meaning for followers that they will accept and act upon in desirable ways?  Is the leader motivated enough to do this?  Driven enough?  Smart enough?

Crafting a narrative isn’t as easy as it sounds.  A leader must develop open communication channels both upstream and downstream in order to receive and deliver messages with minimal distortion and delay.  Reports and briefings may provide some information, but the savvy CEO will also have his ear to the ground by interacting regularly with all levels of the organization.  This should be informal as well as formal.

Many people (all people?) struggle to make sense of their world.  They absorb news and information and try to assimilate it into a coherent view.  The more solid this view, the more confident they are acting in accordance with it.  But the problem is this: with the advent of communications technology and the evaporation of cultural borders the common man has much more access to all kinds of data on a daily basis.  Much of it is conflicting.  The more data there is to understand, the more difficult it is to create one clear worldview through which to grasp it.

When people’s worlds were smaller, it was easier to create a narrative that made sense of the observations and “reality” that people experienced.  Leaders had only so many concepts and observations to weave into their narrative.  It was easier to motivate people to action because one frame of reality—one story—could explain everything they saw.  And if a leader chose the right story, he could line up motivated followers to his cause.

Increasingly people are bombarded with many more variables than can fit in a concise narrative, and as such faith in some traditional leaders and their interpretation of events has waned.  Twitter and smartphones transmit the experience of any person across the world in seconds.  Virtually all public events are digitally recorded, and the video lives forever online, waiting to catch the unwitting politician or CEO in a moment of hypocrisy.  Leaders can no longer change their narrative without being called out for being inconsistency and disingenuousness (fans of the Daily Show will recognize this  Jon Stewart’s main modus operandi).

What some might call the current crisis of leadership is a reflection of this.  Most leaders, save for some religious ones (I’m thinking Eastern traditions here), can’t create a narrative which meaningfully encompasses all the stimuli most people receive.  The more people know, the harder it is to tell them what to think.  And the world is not a black-and-white place; shades of gray are now obvious to all.
I’m not sure what this may mean for the future of leadership, although one hypothesis is that we will increasingly see a split between two modes of thought- the first being a dogmatic and closed-minded adherence to the old story, where any contradicting information is summarily ignored or discounted (Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann come to mind), and the other is one that increasingly accepts a narrative so expansive and inclusive that it can’t inspire followers to take action.  This can be seen in Taoist or Buddhist narratives of accepting the interplay of opposites and holding two contradictory thoughts in one’s head at once—a koan of sorts.  The consequence of this is a feeling that “there is nowhere to go, there is nothing to do, there is no one to be.”  How do you inspire someone to act on that?

While the tidal wave of technological revolution affects us all, there are tactics for the aspiring leader.  First, choose your audience carefully.  The smaller the target the better you can manage meaning.  Second, do your research to know what they know.  If you send out a company-wide email explaining why the organization has to make budget cuts next year, make sure that month’s newsletter doesn’t cover the lavish executive retreat the C-staff just came back from.  Third, frame events to motivate employees in the right direction.  The best stories inspire people toward an event (e.g. increased revenue) rather than away from something (e.g. decreased spending).

As for the state of global leaders, I don’t envy their challenge.