Populist Leadership: Convictions and Responsibility

Leadership is above all a process of collective value creation, when you only defend a political position at all costs without taking into account its consequences, you end up destroying value and dividing your own

Each historical era is associated with a type of leadership. Today, when observing the behavior of our political leaders, it seems that populism as a “leadership style” is gaining followers, especially in emerging social movements and parties. The most observable characteristics of this new type of leadership are:

1. Personalism: adherence to a person, his ideas and his will.
2. Paternalism: direct and highly emotional relationship between leader and follower in which the leader does not recognize organizational or institutional mediations.
3. Confrontation: the leader speaks in the name of the people and discursively enhances the opposition of the people with “the others”.
4. Empathy: They have a great ability to empathize with the feelings and ways of thinking of the masses, and often simplify and radicalize values and points of view that are already widely shared by a social collective.
5. Radicality: aims at the radical transformation of an institutional order, seeks to change and refound the dominant status quo.

Populist political leadership is always radical, in the sense that its avowed ultimate goal is to change the values of society and change the state of things they consider unjust. And its starting point is a political antagonism different from the traditional one, of “right” and “left.” Its discursive logic polarizes the space between the “people” and the dominant elites, the “caste.” Its leaders seek to come to power to change the current status quo, and they mobilize their followers by appealing to the constant struggle of “those at the bottom” against “those at the top” as an instrument to reinforce collective identity and transmit their ideals to society.

In a connected society, populism as a form of mass mobilization around shared aspirations is here to stay. In our country we can already say, without risk of error, that populism as a new way of doing politics has put an end to the dominant two-party system, forcing a new political ethic, closer to the citizens and more focused on values, and changing the way of doing politics of the traditional parties. They have also made possible the emergence of new actors, parties and coalitions that today govern the country’s most important capitals. More importantly, they have opened up hope for a regeneration of our democracy, which would have been impossible without their appearance.

Political Ethics: Convictions and Responsibility

Fernando Savater, in his book Ethics for Amador, defines ethics as “the art of living, knowing how to live, therefore the art of discerning what is convenient for us (the good) and what is not convenient for us (the bad)”. And in political ethics, there are two dominant logics when it comes to deciding what is or is not convenient for us at a given time. Following Max Weber’s thinking, most politicians when deciding on the morality of a specific event are based on two principles: convictions and responsibility. In the first case, you act believing that you are doing good, but you do not feel responsible for the consequences of the action. In the second, the foreseeable consequences of the action itself are taken into account. And action is interpreted in terms of means and ends.

In my opinion, the two ethics are not contradictory, but complementary. In other words, when the leader makes a decision, he must assess the consequences of his actions and compare the means with the ends, which in any case must be aligned with his political convictions. Populist leadership always puts convictions before responsibility and pragmatism.

The point is that when the ethics of convictions becomes an absolute ethic, based on defending a political position at all costs, without taking into account the possible consequences that our actions have for other people, as leaders we can destroy more value than we intend to create. As José Ignacio Torreblanca argues very well in his recent article in El País, this way of acting can lead us to collective stupidity and political irresponsibility. In his words: “Acting in accordance with our convictions without worrying about the consequences of our actions is a religious logic, not a political one. The main effect is that actors exonerate themselves from the consequences of their decisions.”

The ethics of responsibility, on the other hand, obliges us to take into account the possible consequences of the action, to such an extent that on some occasions the leader, faced with the dilemma of choice, may consider it preferable to momentarily sacrifice his principles, in order to avoid the greater evil of the foreseeable disastrous consequences of an action exclusively oriented according to convictions. Beyond the natural power struggles, this, and no other, is the question that the socialist party faces in its next Federal Committee, when deciding whether to abstain or not, in order to facilitate Rajoy’s investiture.

This critical situation, with enormous consequences for Spanish social democracy, could have been avoided if Pedro Sánchez, as Secretary General, faced with the dilemma of having to decide between:

1. Exercising responsible leadership, ending the institutional deadlock, abstaining and exercising a radical opposition, leading political initiatives on issues of corruption, electoral reform, active social policies, territorial question, labor contracting and a long etc of measures that had already been agreed with Ciudadanos, but that were now possible with the support of Podemos and in the face of a minority PP in congress.
2. Exercise populist leadership, make “no is no” an absolute principle, empathize with the feeling of rejection of Rajoy in its bases, simplify the debate: “Yes or no to corruption”, personalize oneself as the leader of change, confront the barons of the party with the grassroots, and call an extraordinary congress to seize power and change the status quo of the party.

He would have chosen the first option as the “lesser evil”, knowing that there was no possible arithmetic for an alternative government and that the situation would inevitably lead him to a third election, the division of his party, the polarization of its militants, the loss of voters, and a new government with a greater majority, the PP.

However, he opted for the second option and the consequences have been lethal for his party, and for him, although this will depend on the degree of support he receives from supporters in the primaries in which he intends to run. One of the problems with the ethics of convictions is that by breaking the link between actions and responsibilities, it does not allow us to correct mistakes and learn from past experiences. Being a socialist cannot be reduced to a feeling of aversion to the corruption of a right-wing government. Hence the absurdity, when you talk to PSOE militants who, despite what has happened, do not attribute any responsibility to their leader, are willing to forget everything, and are proud of their political coherence. They forget that leadership is, above all, a process of value creation when you only defend a political position at all costs without taking into account its consequences, you end up destroying value and dividing your own.

The Political Leader as Social Architect

Dear reader, I think you’ve figured out by now that I’m not exactly a fan of populist leadership. Especially because I believe that the challenges we face in a complex and hyperconnected society are too complex to be tackled from the simplicity and reductionism of “yes or no to Rajoy”.

The political leaders of today and tomorrow, as social architects, must be able to select the values that we wish to maintain and preserve, and discard those that are expendable, leaving room for the capacities necessary to face the future successfully. In addition, as leaders you must keep your organization in a productive zone of imbalance, without polarizing the debate, asking the uncomfortable questions, making the difficult decisions, and managing the inevitable conflicts, losses, and confusion associated with change; Ultimately, they must create value and address the challenges that affect their organizations in productive rather than destructive ways.

As social architects we must avoid simplicity and polarization of ideas, our job is to ask the right questions, and to create the right conditions for the responses to the new challenges to be collective, that is, for the solution to emerge naturally as a result of the collaborative relationships established between all the people in the organization and between them and the outside. Leveraging collective intelligence.

Unlike formal leadership from a position of authority, where our power is derived from position, when we act as social architects our power derives from authenticity, credibility, and our ability to make decisions, and act proactively as leaders based on our passion, perseverance, self-confidence, and added value to the community. So you can exercise this type of leadership from any position in your organization, mobilizing others – outside and inside your area of responsibility – to achieve understanding and agreement on what needs to be done and how it needs to be done, facilitating efforts, both individual and collective, and developing the new skills and habits necessary to adapt to new circumstances.