"The most essential quality of an effective leader is the ability to remain consistently committed to particular principles and objectives. Any leader who is quickly and easily influenced by shifts in popular opinion will accomplish little."
Whether effective leadership requires that a leader consistently follow his or her principles and objectives is a complex issue--one that is tied up in the problem of defining effective leadership in the first place. In addressing the issue it is helpful to consider, in turn, three distinct forms of leadership: business, political, and social-spiritual.
In the business realm, effective leadership is generally defined, at least in our corporate culture, as that which achieves the goal of profit maximization for a firm's shareholders or other owners. Many disagree, however, that profit is the appropriate measure of a business leader's effectiveness. Some detractors claim, for example, that a truly effective business leader must also fulfill additional duties--for example, to do no intentional harm to their customers or to the society in which they operate. Other detractors go further--to impose on business leaders an affirmative obligation to yield to popular will, by protecting consumers, preserving the natural environment, promoting education, and otherwise taking steps to help alleviate society's problems.
Whether our most effective business leaders are the ones who remain consistently committed to maximizing profits or the ones who appease the general populace by contributing to popular social causes depends, of course, on one's own definition of business success. In my observation, as business leaders become subject to closer scrutiny by the media and by social activists, business leaders will maximize profits in the long term only by taking reasonable steps to minimize the social and environmental harm their businesses cause. Thus the two definitions merge, and the statement at issue is ultimately correct.
In the political realm the issue is no less complex. Definitions of effective political leadership are tied up in the means a leader uses to wield his or her power and to obtain that power in the first place. Consider history's most infamous tyrants and despots--such as Genghis Khaan, Stalin, Mao, and Hider. No historian would disagree that these individuals were remarkably effective leaders, and that each one remained consistently committed to his tyrannical objectives and Machiavellian principles. Ironically, it was stubborn commitment to objectives that ultimately defeated all except Khan. Thus in the short term stubborn adherence to one's objectives might serve a political leader's interest in preserving his or her power; yet in the long term such behavior invariably results in that leader's downfall if the principles are not in accord with those of the leader's would-be followers.
Finally, consider social-spiritual leadership. Few would disagree that through their ability to inspire others and lift the human spirit Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King were eminently effective in leading others to effect social change through civil disobedience. It seems to me that this brand of leadership, in order to be effective, inherently requires that the leader remain steadfastly committed to principle. Why? It is commitment to principle that is the basis for this brand of leadership in the first place. For example, had Gandhi advocated civil disobedience yet been persuaded by dose advisors that an occasional violent protest might be effective in gaining India's independence from Britain, no doubt the result would have been immediate forfeiture of that leadership. In short, social-spiritual leaders must not be hypocrites; otherwise, they will lose all credibility and effectiveness.
In sum, strict adherence to principles and objectives is a prerequisite for effective social-spiritual leadership--both in the short and long term. In contrast, political leadership wanes in the long term unless the leader ultimately yields to the will of the followers. Finally, when it comes to business, leaders must strike a balance between the objective of profit maximization--the traditional measure of effectiveness--and yielding to certain broader obligations that society is now imposing on them.
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