9. CAIRO
In early 1978, I moved to London to open our new law offices. The years over there unified my thinking in a way that would never have happened had I stayed in the States. I realized that the implications for the American Leadership Forum were global, that the free world looks to the United States as the model of democracy, and that if democracy is not working here, it’s not going to work anywhere.
By 1979, commentators were writing about leadership in the United States. Business Week, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, and the leading newspapers were all carrying stories, and Time devoted a special issue (August 6, 1979) entirely to leadership, including a wonderful editorial by Lance Morrow entitled “A Cry for New Leadership: America Looks for Leaders Who Can Construct a New Consensus.”
All of the writers addressed the same issues. They said there was a general retreat from community and national service all across the country, and that there was a self-absorption prevalent among the people of our generation, as well as a kind of civic cynicism. They talked about the fact that demographic shifts had taken place in the country over the previous twenty years which had made it clear that the old style of community leadership and regional leadership would never be effective again. New attitudes and new kinds of leadership were necessary. We needed more open, flexible, and participatory kinds of leadership. The commentators were saying what John W. Gardner had said twenty years earlier: Communication among the diverse leadership elements—city hall, business, minorities—was the first condition for renewal in our communities and in our nation.
I was traveling all over Europe at this time, and whenever I could, I talked to high-level people in business and in government about what was happening in the world and in our own country. Perhaps living abroad brought a clearer understanding of the States. It’s always that way when you walk away and see something from afar. What I saw was that people of my generation were self-absorbed and materialistic, bent on making more to get more. John Gardner had talked about the “anti-leadership vaccine” that we all received back in high school in the fifties and in college in the sixties. I don’t recall one college professor or one mentor ever talking to me about leadership or about giving something back or about serving others. The focus was on picking a business or a profession, becoming preeminent in that field, and rising to the top.
I kept wondering what the key to all this really was. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew that this discussion all centered around doing, and although important, it was missing something crucial. It became clearer and clearer to me that the kind of leadership that could effect lasting change was centered around the being aspects of leadership.
I continued traveling and working and thinking about issues of leadership and what was happening in the States, but I didn’t share my ideas with anyone.
In 1979, an opportunity arose for an association with a law firm in Cairo. Anthony Radcliff, an English lawyer who was a partner of mine in London, flew with me to Cairo. We spent about ten days there, and a lot of the time, instead of engaging in pure business, we visited in homes and went sightseeing, getting to know something about Egyptian culture and society.
Anthony and I spent a good deal of time alone, and I found myself talking with him about my dream of the American Leadership Forum. At that time I still didn’t have a name for it. I was just describing the concept for him. I told him I felt that most of us were using only a fraction of the capacity that we really have. I longed to find a way to unlock that potential for constructive change in America and the world. I talked about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and about how once we can get past satisfying our material desires, we can turn to satisfying our higher needs. I felt that there were five thousand or more people in the United States who, like me, had turned forty, having largely satisfied their needs for materialistic success, and who now wanted so much to live a life of meaning and adventure, but were simply afraid to take the first step. What they needed was some mechanism to nudge them, to connect them with others who were feeling the same way, and to heighten their sense of public responsibility. I told Anthony that I longed to help provide that mechanism for others because I knew deeply how badly it was needed. I was the prototype of the “successful” individual who had worked for years and years, making his mark in his profession, only to look up after twenty years and realize that he never had understood his true purpose for being here, and was not truly stepping into his real life. There was so much wasted talent around, so much hidden talent, and what I wanted to do was to help discover and develop that talent. I wanted to find a way of linking these people together into a national community of leaders who would develop the wisdom and the power to serve others. I envisioned a national, and later an international, community of servant leaders—a community of enlightened, committed people who could join hands in fact and in spirit and literally change their communities and the world—“the only thing that ever has,” as Margaret Mead once said.
I told Anthony that I knew my idea sounded grandiose and perhaps a little naive, but that I deeply believed it. I believed I was being called to act as a catalyst to make all of this happen. I was almost ashamed to say it, but I felt I had the capacity to put this in place and help create a movement toward enlightened, committed, transformational leadership.
Anthony listened, and we talked back and forth over several days. He was a great listener and a very gentle person, almost coaxing the ideas out of me. It was not unlike what I had experienced speaking with Tom Fatjo several years before, when I had first had the dream but not the guts to step out and make it happen. Anthony inspired me simply by the way he listened. He made me know he expected great things from me.
Later, as I reflected on the conversations, it began dawning on me that Anthony was a true servant leader. He had my own interests at the center of his attention, and his questions and concern for me gave me a source of energy I had not received by any other means. I was struck by the fact that back in Steamboat Springs, the concept of servant leadership was at the center of my dream, and now I had experienced, in the most significant way, true servant leadership, the word made flesh.
Years later, when the American Leadership Forum was a reality, Anthony and I reminisced about our trip to Cairo. He told me that he had known then what was really not apparent to me—that I soon would be leaving the law firm to follow this dream. He never said a word about this to me in Cairo, but just continued to encourage me by listening to me describe the picture in my mind.
Leadership is all about the release of human possibilities. One of the central requirements for good leadership is the capacity to inspire the people in the group: to move them and encourage them and pull them into the activity, and to help them get centered and focused and operating at peak capacity. A key element of this capacity to inspire is communicating to people that you believe they matter, that you know they have something important to give. The confidence you have in others will to some degree determine the confidence they have in themselves. John Gardner put it succinctly:
If one is leading, teaching, dealing with young people or engaged in any other activity that involves influencing, directing, guiding, helping or nurturing, the whole tone of the relationship is conditioned by one’s faith in human possibilities. That is the generative element, the source of the current that gives life to the relationship.
Just being able to be there for others and to listen to them is one of the most important capacities a leader can have. It calls forth the best in people by allowing them to express what is within them. If someone listens to me say what I am feeling, then my feelings are given substance and direction, and I can act.
Anthony probably didn’t agree with all that I was saying, but during the days in Cairo he listened intently, and I know he cared deeply. We would work and then go off and do something, and then come back to the hotel and talk. His listening allowed me to develop my thoughts. While I talked, his eyes never wandered. He looked directly at me and gave me his full attention, as if nothing else mattered in that moment. The more he listened, the more I was able to express myself and the more certain I became about what I was saying. This experience with Anthony taught me a great deal about the power of listening, about how fundamentally important it is in helping leaders dream and form their visions of the future.
As I talked to him about this back then, a great feeling of calm and peacefulness came over me. It felt right for me to be in this place, at this time, and to talk of this possibility.
Anthony’s listening had something to do with it, and Cairo itself had something to do with it. I had spent quite a bit of time walking around by myself, and I felt I had actually been there before when, in fact, I had never visited Cairo. Yet as I walked in various places, I felt certain that I had seen them before. And I remember even taking a picture, which I have to this day, of a particular area that I felt connected to. It was a small open area in the heart of Cairo near a narrow walkway that eventually led to an ancient church. There was a place to sit and rest, and I found myself returning there again and again. The play of light there in the early morning and late afternoon fascinated me. Often when I was there, I would experience this strange ringing sound in my mind and would feel, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was fundamentally at one with the entire universe. My sense of identity expanded beyond me and embraced the entire world, the entire universe. This was a return of the same feeling I had experienced in the mountains, particularly when I had encountered the ermine, and it was the same feeling I had experienced at the great cathedral at Chartres. So I kept returning to this place in Cairo, and it became a kind of sacred place for me. My time there was quiet and very reflective and peaceful. I felt at one with myself and with the world.