- December 1, 2014
- 11:55 am
- Al Gini
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Reflection on Mandela
Reflection on Mandela
Al Gini
Quinlan school of Business
Loyola University Chicago
December 5, 2014 is the first anniversary of the death of Nelson Mandela. His death was a peaceful one, but his life was anything but tranquil or well ordered. Mandela was neither a prophet nor a saint. But his twenty-seven years of imprisonment, allowed him to grow into the role of leader and father of his country.
According to Mandela, “if I had not been in prison, I would not have been able to achieve the most difficult task in life, and that is changing yourself.” Mandela referred to his Robben Island cell, located just off the coast from Cape Town, as “The University.” The “University of Prison”, he argued, taught him patience, self-control, and discipline -things essential to leadership. In the words of Aldous Huxley: “Experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him”.
Mandela was in full agreement with his fellow African, Augustine of Hippo, that “the first and final job of leadership is the well-being of the people that they lead.” The Zulu word for Saint Augustine’s leadership principle is Ubuntu, the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others. Ubuntu is the idea that people are empowered by other people, “that we become our best selves through the unselfish interaction with others.” Ubuntu chieftaincy, is about the rights of others, not the chief.
Like Pope Francis, Mandela believed that “authentic power is service”. Therefore leadership was a duty, an obligation, a commitment to the wants, needs, and aspirations of those that they both serve and lead. As the first democratically elected president of South Africa, Mandela believed that “what counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived, rather, it is what difference you have made in the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” Mandela recognized and accepted the fact that although his footprints would be the first ones in the sand, others would follow. In Mandela’s own words: “Men come and men go. I have come and I will go when my time comes.”
He is gone now, and he shall be, forever, missed.
All Gini is Professor of Business Ethics, Chair of the Management Department, Quinlan School of Business, Loyola University Chicago. His most recent book, with Ronald M. Green: 10 Virtues of Outstanding Leaders.