Description

With emotional intelligence emerging as a major focus of leadership thinking over the past two decades, centres such as the Moral Cognition programme at Harvard, drawing from psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, have sought to explain the relationship between emotion and reason in an increasingly polarised society marked by deep divides between “us” and “them.”

Earlier, the 2008 global financial crisis had shaken global prosperity, with much of the blame laid at the feet of failing corporate leadership. This failure pointed to a deeper need for more authentic forms of leadership. In the United States, national trauma and leadership shortcomings became highly visible, and subsequent political developments, including the resurgence of the Right in parts of Europe and the rise of MAGA-era politics in America, have further strained democratic processes. Bipartisan lawmaking in the US Congress has become increasingly difficult, reflecting deeper emotional and ideological fractures.

These global upheavals have exposed a profound crisis of leadership. Nowhere is this more evident than in the crisis of development and the persistence of poverty in resource-rich countries, where corruption is systemic and its deadly consequences are undeniable. The slide of many African democracies towards state capture and kakistocracy—government by the worst—underscores the urgency of revisiting the meaning of authentic leadership, alongside Plato’s enduring idea of the philosopher king.

This book offers hope that leadership can be learned and practised differently. That hope is grounded in both research and praxis, and in the social enterprise engagements of the Centre for Values in Leadership.