Trust-based integrity leadership delivers personal, institutional, societal, and systemic purpose-driven and value-enhancing positive impacts. These impacts have societal and systemic reach way beyond mere personal, professional, and organizational performance.

Where there is integrity and trust in leadership and by leadership this results in leadership impacts which are analogous to those described by The African Leadership Council’s Mombassa Declaration (Masire et al., 2004) . According to the Council, which was facilitated by Robert Rotberg:

“Good leaders globally guide governments of nation-states to perform effectively for their citizens. They deliver high security for the state and the person; a functioning rule of law; education; health; and a framework conducive to economic growth. They ensure effective arteries of commerce and enshrine personal and human freedoms. They empower civil society and protect the environmental commons. Crucially, good leaders also provide their citizens with a sense of belonging to a national enterprise of which everyone can be proud. They knit rather than unravel their nations and seek to be remembered for how they have bettered the real lives of the governed rather than the fortunes of the few.”

Where integrity and trust in leadership and by leadership is lacking, the results are analogous to those described by the council in the following way:

“Less benevolent, even malevolent, leaders deliver far less by way of performance. Under their stewardship, roads fall into disrepair, currencies depreciate and real prices inflate, health services weaken, life expectancies slump, people go hungry, schooling standards fall, civil society becomes more beleaguered, the quest for personal and national prosperity slows, crime rates accelerate, and overall security becomes more tenuous. Corruption grows. Funds flow out of the country into hidden bank accounts. Discrimination against minorities (and occasionally majorities) becomes prevalent. Civil wars begin.”

The benevolent effects of integrity and trust-based leadership, as ethical and moral leadership, as opposed to deficient integrity-based and trust-breaking leadership, as unethical and immoral leadership, also holds true for political, economic, and societal leadership.

The world currently faces many crises, of which the Covid-19 pandemic is but one. Indications are that there are many other looming crises linked to global political, economic, social, and ecological conditions. The nature of these crises, as well as their potential for socially innovative solutions

facilitated by integrity-based learning leadership can be perceived through the opening line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”

These global crises, of which the Covid-19 crisis is evidence, and which is neither the last nor the only crisis that has to be dealt with by leaders globally, call for the reimagining of leadership. This reimagining of leadership must deal simultaneously with the challenges of the crises as well as reach out towards the envisioning and inspiring reimagining of leadership for socially innovative integrity-based learning leadership.

Failing to reimagine leadership as integrity and trust will result increasingly and globally in what Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), in his book Leviathan (1651), describes as a: “War of all against all” (Bellum omnium contra omnes) where there is:

“…no place for industry,
because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently
no culture of the earth;
no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea;
no commodious building;
no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force;
no knowledge of the face of the earth;
no account of time;
no arts;
no letters;
no society;
and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and
the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Now is the season to reimagine leadership.

If integrity and trust-based leadership loses the season, Hobbesian apocalyptic outcomes result.

If integrity and trust-based leadership wins the season, the best of times may still emerge, bringing with it wisdom, belief, light, hope, and prospects, rather than going the other way.

It is a time to choose!

Reimagine leadership now, in terms of integrity and trust, and co-create the desired future through social innovation.

Or risk a scenario of co-created collapse where the few get less and less in the short-term through corruption, which is deadly — and kills!

References

Covey, S.M.R. (2006). The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything. Free Press.

Masire, K., Gowon, Y., Awori, M., Anyang’ Nyong’o, P., Balala, N., Chikaonda, M., Khalif Galaydh, A., Geingob, H., Jonah, J., & Kinana, A. (2004). Leadership in Africa: The Mombassa Declaration. African Leadership Council, facilitated by Robert I. Rotberg, Belfer Center, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/african-leadership-council

Yukl, G. (2012). Leadership in Organizations, 8th Edition. Pearson.