Governing with Iron or Empathy?
What makes a strong leader?
Otium Den recap:
Britain makes profit a dirty word
A speech from Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew often does the rounds on social media. It shows him calling out then-striking Singapore Airlines pilots at a political rally in 1980. Continue the strike, Lee says, and he is prepared to ground the airline and start all over again. Or get back to work. An example of the iron Lee argues anyone governing Singapore needs.
To Lee, obstinacy and strength were non-negotiable leadership qualities because they separate personal feeling from public authority. Compartmentalising those aspects represents duty and humility in putting the highest office above one’s lived experience. Even after leaving office, Lee refused to muddy the waters. In one of his final public appearances, he was asked about the influence of his late wife. “I’m not here to let my hair down about family matters,” was his terse response.
Bring your whole self to work
Facile popular psychology turns such self-command into repression. It is part of a nefarious culture that dictates the easy thing is always the right thing. The kind imbibed by HR departments who talk up the importance of bringing your “whole self to work”. As if being unable to separate subjective emotions from objective criteria is somehow a handicap.
I thought about this while watching Prime Minister on a recent flight. It’s a hagiographical account of Jacinda Ardern’s time as leader of New Zealand. Her self-branded empathetic leadership was a zeitgeist of the Covid years. She described its core tenet as leading like a “human first and politician second.”
But its application on a mass level is not feasible. If empathy means feeling the emotional experiences of others, it cannot form the foundations of collective leadership. Because it makes decisions based on those feelings that impact you most profoundly. Ardern implies this on a podcast with American author Adam Grant. She talks about the immense proximity to grief one feels as Prime Minister. But describes the upside as being able to do something about it.
Separating grief from policy
To be in the midst of suffering, and to be constantly petitioned by victims of misfortune and injustice is tough. But responding with empathy is easier than acting with the distance leadership necessarily entails. Only by showing that restraint can one acknowledge tradeoffs. Look, for instance, at Andy Burnham’s recent £343m expansion of mental health support. It enjoys widespread praise for reacting to personal testimonies of psychological struggle. But anyone questioning its financial prudence is shouted down for coldly rejecting stories of suffering.
It’s an unfortunate fact that not every individual story, no matter how tremendously sad, can form the basis of public policy. Take the case of Scottish swimmer, Archie Goodburn, diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and pleading for more government support on the disease. Burnham has accordingly pledged to meet Goodburn and discuss it. Goodburn’s situation is tragic but rare. And public resources are finite. So leadership is hard precisely because it involves separating these heartwrenching cases from that broader remit. In other words, compartmentalising one’s personal feelings and public authority.
As an example of doing just that, I think of former Prime Minister David Cameron’s personal tragedy in the death of his son Ivan. Speaking about in 2024, he revealed the difficulties of turning up to Commons’ debates after spending all night in hospital with his son. But he never asked for sympathy then, nor turned Ivan’s horrible genetic disease into policy. Only out of office is he focusing efforts on research, funded by philanthropy and private capital.
Strongmen vs Empaths
None of this means personal experience is irrelevant to governing effectively. We rightly want politicians from different walks of life. People who can understand specific contexts and challenge groupthink in the Westminster bubble. But such experiences should not be defined by emotion. The sort that says I’ve seen these people suffer and we need to do something about it. It’s fine for Burnham to take on the levelling-up mantle, but it needs a wider context beyond personal moral endeavour.
Kindness sounds very noble, especially when juxtaposed against the actions of villainous strongmen. Lee’s stoical rhetoric would almost certainly see him lumped into that category today. The term is used pejoratively because it implies a deceptive personality cult. Think of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, presenting himself as the virile servant of Mother Russia while profiting at its expense. The leader becomes the arbiter of truth. His interests are inextricable from those of the state.
Today’s empaths are not guilty of the same kleptocratic destruction. But its tendencies produce a different kind of personality cult. Certainly less nefarious, but one that similarly dictates policy based on a leader’s personal feelings. The office is subjugated to the individual.
So perhaps it’s worth deconstructing strongman leadership to see its value beyond modern despotic connotations. Like populist, it has become a catch-all term to describe demagoguery. But that risks obscuring desirable characteristics. I think of Martin Wolf lumping Javier Milei in with populists for an agenda that is “appealing in the short term and damaging in the long term.” As if drastic spending cuts are red meat for electorates.
Populism is bad when it proposes popular but unrealistic fixes. But sometimes it just shows the will to do what others imbue with unnecessary complexity. So too strongmen are bad when their fleeting whims constitute national policy. But equally, decisiveness and obdurance protect against conflating personal feelings with collective interests.
Ethics of conviction vs ethics of responsibility
Ipsos polling from May shows Brits want politicians to focus on results. The top two characteristics of a good Prime Minister were understanding the problems facing Britain and having a plan. Much lesser importance was ascribed to likeability (20%). This means separating short-term people pleasing from longer term results. Few will indicate immediate disapproval of good-intentioned policy, but they will be dissatisfied when the trade-offs become apparent later on.
The German sociologist Max Weber differentiated ethics of conviction from ethics of responsibility. The former describes the intrinsic moral purity of any given action. The latter describes responsibility for practical consequences. Good leaders draw upon Lee’s iron to make that distinction and eschew personal feeling for a wider duty.
Self-expression may be likeable. Self-command is consequential.