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TechNews | Tuesday, February 1 7h, 2015

 

Learning through historic leaders

Jerry Sha
TECHNEWS WRITER

There exists a distinction between a
leader and a tyrant that is at once bold and in-
distinguishable.

Many historical great leaders were,
in fact, tyrants with a talent for demagoguery.
Figures such as Caesar, Napoleon, Elizabeth,
Stalin, or Hitler commanded a great amount of
respect and genuine loyalty from their numer-
ous followers, but they were in essence cleaver

tyrants who found a way to convince a mass ‘

of people to willingly embrace their personal-
ity and ideology. While their power is great,
such figures impose the likeliness of their per-
sonal beliefs and biases upon their followers,
often at the expense of the individuals who
comprise their following. Such leaders over-
write the personal beliefs and individualism of
those they propose to lead, and as such, while
the personal virtues of the leadership figure is
amplified by the reproduction of those virtues
in their followers, amplified also are the vices,
prejudices, and other shortcomings of the very
human character which seeks to impose. Al-
though the power these figures attain through
the pervasive distribution of their ideology is
great, the very nature of their leadership, which
is to dominate and to impose a very flawed and
imperfect image, leads to the rapid rise and
equally rapid downfall of their legacies.

True organic leadership isn’t to have
authority vested upon you by sophistry, dema-
goguery, or other sly means, but the craft of
persuading a general population of your wor-
thiness to undertake certain tasks on their be-
half. Historical organic leaders such as Gandhi
and Martin Luther King Ir. rose naturally to the
positions they are remembered for out of a de—

sire to serve the body of people whose interests
they represented. As opposed to the tyrant who
proposes a set of values for his/her followers
to accept and identify with, an organic leader
recognizes the needs and the identities of the
group that he/she is' fit to lead. Organic leaders
often emerge and are quick to be discredited
by those outside of the demographic they have
naturally risen to serve, but the actions they
take, the motivation that they instill naturally
by resonating with the needs and desires of
the group they have chosen to represent will
far outlast the legacies of the most successful
tyrant. While potential organic leaders are nu-
merous, those who actually find occasion and
motivation to rise to their potential are few,
and these few are often overpowered by those
who pursue means of leadership which more
heavily incorporate tyrannical methods.

These two archetypes of leadership
are not mutually exclusive, nor are they so‘me
arrogantly proposed model, which seeks to
encompass all possible means of leadership. I
am also, by no means, suggesting that tyran—
nical leadership is fundamentally inferior to
the organic sort or vice versa. It is my sincere
opinion that a truly successfiil leader must
recognize and be proficient in utilizing all the
modes of leadership, including and beyond the
two archetypes discussed above, according to
the situation and requirements that the leader
is currently facing.

A commissioned military officer, for
example, does not have the luxury of becom-
ing intimately aware of the needs and abilities
of the men and women he/ she commands, for
their responsibility comes from the orders of
superior officers above them and their group.
In this situation, organic leadership springing
from empathy and personal connection must

be overruled by tyrannical military tradition-
alism. But when that same officer completes
his/her commission and; later in life, becomes
a civilian manager in a large corporation, he/
she might then find it beneficial to rebalance
their approach as to be at once sympathetic
and organic to his coworkers, but also still
stringent enough to meet the goals of the man-
agers and the company. Finally, this same per-
son may one day settle down and raise a family,
in-which case he/she must then manage an—
other drastic transformation from leading and
managing professionals to resolving conflicts
between him/herself and their spouse, as well
as guiding the development of their children,
activities which, no doubt, require an infinite
capacity of compassion and empathy, but also
retain a residual trace of self-imprinting and
dominance.

The ideal leader is, therefore, knowl—
edgeable in the many ways that men and
women are led, but also open to and capable
of imposing drastic changes upon him/herself
regarding both, the method and purpose of
his leadership. Simple, brutal instruction can
stamp out the efficient taskmaster, while nat-
ural, loving care can raise the compassionate
father or mother. However, a true leader is all
of this and more, able to understand the needs
and capabilities of his/her flock, and able to
grasp and pursue the objectives towards which
he/she proposes to lead. The education of a
true leader starts at the beginning of reaching
this understanding, and that education and de-
velopment never truly ends. Just as the group
being led is never static, the world in which we
navigate is never still, and the goal that we pur-
sue is ever changing.

‘

Are the rich more unethical than the poor?

Jerry Sha
TECHNEWS WRITER

Research has previously suggested
that individuals with higher socioeconomic
standing (SE5) are more likely to behave un—
ethically. This finding was very much in align-
ment with the popular perception of the upper
class, as evidenced by campaign slogans such
as the 99%, or films such as The Wolf of Wall
Street. However, a group of new researchers
have suggested in the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology that these prior results
hold true only under a specific range of condi-
tions and definitions.

How one defines moral and ethi-
cal behavior is critical to making generalizing
claims regarding such behavior. Unethical be-
havior is usually associated with the employ-
ment of unfair methods in search of selfish
gain. An example would be cheating on a test
to get a better grade. However, unethical be-
havior covers much more than selfish gain. For
example, if a friend of yours wants to see your
old test from last semester when the professor
forbids it, you giving up the test would still be
unethical, but it would not be for direct self—
benefit. -
A new study in the Journal of Per-

' sonality and Social Psychology attempts to ac-

count for such unselfish but likewise unethical
behavior, and its findings are quite interesting:
There isn’t a reliably reproducible difference in
the observed ethicality of the rich and poor,
but when unethical behavior does occur, those
with higher SES are more likely to act unethi-
cally for the sake of themselves, while the op-
posite is true in that those with lower SES are
more likely to act unethically for others. For
the full study, visit http://goo.gl/90wPOK.

In an example experimental setup,
groups of participants were told to play a

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computerized dice game. For one trial, the re-
searchers stated that if the sum of a series of
dice rolls totaled above 14, then the participant
would be entered to win a $50 gift card. For the
opposing trial, the condition for the gift card
was the same, but the gift card would be given
to someone else of the participant’s choice.

The dice program used in the trials
was programmed to never exceed a sum of 12,
and therefore, any participant that reported a
sum of 14 or above was lying. However, the
participants with higher SES lied more fre-
quently when the recipients of the card were
themselves, and the opposite was true for the
group with lower SES.

Before we jump to any snide conclu—
sions, it is important to take a closer look at
what SES actually constitutes, and which fac-
tors are most influential in ethical decision
making. Of the many factors included in the
term, education and income seems to be the
major factor, and conveniently, both are simple
to account for in experimental trials.

Eighty-one participants were sur-
veyed on their income and level of education
before being subjected to a battery of tests and
surveys regarding their decision morality. As it
turns out, income played a much greater role
than education, and the conclusion reached by
the researchers begs further attention.

The researchers contend that income
is much more closely associated with power.
Power, furthermore, is an unstable state of be-
ing. A person could move frequently through-
out short periods of time from positions of
high to low power. Your correspondent, for
example, finds himself in low to average power
positions during his classes through the day,
but that position improves drastically dur-
ing extracurricular student clubs, sports, and
numerous other activities. Depending on our
personality, we expend our effort throughout

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the day to either enter into or avoid positions
of power, and more importantly, those indi-
viduals at a higher SES find themselves in posi-
tions of high power, intentionally or not, much
more frequently than individuals with lower
SES.

Income, as it happens, is an excel-
lent measure of the average power wielded in
our capitalist society. Those with high income
are generally more used to making decisions
on their own grounds for themselves, and each
of those decisions usually lead them toward
positions of higher power, creating a positive
feedback loop. Those who are unaccustomed
to the expression of power, on the other hand,
are not as confident when they are placed into
powerful positions, especially when asked to
openly utilize the power they attain for their
own, personal gain. This process, therefore,
creates a negative feedback.

Will to power has been, for a long
time, a fascinating facet of sociology, and this
recent publication, taken in that light, shows
that the acquisition and expression of power
is still a very powerful force in creating the
subtler boundaries of our society, with major
implications in other critical concepts such as
class warfare, inequality, and class mobility.

It is not the intention of your corre-
spondent in penning this article to incite a call
to action or personal reform. The paper and
its findings are simply a very interesting lens
with which we can see the world. For those
power-minded individuals, a careful and in
depth reading of the full article will yield valu—
able insights to assist them in communication,
persuasion, and the outright manipulation of
other individuals, whereas a more timid reader
will attain a more thorough understanding of
how various power structures in society came
to be.

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