I came across some wonderful words the other day and thought I should share with you, here in this column. These words are ancient, written over 2500 years ago. They come from the Tao Te Ching, perhaps the world?s most profound book of leadership wisdom and they are amazingly relevant to us here in Mauritius and in the world in general. Here they are: ?When a country or an organization obtains great power, it becomes like the sea: all streams run downward into it. The more powerful it grows, the greater the need for humility. Humility means trusting the Tao, the Way, thus never needing to be defensive. A great nation or corporation is indeed like a great man: when it makes a mistake, it realizes it. Having realized it, it admits it. Having admitted it, it corrects it??

I was thinking about these words and was saying to myself, ?How utterly true!? Like me, you must have noticed it: the bigger a country or an organisation gets, the more complacent and arrogant it becomes. Despite all their talk about empowerment, participation, innovation and change, its leaders insist on rigid compliance with company values, policies and procedures. Think of these many organizations around us here in Mauritius or in Europe and the States that have either failed to survive or fallen into crisis. Inevitably, you?ll find in them a management that refused to question its own actions, could not admit the possibility of mistakes, and, to use an American frontier expression, circled the wagons in the face of criticism.

Is this inevitable? Does power and so-called ?greatness? have to come with arrogance and complacency? I think not. I think that the more power and influence we gain, whether as business people or as political leaders, the more humble we need to be. The more we rise in our society, the more we need to accept criticism graciously. Great leaders are indeed those who recognize that internal and external criticism are valuable feedback tools, no matter how painful these may sometimes be. Whereas most managers hear criticism as a personal attack requiring immediate and harsh responses involving the full force of their public relations department, great leaders create a learning culture in which honest criticism is welcome, is not perceived as condemnation and is valued as a means of improvement. Great leaders do not shoot the messenger, the bearer of bad news. Instead they welcome him or her, listen to what is being said and if re-levant, act upon it. Once action has ensued, the next step is for them to stand back and reflect upon what has taken place so that they can learn from it all.

This simple process of welcoming feedback, analysing its vera-city, acting and reflecting upon it and learning from it at the end of it all, produces invariably magical things. By creating a culture where honest and accurate feedback is allowed and welcome, great leaders give permission to everyone around them to admit his or her mistakes. They create a climate where mistakes are indeed permissible and can be rectified before they fester further and become major crises. But be warned though: this so-called ?simple process? is never an easy one to implement. Your CEO and other senior corporate managers might be fond of saying to you and your colleagues, ?We encourage risk and welcome feedback. We reward mistakes and see them as opportunities to learn? ? but the moment that something goes wrong in their own divisions or groups, these very same managers will inevitably look for someone to blame. They?ll point fingers at their middle managers, who will point fingers at their supervisors, who will point fingers at their employees who, in turn, will point fingers back at management. The hunt for the scapegoat is now in full swing.

In a similar vein, great followers are those employees who refuse to allow themselves to become the mistake for which they have been blamed. They are those rare individuals who refuse to both negate their own identity and take on the identity of the mistake ? and carry its weight for the remainder of their lives, like the condemned man trails his iron ball. They refuse to see themselves as ?The Person Who Made The Mistake?, even though many around them may think that way. They have sufficient maturity to realize that mistakes are part of their job and an essential component of growth and innovation, and if they are not making mistakes, they are not growing. They see mistakes for what they are, understand how they happened, move to correct them and always claim full responsibility for them. Above all, they learn from them.

Prof Eric Charoux Feedback: [email protected]