What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader by Alison Reynolds

Author:Alison Reynolds [Alison Reynolds, Dominic Houlder, Jules Goddard and David Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Kogan Page
Published: 2019-09-04T13:49:07+00:00

What can philosophy tell us about how to use our authority to support empowered people?

In answering this question, we focus on the thinking of our two philosophers, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Through Hobbes we will challenge the notion that authority is delegated downwards. In any situation other than a dictatorship it is in fact delegated upwards by the consent of others, with the duty to use it for the benefit of others. Through Kant we will explain what it means to exercise the authority we have for the benefit of others. So much of our management practice is instrumental, seeing others as a means to an end; Kant refocuses us on seeing others and behaving towards them as an end in themselves.

It is a tribute to the quality of their insights into the human psyche that an Englishman from the 17th century and a German from the 18th century have so much to offer us in our modern 21st-century, thrusting world of business, with multiple KPIs, bonuses to strive for, colleagues to compete with and foreign holidays to organize. The basic needs of people for meaning and self-expression have changed little if at all in the last 3,000 years. And the questions of how power is distributed between people and what is legitimate authority are as relevant to us today as they have ever been.

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