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Communicate: from the classical Latin commūnicāt-…to take a share in, to make a sharer (in), to share out, to associate, to impart, to discuss together, to consult together, to bring into common use, make generally accessible.

—Oxford English Dictionary

It has been fifty years since I published my first book, Towards the Turn of the Century, at Random, a work that addressed my fundamental concern with the ability of democracy to safeguard and manage our collective future. Five decades of that envisioned “future” are now behind me, and over their course I have worked with people from all walks of life, in endeavors that include those of industry, diplomacy, politics, and the arts. In my experience, with each passing decade of increasing global interdependence there has been a growing, critical scarcity of the value-driven individual and institution.

In a world already undergoing dramatic political changes, we are, as I write this, experiencing a profound disruption to daily life in the wake of the coronavirus—one of the deadliest global pandemics in modern history. Coronavirus has upended almost every aspect of life, leaving vast numbers of people unemployed, disrupting important international exchanges of goods and services, gutting the stock market and economy, and leaving entire nations reeling in confusion and shock as they struggle to come to terms with the loss of life and instability now pervading the world. There is no way to know how long the pandemic will continue, what the ultimate toll will be, or whether and when a vaccine will be developed. What we do know is that the world will not be the same in the aftermath of this extraordinary calamity. Throughout this crisis, the American political arena has demonstrated an appalling deficiency of leadership.

The elected president of the US is self-obsessed, dangerously impulsive, poorly educated, and alarmingly uninformed. Because the democratic system creates a tabula rasa for each newly-elected commander in chief, he has been able to largely eradicate many of the people, policies, and platforms of the previous administration, often dismantling old structures but failing to replace them. Democracy’s predilection for short-termism has never been more damaging than in Washington today, where the prevailing Republican Party has virtually closed ranks behind the president even as allegations of serious political, business, and personal misconduct increase, and a constitutional crisis seems all but inevitable.

What has made it possible for one man to instigate the collapse of a 250-year-old political democracy? One considerable factor is the prevailing climate of dishonesty and double-talk legitimized and championed by President Donald Trump, a man who literally lies with impunity, both off the record and on, often compounding previous lies with new ones.

While America has presented the world with the most blatant (and therefore the most dangerous) scenarios of rapid-fire political and cultural disintegration, similar problems have arisen in numerous other parts of the world as well. Nationalist movements in Europe are on the rise as is terrorism, and Brexit has given a clear indication of the extent of the European Union’s instability. The breakdown of our ability to communicate cogently coupled with our increasing tolerance for—or unwillingness to censure—double-talk, hypocrisy, and outright prevarication in our leaders has put the whole world at risk.

The decline in our ability to communicate honestly and with integrity is a dangerous signpost. All cultures are to some extent predicated on shared identity and experience, and communal and historical connection. Language is the bastion of all of these. A leader with the power to control language and communication is one who will be able to maintain broad political and social power, for better or worse. In contemporary society, we depend upon the media and upon a free press as the most reliable means for the communication of news and information. A political leader who openly wages war on the media poses a serious risk to culture and society, one that cannot be ignored.

And who is doing the listening—who comprises most of the collective body of people that enable a leader to take and keep power? They are largely the regular workingmen and women of the society or institution in question. They are the people with whom I’ve had some of the most rewarding and gratifying experiences of my professional life. On the factory floor at Volvo and beyond, I’ve found the labor force to be more open-minded, honest, and fair than any other group, and I’ve long admired their ability to see things that even their white-collar counterparts could not.

The mutually respectful relationship I’ve had with working people over the years is not a result of my being a highly skilled speaker—since I don’t believe that I am—it has come rather because our interactions were always unvarnished, honest, and direct. This is the source of my long-standing conviction that when one strives to narrow the gap between what one thinks and how one acts, the resulting correlation engenders trust and followership—not by capitulation, but through the consensus that comes from interacting with people on equal terms as adults with agency, and by addressing their higher-order psychological needs.

And so, a good half century after writing Towards the Turn of the Century, at Random, as a young man of thirty-four, I return to this somewhat familiar but shifting territory. With the benefit and hindsight of decades of good fortune, I’ve been privileged to come to know a number of great institutions and remarkable people. Some are familiar names, while others remain unsung heroes who accomplished great things in relative anonymity. In reflecting on what qualities these leaders of many different kinds might share, there is one compelling commonality: profound integrity. Every person or organization that I have experienced as highly effectual is one who held its actions and communications to the highest ethical standard, with unflinching alignment between words and deeds, regardless of how such forthrightness would be received by the prevailing establishment. And each of these individuals has had the intuitive understanding that a true leader of any capacity must possess and demonstrate an authentic intolerance for injustice.

In sharing some of my experiences over the years with individuals and groups that have had exceptional impact on the world, I hope to demonstrate by their example the power of integrity in speech and action, and how the two act as a singular power through the art of communication. At a time when people around the world are anxious and pessimistic about the future, and democracies and institutions we have seen as unassailable are threatening to crumble, it is imperative that we strive to communicate in a way that reflects a principled stance and commitment to what is upright, and that we demand that quality in our leaders. From an individual standpoint, a long-term view of the world is predicated on having the method and means to begin the architecture of a sustainable future. I believe that neither the method nor the means have changed in the last fifty years; they remain rooted in a system of ethics and values that adhere to an unyielding core of integrity. As such, sustainable approaches—whether to business, national policy, or to the way we choose to live or consume—require that we proceed simply, with economy and directness of intent, committed to prioritizing what is important and what is right not just for ourselves, but for everyone.

Toronto

April 2020