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What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader

By Alison Reynolds, Dominic Houlder, Jules Goddard, and David Lewis

Learn how to use philosophical principles in your personal and work life

Successful strategy prioritizes experimentation and learning​

The basic idea here is that no-one is perfect and that we always have more to learn. By understanding that anything he assumes could easily be wrong, Soros stays alert and ready to change direction. Any time a strategy doesn't fulfill his expectations, he immediately examines what his initial assumptions were and where he might have gone wrong.

It's not easy to admit that we've made a mistake or that our initial strategy wasn't all that great. But the ability to learn from our mistakes and change direction is often what leads to great success.

Leadership isn't about influence and control. It's about trust, fairness, and leading by example​

An excellent embodiment of this leadership philosophy is Max Perutz, one of the most successful scientists of the twentieth century. Perutz ran the Cavendish Laboratory, which has been awarded nine Nobel Prizes, four Orders of Merit and nine Copley Medals. The secret to his success? Perutz built a world-class lab by assuming that everyone he worked with was as ambitious, hardworking, and honest as he was. He didn't care about bureaucratic rules, hierarchies, or proving himself to his coworkers. Instead, he inspired his colleagues to be the best they could be through his own brilliance and dedication.

One of the reasons Perutz's employees trusted and admired him so much was because their work environment felt fair. There are many ways to foster a sense of fairness. One of the most effective is to borrow a philosophical principle calledthe veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance was developed by John Rawls, probably the most famous political philosopher of the twentieth century.

To put the exercise into practice, gather your workers together and present them with a problem that needs solving. Here's the catch: They must develop a plan that feels fair to all of them, without knowing beforehand who will end up with which role and set of duties. In other words, each participant will be ready to doanyof the jobs the team creates. Great leaders will involve themselves in the process, showing their willingness to roll up their sleeves and do any of the work that their employees normally do.

Real authority promotes empowerment at all levels of an organization​

To promote engagement, we need to learn to treat each other not as objects, but as people​

Ethical behavior in the workplace means understanding the concept of moral plurality​

Every day, leaders need to make dozens of decisions. One hopes that that decision-making is guided by a sense of morality and a desire to do what is right. If the world were cleanly divided between "right" and "wrong," that wouldn't be so hard. Unfortunately, that's not how the world works. What makes ethical decision-making so difficult is that the real dilemma isn't about choosing between right and wrong, but about choosing between two competing "rights."

Take the following story, which occurred at the height of World War Two. An Allied officer received word that there had been a leak of very important information by a member of his staff. He tried his best to find out which of his secretaries had leaked it, but to no avail. Eventually, he had to choose between two "rights." If he fired all of the secretaries, he would ensure there would be no more leaks, which would protect the lives of soldiers. If he fired no one, he would ensure no innocent secretary would be punished for the wrongdoing of another. There wasn't a clear right or wrong. Instead, he had to weigh the relative value of each "right" against the other.

There's a philosophical term for the situation the officer found himself in. It's calledmoral plurality, the idea that there isn't one single right or wrong, but a number of competing rights. The twentieth-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin was a big believer in moral plurality. He thought the idea of a perfect world where all values were harmoniously combined was impossible. In the case of the officer's situation, for instance, there was no way for him to uphold the ethic of protecting his soldiers' lives while also upholding the ethic of fair workplace conditions.

We all want to be free, but we also need to understand the responsibility that comes with freedom​

It's easy to think about freedom as power. By that logic, when we're free, we're free to do whatever we want. But in actuality, freedom involves a lot of responsibility.

Think about the following scenario. Mario has been tasked with designing the new website for his company, and he has been given instructions for every single component, from the colors to the banner design. His job is that of a designer, but in reality, he doesn't actually have any freedom to design. Without freedom, Mario probably feels held back, bored, and disempowered.

Now let's think about the opposite situation. Mario has been given total freedom to develop the website however he wants. At first, the opportunity probably feels exciting. But then fears and doubts might creep in: If he builds a website no one likes, he has no one to blame but himself. With the freedom to create comes total responsibility for what he creates.

The lesson from this story is that freedom both allows us to feel empowered and forces us to take responsibility for our thoughts and actions, and to prepare for the possibility of being wrong or rejected. What freedom gives us is choice. How we use that opportunity is entirely up to us.

One of the most important schools of philosophy to discuss the idea of choice isexistentialism.The existentialists believed that "existence precedes essence." The idea here is that we come into the world as a blank page. To live is to determine who we are entirely: we can't blame the past, our genetics, or anything outside of ourselves. As a philosophical position, it's optimistic in the sense that we get to choose who we are. But it's also challenging, because we are then given the responsibility to shape who and what we are entirely. If we succeed, that's on us. But if we fail, that's also on us.

Whether you're navigating the freedom and responsibility of actualizing a milestone at work or making the difficult ethical decision about whether to fire an employee, remember that with the freedom to choose comes a lot of responsibility.

Great leaders don't treat freedom as power. They treat it as an enormous responsibility.

Actionable Advice - Strengthen your argumentative skills​

The next time you think you are certain about something, run a thought experiment. Try to locate the basis of your certainty and figure out whether or not it's actually a solid foundation. Next, try to build up the logic of the counter-argument as much as you can. What have you learned by the end that you didn't know at the beginning?