21 Great Leaders: Learn Their Lessons, Improve Your Influence (4 page)

As Walt’s grandson, Walter Disney Miller, told me, “EPCOT was my grandfather’s biggest dream—the city of the future that would point the way to a better world. His dream remains unbuilt. When he died, the company lost the driving personality that focused the organization’s energies on a single goal.”

Let’s not be too hard on Walt’s successors. It may have been wise to downsize his dreams. Without Walt himself at the helm, building his dream might have proved impossible. It’s a tragedy for us all that the life of this visionary leader was shortened by cigarette smoking.

Some say that vision is the ability to see the future. I disagree. No one can see the future. Vision is the ability to
make the future happen
. Vision is a form of creativity. When you see something no one else can see, and
you believe you can make it real
even though everyone says you’re crazy, that’s vision. Vision is imagination plus action. Without action, a vision is nothing more than a daydream.

A vision must be visual, and it must also be describable in words. A vision is a word picture you can transfer from your imagination to the imagination of others through the art of communication. If you can’t communicate your vision, how will you make it real?

The world divides people into “dreamers” and “doers.” According to this view, dreamers supposedly have their heads in the clouds. Doers have their feet on the ground. Dreamers deal with what might be; doers deal with what is.

Visionaries don’t see the world that way. Visionaries don’t distinguish between dreamers and doers. Visionaries
combine
both functions. Visionary leaders have their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. They are realistic dreamers. They don’t just daydream. They strategize and set goals; they recruit talent and build teams; they communicate their vision; they delegate tasks; they invest endless hours of hard work. They take risks and solve problems. They overcome obstacles and opposition. Visionaries make the impossible possible.

Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney told me, “If Walt had one great gift, it was that he kept his head down and kept trying. Over the years, he was told that his ideas were impractical, impossible, and would never work: ‘Walt, you’ll lose your shirt on
Snow White
,’ or ‘Walt, give up this crazy obsession with an amusement park!’ Walt knew his ideas were good and the naysayers were wrong. Walt proved that the only way to get things done is by sticking to your ideas and your beliefs.”

Visionaries don’t foresee the future. They
build
it. You and I are living in the future Walt envisioned and built.

Someone asked Walt how he achieved so much in one lifetime. He replied, “I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true.”
¹¹
That’s a concise formulation of visionary leadership. Walt’s success formula consists of four parts, which can be summarized in four words:
dream, believe, dare
, and
do
. Let’s take a closer look at Walt’s success formula:

1.
Dream
. Walt said, “I dream.” He begins with a vision of a better future.

2.
Believe
. Walt said, “I test my dreams against my beliefs.” Walt made sure that his vision of the future was consistent with his core values. He also made sure he had the confidence, the belief in himself, to accept this bold challenge.

3.
Dare
. Walt said, “I dare to take risks.” Walt took counsel of his confidence, not his fears. He wasn’t reckless, but he believed in himself, and he bet on himself to win.

4.
Do
. Walt said, “I execute my vision to make those dreams come true.” Walt wasn’t just a dreamer; he was a doer as well. He focused all his energies on his dreams, he motivated his people to build his dreams, and he turned his dreams into a reality.

Don’t worry that you can’t see the future. Nobody can. Your vision doesn’t exist out there in the future. Your vision exists
within you
. If you can envision it, if you believe in yourself, if you can sacrifice and take risks for your dream, if you can work tirelessly to build it, then you are a visionary leader.

N
ELSON
M
ANDELA

A Rainbow Vision

There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way
.

N
ELSON
M
ANDELA

N
elson Mandela was a prince who could never be king. He grew to become something greater than a king. He became a visionary leader.

He was born July 18, 1918, in the village of Mvezo, in South Africa’s Cape Province. His clan name was Madiba, and his parents named him Rolihlahla, a Xhosa word that meant literally “tree shaker,” someone who shakes things up.

Mandela’s patrilineal great-grandfather was Ngubengcuka, a ruler of the Thembu people from 1809 to 1832. Nelson’s grandfather was one of Ngubengcuka’s many sons. It was a polygamist culture, and Nelson Mandela’s lineage was traced through a “lesser” wife, so he was a descendant of the “left-handed house”—of royal blood, but disqualified from the throne.

Nelson’s father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a local chief and an adviser to the tribal king. In 1926, when Nelson was eight years old, a white government official accused Gadla of corruption—likely a trumped-up charge. Gadla was a proud man with a stubborn integrity, and he sometimes angered white officials by defying their unjust decrees. The accusation was a devastating blow to Gadla’s reputation and self-esteem.

Gadla was a follower of the tribal god Qamata, but Nelson’s mother, Gadla’s third wife, Nosekeni Fanny, was a Christian. She sent him to a Methodist missionary school when he was seven where he took the English name Nelson. “I defined myself through my father,” Nelson recalled, adding that he especially identified with his father’s qualities of “a proud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness.”
¹

In 1927, Gadla came down with a lung disease. Nine-year-old Nelson stood at his father’s deathbed and watched Gadla draw his last breath. Though Nelson admired his father, he was never close to him. He didn’t recall feeling grief, but rather a sense of being “cut adrift.”
²

After Nelson’s father died, his mother took him to the Great Place, the Thembu royal palace at Mqhekezweni, to live as a ward of Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo. Nelson didn’t see his mother again for years. Chief Jongintaba and his wife, Noengland, raised him as their own child. Nelson became friends with the chief’s son, Justice. Like Nelson’s mother, Chief Jongintaba was a Christian, and he and his wife took Nelson to church every Sunday. Nelson was educated in a Methodist mission school next to the palace, and the Christian faith became an important part of Nelson’s life.
³

As the foster son of the chief, young Nelson attended the tribal meetings at the Great Place. Meetings dealt with civic affairs, agricultural issues, and problems caused by the white apartheid government. All Thembu tribesmen were free to speak before the chief and his councillors. The meetings were held in the outdoor courtyard of the chief’s house. Chief Jongintaba would convene the meeting—then say nothing until the end.

Though women were not permitted to attend, there was no class discrimination among those who spoke. “Everyone was heard,” Mandela recalled, “chief and subject, warrior and medicine man, shopkeeper and farmer, landowner and laborer.” No one was interrupted or given a time limit. Meetings lasted many hours. Young Nelson was impressed that all men were valued as equals.
⁴

Nelson observed the communication styles of those who spoke. Some argued succinctly, some used dramatic oratory and tugged at the emotions, some relied on logical argument, and some droned on and on, never getting to the point.

Nelson’s foster father, Chief Jongintaba, was often the target of criticism—yet the chief never interrupted, never defended himself, never showed emotion. In the end, he would often make changes in response to the complaint. Chief Jongintaba was a leader who used his authority to solve people’s problems, not to serve himself.

Tribal meetings lasted until a consensus was reached (though some matters were held over and resolved at a later meeting). In contrast to Western democracies, the tribal democracy of Chief Jongintaba did not make decisions by majority rule. Under majority rule, the interests of the minority is often crushed by the majority, causing feelings of alienation and disenfranchisement. A consensus democracy permits the majority opinion to prevail but includes compromises that address the concerns of the minority.

The meetings would draw to a close at sunset, and the chief would speak. He would summarize all that had been said (Nelson was amazed that his foster father kept every argument and counterargument in his head). Then he would render a conclusion. Dissenters were not forced to accept the chief’s conclusion. If those present did not agree, they scheduled another meeting and agreed to settle it later. The chief’s conclusion was usually accepted by consensus.

Nelson learned that an authentic leader is a humble servant, not a self-important boss. He often recited an axiom he learned from Chief Jongintaba: “A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
⁵

Nelson studied African history and learned about such heroes as the Marota warrior-king Sekhukhune and the Basotho diplomat-king Moshoeshoe. “My imagination was fired,” he said, “by the glory of these African warriors.”
⁶

Chief Jongintaba wanted Nelson to become a counselor for the Thembu royal house. He sent Nelson to Clarkebury Boarding Institute, a Western-style school for black Africans in Thembuland. There Nelson made friends, played sports (including boxing and long-distance running), and discovered the joys of gardening. Though Nelson endured indoctrination in the superiority of English government, he maintained his passion for African history and culture.

Nelson went on to the University of Fort Hare, a small, elite institution of higher learning for black Africans in Alice, Eastern Cape. He studied English, anthropology, political science, and law. He joined the drama society and performed in a play about Abraham Lincoln. That play helped shape his thinking about leadership. Nelson played John Wilkes Booth. “I was the engine of the play’s moral,” he later recalled, “which was that men who take great risks often suffer great consequences.”
⁷

Though Mandela had friends involved in the African National Congress (ANC), he avoided the radical organization. World War II broke out while Mandela was at the university. Though no fan of colonialism, he vocally supported Great Britain’s cause. After becoming involved with a campus food boycott, he was suspended by the university. He left without a degree.

Mandela went to Johannesburg in 1941 and found work as a law clerk. There he met people of many races—black Africans, Europeans, Indians, Jews, and people of mixed race—and they all got along as equals. Some were involved with the Communist Party. Nelson rejected Communism because its doctrinaire atheism violated his Christian beliefs. But he was becoming politicized and was increasingly attracted to radical activism.

Nelson Mandela studied law at the University of Witwatersrand. As the only native African student, he was often subjected to racism. Mandela was deeply influenced by a friend, Anton Lembede, who advocated African nationalism, and under Lembede’s influence, he joined the ANC. In 1944, he helped create the ANC Youth League (ANCYL). That same year, he married fellow ANC activist Evelyn Mase; their first child, a boy, was born in 1945.

Mandela’s radical activities caused his studies to suffer. He failed his final year at Witwatersrand three times, and the school expelled him in 1949. By 1950, the ANC and the Communists were stepping up their activism and strikes. The white apartheid government responded with increased repression and the Suppression of Communism Act, which radicalized Mandela even more. He began reading Marx, Engels, and Lenin—and his mistrust of Communism began to erode. Yet Mandela was also influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and his path of nonviolent resistance, which ran counter to the violence advocated by the Communists.

In 1952, Nelson Mandela was elected ANC Transvaal president and deputy national president, and the government arrested him, along with twenty other activists, under the Suppression of Communism Act. Mandela was banned from ANC meetings and talking to more than one other ANC member at a time—effectively barring him from leadership.