“The first step is not action; the first
step is understanding.”
John
W. Gardner, On Leadership
Last weekend I started reading The Unreal and the Real. Volume Two, Outer
Space, Inner Lands: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin. I’ve had a soft
spot for Le Guin since reading “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” last
semester as part of my critical and creative research paper. While science fiction isn’t
my forte, her stories are simultaneously gripping, unusual, and brutally real. Rarely are there happy endings for her characters. But whether alien,
human or something inbetween, they are always redeemable, even if they don’t
choose that path. There are always choices
of one kind or another.
In this post I’m including a
piece I wrote three months ago. Apart from getting a good grade (as a journal entry no less!), I find it still resonates with me, and, to date, is my
favourite close reading/personal reflection on a literary text using the lens
of authentic leadership (and it also explains in a very succinct way the basic
ebb and flow of my thesis interests!):
Should Leaders be as Moral as Possible?
“As part of my thesis research I
have been investigating authentic leadership. At its core, ‘authenticity’
refers to “the degree of congruence between internal values and external
expressions,” and, as such, is concerned with developing a deep awareness of
one’s moral values and beliefs (Roberts, 2007, p. 329). Bill George and Peter
Sims, the scholars who popularised authentic leadership in the early-2000s,
argue that authentic leaders do not compromise their values, particularly in
difficult situations. Rather, “authentic leaders use adversity to strengthen
their values…[they] take the most difficult road and do not compromise [their]
values” (McManus & Perruci, 2015, p. 220). Ultimately, being as moral as possible
in all circumstances is the only ‘authentic’ choice.
However, making moral or ethical
decisions is not always clear-cut, and making distinctions between right and
wrong actions is often difficult, resulting in situations termed “ethical
dilemmas.” Many of the hardest questions, in organisations and in life, are
conflicts among multiple competing responsibilities (Badaracco, 2006). Based on
my experience as an arts student, I want to explore this conundrum using a
short story by Ursula Le Guin, asking and answering: ‘As a leader and follower,
should I be as moral as possible,
regardless of the circumstances?’
Why use stories to explore complex
leadership questions? Using the humanities to study leadership is an emerging
and important field of management research (Marturano, Wren & Harvey, 2013;
Badaracco, 2006). Badaracco contends that classic literature and fictional
narratives provide valuable frameworks for examining ethical leadership, as
stories not only heighten emotional engagement but encompass a more diverse
range of ‘real-life’ circumstances than traditional, prosaic business case
studies. In this way, literary analysis adds an important ‘human’ dimension to leadership
development, since it is concerned with “trying to explore, make sense of, and
capture something” about individuals’ and communities’ lives” (Marturano, et
al., 2013, p. 2). Consequently, ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’ by Ursula Le Guin, with its complex postulations on moral dilemmas, choice and
compromise, has the potential to help me develop “new ideas – about
possibility, risk taking, and courage” (Simon, 2004, p. 101) in situations
where there is no clear right or wrong moral answer. I will begin my analysis
with a short summary of the story before reflecting on what it has taught me
about my moral compass.
In ‘Omelas’ Le Guin invites the
reader to envisage a utopian city, “bright-towered by the sea” (p. 902), a
place of never-ending joy and happiness. But not all is as it seems. We are
told that the prosperity and success of Omelas depends entirely upon the
perpetual misery of a single child who is kept locked away in squalor beneath
the city, where “it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and
neglect" (p. 904). Naked, covered in sores, and left to sit in its own filth,
the child bears a horrifying burden – suffering for the sake of its fellow
citizens. Sometimes the child begs for its freedom: "I will be good,” it
cries, “Please let me out. I will be good” (p. 905). But even though every
person in Omelas is aware of its existence, no one responds to its pleas. Many,
however, have chosen to visit the child, and those who do so are invariably outraged
and repelled:
They would like
to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do. If the child
were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned
and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done,
in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would
wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and
grace of every life in Omelas for that single small improvement: to throw away
the happiness of thousands for the chance for the happiness of one: that would
be to let guilt within the walls indeed (p. 905).
No one, then, chooses to sacrifice
the good of the many for the good of the one. But they know that they, like the
child, “are not free,” and this knowledge makes them more compassionate, more
noble, and more gentle (p. 906). However, there are those who individually
"opt out" from the “terrible justice of reality” (p. 905) and the
uneasy moral compromise the citizens of Omelas have made with the child’s
suffering. They leave the city, “they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do
not come back” (p. 906).
On
the surface, Le Guin’s dystopian narrative appears to be a critique of Western
society’s tendency to adopt utilitarian approaches to ethical dilemmas, that
is, choosing the greatest good for the greatest number (Wyman, 2012). When I
first read ‘Omelas,’ I believed the ones who “walked away” were acting
courageously by refusing to participate in the torturous treatment of
the incarcerated child. By following their ‘authentic’ moral compass, they were
‘doing the right thing.’ The story appears then to pose a simple challenge:
would you be among those who walk away?
But is taking a ‘moral stand’ by
absolving responsibility and ‘walking away’ from a difficult situation the right thing to do? Wyman points out that
“while the choice to walk away from the hideous bargain Le Guin puts forth may
seem correct at first, a more careful reading suggests that Le Guin would elect
to stay in Omelas, imperfect as it turns out to be” (Wyman, 2012). Abdicating
responsibility for the child’s lot by leaving Omelas may be a good moral
decision for the individual, but it not only fails to resolve the dilemma, it
undermines the community, leaders and followers alike. Does that mean we should
abandon the idea that good leaders (and followers) should have a reliable, strong,
internal guide to right and wrong? This is a disturbing question because “we
want leaders with moral clarity, who can guide and inspire organisations,
especially in tough times” (Badaracco, 2006, p. 32). However, rather than
offering a utilitarian excuse—the good of the many outweighs the good of the
one—or encouraging individuals to ‘be as moral as possible’ by “walking away,”
I conceive Le Guin as insisting on the development of a dynamic ethical system which
is dependent upon all community
members, existing and evolving as they work collaboratively to solve the
problem.
This story resonated with me in a
way no business ethics case study ever has before. Having been brought up with
a strict moral code which emphasised, as George and Sims do, that you should never compromise your values, my moral
compass was only suited to straightforward questions of right and wrong, so
much so that I failed to see any alternatives for the people of Omelas. It has
highlighted the need for me, as both a leader and follower, to work on
developing a more flexible moral code that is as complex, varied, and as subtle
as the situations in which I will find myself in the future. As Badaracco
(2006) points out, this does not mean “abandoning basic values or adopting
moral relativism” (p. 33), but in my quest for ‘authenticity,’ being willing to
embrace a wider set of human values which will allow me to look beyond myself
and my moral code to find better, more innovative solutions.”
References – APA 6th Edition
Badaracco, J. L. (2006). Questions of character:
Illuminating the heart of leadership through literature. Boston, MA:
Harvard Business Review Press.
Le Guin, U. K. (2003). The ones who walk away from
omelas. In A. Charters, The story and its writer: An introduction to short
fiction (6th ed., pp. 902-907). New York, NY: Bedford/St. Martins.
Marturano, A. J., Wren, T., & Harvey, M. (2013).
The making of leadership and the humanities. Leadership and the Humanities,
1(1), 1-5.
McManus, R. M., & Perruci, G. (2015). Understanding
leadership: An arts and humanities perspective. London, UK: Routledge.
Simon, L. (2009). William James’s lost souls in Ursula
Le Guin’s utopia. Philosphy and Literature, 28(1), 89-102.
Wyman, S. (2012). Reading through fictions in Ursula
Le Guin’s “the ones who walk away from omelas”. ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of
Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, 25(4), 228-232.
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