SpecialArticle 5

What Are the Important Qualities
Needed for Demonstrating Leadership?
By Yoshihiro Hashimoto

Distinct Features of the Modern World
Today, in the 21st century, the world in which we live and work has
shown the various limits of the capitalist and democratic systems,
including the huge expansion and globalization of systems andorganizations, a culture within organizations that puts the highest
priority on the organization and efficiency, and an individualistic andutilitarian sense of values among the people who support thoseinstitutions. We have reached a major turning point, as we are also
facing a variety of challenges in terms of management and leadership,including increasing complexity and discontinuous change, anaccelerating pace of change, and the diversification of values. In thiskind of environment, when demonstrating leadership it becomes
important to determine how to perceive these changes and what
qualities need to be developed, and how to make that development
possible.

Perspective of the Aspen InstituteSince its establishment in the United States in 1950, the Aspen
Institute has trained many leaders through dialogue around the liberalarts, and the classics in particular, to consider how to view the worldin which we live and be able to formulate prescriptive measures,
based on our awareness of issues and experience.

The Danger of Trivialization
In 1949, soon after the end of World War II, a 20-day conference
was held in Aspen, Colorado, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of thebirth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who symbolized humanity inso many senses. The conference brought together more than 2,000
leading intellectuals and cultural figures from around the world,
regardless of which side their country had been on during the war.
Among the attendees, the one who is said to have made thegreatest impression on the audience was the young chancellor of theUniversity of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins. In an address titled“Seeking the Civilization of Dialogue” he explained, “The mostunexpected characteristic of our time is the universal trivialization oflife.” He went on to explore in depth three problems related totrivialization.
The first problem is the trivialization of how people work and live.
He noted, “The rising power of the enormous, mysterious,
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bureaucratic state and of the equally enormous, mysterious,
bureaucratic industrial corporation has removed the control over thelife of the individual,” and went on to warn of the dangers people facefrom the society that had emerged and the management of hugeorganizations.
The second is the loss of culture and personal interaction as aresult of excessive specialization. On this point, he said, “Thesuccesses of specialization have led to specialism, a state of mind
that favors technical training at the expense of liberal culture andstops communication by cutting off man from man.” He went on toquestion the benefit of specialist knowledge if a man is uneducated inother fields and ignorant of many things. He warned against
producing large numbers of leaders through excessive specialization.
The third problem is the breakdown of communication andcommunity life, and the decline of thought. As a person who thought
about education, he also spoke frankly about the crisis in education
stating that the “general current conception…together with theadvance of specialism and vocationalism, undermined thefoundations of communication and community life. The decay ofliberal education, which is the education of the independent thinking
man in the tradition in which we live, has cut off thinking men fromone another and from the great thinkers of the past.”
At this time, Hutchins was already warning of the dangers of asociety built on the combination of extremely large organizations,excessive specialization, and decision-making by uneducatedspecialists and leaders.

Liberal Arts & Dialogue as Prescriptions
What prescriptions, then, does the Aspen Institute propose forthese various problems? In a word, we see light in the power of theliberal arts and dialogue. There are many definitions of the essence ofthe liberal arts and dialogue, however, so let us proceed by clarifying
our understanding. Hints can be found in the words of the Spanish
thinker José Ortega y Gasset, who also attended the 1949 conference
and was a major inspiration for the establishment of the Aspen
Institute.

The Liberal Arts
In his 1930 book Mission of the University (translated into
Japanese by Tadashi Inoue, 1968) Gasset has this to say about theJapan SPOTLIGHT • September / October 202239

meaning of the liberal arts (culture): life is a chaos, a tangled andconfused jungle in which man is lost. But his mind reacts against thesensation of bewilderment: he labors to find ways through the woods,
in the form of clear, firm ideas concerning the universe and positive
convictions about the nature of things. This ensemble or system ofthese ideas is culture in the true sense of the term; it is precisely theopposite of external ornament. Culture is what saves human life frombeing mere disaster; it is what enables man to live a life which issomething above meaningless tragedy or inward disgrace.
If we apply this to leadership, the fact that a leader is someone whomakes important decisions means that when they are unsure, theliberal arts (culture) act as a signpost and provide support. This is avery interesting definition of the meaning of the liberal arts.

Dialogue
Another important concept is dialogue in the broad sense. Let us
look at the Goethe school’s concept of dialogue and the foundationthat makes it possible to have dialogue with deeper meaning. First,according to Goethe, communication is the foundation of the humancommunity. Decades before people dreamed of the projects, he issaid to have talked about the interaction that the Panama Canal andSuez Canal would bring about. Goethe saw communication as animportant bridge through which the human community could expand
and grow. This is related to Goethe’s thinking about the reciprocal
distribution of the world’s literature; the idea that global interaction
would lead to the further growth of humanity.
According to Goethe, the lack of contact at that time meant thatpeople could not sufficiently know what was going on in the world,and could not develop a common basis of sentiment or sharedobjectives, and projects like the Panama Canal and Suez Canal would
be practical, ideal bridges for bringing enlightened people together.
This was Goethe’s grand image of dialogue and civilization.
Hutchins also talks about dialogue. “In one good Goethean world
the Civilization of the Dialogue is communication. The Civilization of
the Dialogue presupposes mutual respect and understanding; it does
not presuppose agreement.… The common bond is the bond of faith.
Goethe’s faith in goodness, his faith in humanity, his faith in thegoodness of humanity is the solid ground beneath the feet of those
who refuse to be drawn into the morass of cynicism and despair. Thisfaith is a creative force, a force that can make us better than we are
and that will lead others to have trust in us and to become better thanthey have been. Through this faith we may lay the foundations of theCivilization of the Dialogue.”

The Qualities Sought in Leaders
Based on an awareness of the issues and prescriptive concepts
outlined above, I would next like to introduce the three qualities
required of leaders and methods for cultivating those qualities as put
forth by the Aspen Institute Japan.
The first quality is deep insight and values to make decisions andact as a leader. Nagayo Honma, professor emeritus of the University
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of Tokyo and former deputy president of the Aspen Institute Japan
who edited and compiled the readings for liberal arts seminars, said
that the most important thing for a leader is deep insight into humannature and the essence of human relationships. The values we refer toinclude views on things including people, nature, the world, history
and the state, legal consciousness, life and death, and religion, but
the important values related to human beings from an elevatedperspective can be learned through things like philosophy andliterature expressed in various forms in literature from all times andplaces. This leads to the acceptance of diversity and humility as aleader.
The second quality is the ability to broaden one’s perspective
toward a diverse world, and to build principles and ideals. Leaders
must deal with various difficulties and problems, guide people, andmove forward themselves without breaking. To do this, they must
maintain an open mind, have a broad view of the world, and look at
the world they see and feel with their own eyes. From thisperspective, or from the second-hand perspective and experience
they gain from the liberal arts literature left to them by theirpredecessors, they must find something they truly believe in,something they yearn for from their soul, something they can call aphilosophy or an ideal. When a leader has a clear idea of what they
themselves want to do for society and what they and theirorganization want to achieve together, this gives them strong
determination and energizes their soul, and makes the leaderattractive as a person and able to move people. The literature of theliberal arts contains many hints for building one’s own convictions
and aspirations.
The third important quality is the ability to be introspective and toengage in dialogue. As noted above, there are problems with theparadigm of gathering information over a long time, formulatinglarge-scale plans, and unilaterally guiding and managing. It istherefore becoming ever more important for leaders at all levels to beable to engage in dialogue with their coworkers, their followers, andsociety.

How These Qualities Are CultivatedThe seminars offered by the Aspen Institute encompass dialogue atthree levels – dialogue with the author, dialogue with other people,
and dialogue with oneself. Participants read liberal arts texts, and by
discussing them with one another and reflecting on them, they learn
experientially, but there are several empirical points with regard to
this process of absorbing the liberal arts and engaging in dialogue.
The first is that when reading liberal arts texts, the reader must not
only understand the content, but also consider the time in which theauthor lived, and develop a deep awareness of their awareness ofissues and attitudes toward life. Vicariously experiencing the lives andthinking of authors of classic works, who lived in a different time andplace but whose works are still read hundreds of years later, gives us
a relative understanding of the world in which we live, and the life of
the author gives us great courage.
The second is exposure to new concepts and ways of looking at

things gained through reading these texts. This is called “insight” inEnglish, and new insights allow us to look at the world differently andin greater depth, giving new meaning to our experiences to date andplans for the future.
In addition, classic texts transcend time and space. For example,
universal human themes like freedom, equality, community, andefficiency make us think about whether we are more advanced today,
and what we should think about for the future. Busy people generally
don’t have time to think about these kinds of fundamental questions,but continuously thinking on a fundamental level with an open mind isimportant for the leaders who will conceive and create the future.

The Perspective of Business Administration
Finally, I would like to digress somewhat from the Aspen Instituteand consider the perspective of business administration. Businessadministration, which directly confronts the difficulty of managing ahuge organization, needs to correct the distortions caused by priority
being given to the organization, efficiency, and utility over people, andrecently various changes are being seen. In addition, since thebeginning of the 21st century we have been seeing additional changes
including the diversification of values, increasingly complex
environments, discontinuous change, and a significant increase inspeed. Given this environment, it is increasingly important for eachindividual to have their own values and volition, and to makedecisions and act independently, and attention is focusing on the needto invest in people with this in mind.
Against the backdrop of this paradigm shift, leadership requires
various modifications. I understand this as a return to human nature,
and would like to consider modifications from the perspectives ofhuman beings, management, and leaders.
A human perspective means viewing people as individuals with
their own thoughts, feelings, and intuition, as opposed to theconventional view of people as a predictable and manageable
resource. More than the economic man described in economics as
one who acts to maximize their own individual benefit, or theorganization man that sociology describes as a cog in anorganization, this view sees people as human beings.
In The Individualized Corporation (Sumantra Ghoshal andChristopher A. Bartlett, 1997; translated into Japanese by Globis
Management Institute, 1999), Ghoshal, a well-known academic who
studied management and taught at the London Business School andthe European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD), makes
three proposals regarding management perspective. The first is to go
beyond “strategy” to “purpose”, which asks why my company exists
and for what purpose. This means that only after incorporating thepurpose of an organization into its strategy will its members havelong-term empathy. Next is to go beyond “structure” to “process”,
which means that instead of the conventional control of anorganization by allocating management resources and capabilities
into categories, it is important to design processes for personal
relationships and workplace atmospheres, and how people interact
with each other, to develop more creative businesses. The third is togo beyond “system” to “people”, which points out the dangers ofrelying on internal information systems alone for information sharing
and decision-making, and notes the greater importance of creatingclose-knit, informal personal relationships.
In terms of a leader perspective, recently leaders are said to bewise people who can tell stories, rather than charismatic, and thatleaders should be coaches rather than consultants, who areinspirational and influential, instead of being effective communicators.
More than giving instructions, this kind of leadership firmly instills theleader’s own vision and gains the trust of members, and provides
ongoing support as a coach for the implementation of that vision.
Does it not make sense to look to the liberal arts, which are nothing
more than the classic propositions of what human beings are, how
they should be viewed, how the mission of a person or organization
can be identified, what people require to work comfortably andautonomously, and whether thoughts and ideals are being taken toheart in the true sense, for hints to this consideration of businessadministration that returns to human nature?

Conclusion
In this article, I have looked at how to view change, and whatqualities need to be cultivated and how to cultivate them, todemonstrate leadership in the current environment based on themany things I have learned through my work at the Aspen Institute. I
would like to conclude with the words of Aspen Institute Japan
founder Yotaro Kobayashi to leaders, based on his extensive
experience as a manager.
He said, “As the specialization, diversification and decentralization,and the resulting trivialization of society advances, and we enjoy
comfortable, ultramodern lifestyles, we should not fall into partial
optimization limited to narrow ‘technical’ fields, but should always goback to a starting point of asking ‘Why?’ with clear insights and an
overall perspective, as we search for how to use the technologies wehave acquired to increase the true knowledge of humanity. With their
far-off and deep starting point, let us seek food for thought from theclassics and take a broad view of the whole world, and combine thatthought with the courage and modesty to confront reality directly, andrefine our judgment and actions, as well as the pillars of our thought.”
What qualities to cultivate is an important part of demonstrating
leadership. There is no doubt that the answer is deep insight, a senseof values, broad perspectives and ideals, and introspection and anability to engage in dialogue based on the liberal arts. Nevertheless,refining these qualities in the true sense needs to be through actions
backed by a solid sense of values, with diligent introspection anddialogue with oneself. I hope that readers will find this article useful.
Yoshihiro Hashimoto is a director of the Aspen Institute, which he joined in2009 after serving as senior researcher for Fuji Xerox Learning Institute,
director of the Institute for Strategic Leadership, and assistant director of theOffice for the Prime Minister’s Commission of Japan’s Goal for the 21st Century,
Cabinet Secretariat. He is a graduate of Tokyo University of Science and INSEAD
in Fontainebleau, France.

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