Questions of Character

In this book, Joseph Badaracco explores serious fiction in search of leadership examples for us to explore and learn from.

Intriguing considering that most business books does not deal with such topics in literature but rather historical figures and other leaders in various forms or other.

He always starts each chapter with a question, starting from the dreams to reflection. A very structured approach in my opinion, as everyone starts with a dream and only upon reflection can we then learn from successes or failures.

He asks

1) "Do I have a good dream?"
Arthur Miller's Death of Salesman is then used as the serious fiction for this topic. In it, the salesman had big, great dreams... which were far away from his realities. In escaping from reality, he fails miserably not only in his job, but ultimately also in his relationship with family and his son. Resultant ending culminated in his suicide to earn insurance for his son whom was probably already a failure, but he had still high hopes for.

2) "How flexible is my moral code?"
Tells the story of Chinua Achebe's Things fall apart. A leader who stood by his principles so strongly that he refuses to accept other ideas and other people's opinions. In short, the leader failed eventually to repel the British Colonialists and committed suicide.

3) "Do I have unsettling role models?"
Perhaps the most poignant tale amongst the stories. Allan Gurganus's Blesses Assurance: A Moral Tale, tells of a young man who was so affected by an unlikely role model during his time working as a insurance agent, that he somehow still remembers after nearly forty years later when he suffered an heart attack. He had tried to help to poor old folks in paying their insurance until he himself who is not well-to-do could not afford to. But he translated this in his later years, by doing community service, building an ethical business but at the same time still feel guilty about his eventual inability to help them.

4) "Do I really Care?"
F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Love of a Tycoon. A story of a committed and determined business leader in Hollywood's film studios who used his patience, courage and tenacity to continue his the film production business but at the cost of personal family and eventually his life.

5) "Am I ready to take Responsibility?"
Joseph Conrad's The Secret Sharer. The story of a new captain of a ship who took the huge risk of taking secretly a sailor whom had potentially commited a crime in another ship. Along the way, he learns about the nature of leadership and steering a thin line between effective command of his ship and maintaining his desire to assist the sailor for his escape.

6) "Can I resist the flow of success?"
Louis Auchincloss I come as a Thief. A pretty sad story of how a very successful lawyer with promising career ahead of him, took into the path of destruction by choosing to pursue a criminal activity even though he had a choice not to. But he took the courage to expose himself and eventually took responsibility of his ill-intentioned choice and paid the price of losing everything.

7) "How well do I combine principles and pragmatism?"
Robert Bolt's A Man for all Seasons. The story of Thomas More who uses wit, humour while maintaining his strong principles in the face of King Henry.

8) "What is sound reflection?"
Sophocles Antigone. Tells story of Antigone and Creon. Both individuals whom I think had perhaps been too quick to make decisions without thinking through their actions. If a fair measure reflection was done, perhaps the end tragedy would not have occurred.

Good read.... we should ask ourselves these questions all the time....