What Can We Learn from Nelson Mandela?

Nelson Mandela's death might be a fitting moment in time to step back and reflect on his leadership, and on ours. What can you and I learn from Madiba? And what kind of leader do you and I want to be? Three principles jump out that turned Mandela into the transcendent leader he eventually became.

One of the great statesmen of our time has left us.

When I heard of Mandela's passing, I could not help but recall the dinner in Washington almost two decades ago, in 1994, when I was honored to meet the newly elected president as he received the Africa Prize for Leadership.

I was immediately struck by the then South African president’s humility, coupled with his straight talk. Instead of talking about himself and his accomplishments, he sternly reminded those of us present to "exert ever greater efforts" to make good on our commitment to make the world a better place.

What I most remember from that evening is my tears of inspiration, and renewing my vow to make my life mean something.

Humility

Five years later, when Mandela was asked by The New York Times's Suzanne Daley what he considered his greatest accomplishments, he said, “they are not my accomplishments. 

"Everything I have done is to do with the ANC [African National Congress]. I do not make the decisions alone. When I decide to act, it is something that we discuss. I think it is a mistake to think in terms of the Mandela years. It is the era of the liberation forces.” 

This is not just pseudo-modest talk. When Mandela was elected, he gave up the presidential mansion to his co-president (and former archrival) Frederik de Klerk. 

And after being in office barely a year, he invited the widows of former presidents, his sworn enemies who had locked him away on Robben Island for 18 years, to tea; guests included Betsy Verwoerd, whose husband Hendrik F. Verwoerd had been a principal architect of apartheid. 

The 94-year-old former first lady was too frail to come, so Mandela traveled to the whites-only enclave where she lived to meet her. 

Anger Management

Mandela talked with Bill Moyers in a 1991 interview about how he had managed his own feelings of rage during his years of imprisonment at Robben Island, an environment that would turn anyone into a wretch of hateful bitterness. How did Mandela keep his hatred in check despite torture and blatant injustice? He agreed that “there was a lot of cruelty on myself and my colleagues.” But Mandela found common ground with his jailors:

"You must also understand that the wardens who worked with us are themselves workers, are themselves human beings, with problems, who are also exploited, the victims of the system. And one of our objectives was to ensure that we improved the relations between ourselves and these wardens, help them in their own problems. 

"And in that way, you forget about anything that is negative, like hate. You are dealing with human beings and you want them to live in peace with his [sic] people. You want them also to go and spread the same message to their people as we want to spread to our own people. And in that situation it is very difficult to find room for hate."

Breakdown to Breakthrough

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Mandela was driven by seeing opportunity, never falling into victimhood. Instead of giving up in prison, Mandela turned his time of isolation into an opportunity to learn and grow.

Each week, another inmate would give a workshop on what he knew. One week it was a doctor; another it was a carpenter; another it was Mandela himself, a trained lawyer. Far from having prison beat them down, Mandela and his fellow prisoners turned that breakdown into a breakthrough.

Mandela had spent decades of enforced isolation in prison. During that time of isolation, he developed a resolve of steel. Upon his release, Mandela emerged with utmost clarity on what was needed to end apartheid and build a modern democracy in South Africa.

What do you say? What made Nelson Mandela the leader he was? And: what characteristics of Mandela can you emulate in your own leadership? I look forward to reading you on my blog: http://thomaszweifel.blogspot.com/.

 
Dr. Thomas D. Zweifel is a Partner & Managing Director at Manres AG in Zurich, Switzerland, and the author of seven books such as The Rabbi and the CEO (SelectBooks, 2008, with co-author Aaron L. Raskin; also available in German, Polish, Russian; finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Foreword Award of the Year), which tells many stories about Nelson Mandela.