Great leaders through the ages all have certain qualities in common, including ruthlessness, sharp intelligence and the ability to recognise and choose talented people.
“Infectious self-belief is the essential quality of leadership, as is the ability to conceive of yourself as a person with a sacred mission. And of course, the last quality is luck,” best-selling author and historian Simon Sebag Montefiore said recently at GIBS.
Speaking at the South African launch of his new book, The World - A Family History, Sebag Montefiore explained the tome deals with the story of humanity from prehistory to the present day, told through the one thing all humans have in common: family. His book is an epic tale that looks at families that have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Zulus, Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Krupps, Churchills, Kennedys, Castros, Nehrus, Pahlavis, and Kenyattas, Saudis, Kims, and Assads.
Democracy: a recent invention
While the idea of democracy and good governance has been around for centuries, Sebag Montefiore argued “democracy was always kind of flawed.” While Ancient Athens was a democracy, “it was also an aggressive empire and a slave owning culture.”
Sebag Montefiore argued democracies have many advantages, such as the ability to vote out rulers, but can fall into the hands of a majoritarian government.
Autocracies are able to make decisions instantly, which makes them incredibly dynamic and allows for policy consistency. “Chinese policy, for example, is much more consistent than American or British policy, where the government changes every 5 years.”
However, “the trouble with dictatorships is you can't get rid of them; and when they go down, they take the people with them. So this book is partly about that debate.
For all of democracy’s disadvantages, inconsistencies and the clownish characters it throws up as leaders, it's still the right system. When democracies mobilise, they are incredibly powerful; And that's what dictatorships always underestimate.”
Power families and modern day dynasties
While we may think of dynasties as a thing of the past, there is a dynastic resurgence going on particularly in Asia and also in Africa, Sebag Montefiore explained, and named India, Pakistan and Kenya as some of the countries where these families can be found. “There are also rulers that are in effect monarchies. Some of them are now in their third generation, like the Kim family of North Korea.”
“The Kim family is the only family in the world that has its own nuclear weapons. You can't get much more powerful than that in the 21st century,” he added.
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