Within human institutions – states, religions, armies, companies, schools – leadership is needed to help people reach from where they are to where they have never been and, sometimes, can scarcely imagine going. Without leadership, institutions drift and nations court growing irrelevance and ultimately disaster. Leaders think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first between past and future, the second between abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. Their first challenge is analysis, which begins with a realistic assessment of their societies based on its history, mores, and capacity. It is the intuitive grasp of direction that enables leaders to set objectives and lay down a strategy. For strategists to inspire the society, leaders must serve as educators, communicating objectives, assuaging doubts, and rallying support. The vital attributes of a leader in these tasks, and the bridge between the past and the future, are courage and character- courage to choose a direction among complex and difficult options, which requires the willingness to transcend the routine, and strength of character to sustain a course of action whose benefits and whose dangers can be only incompletely glimpsed at the moment of choice. Leadership is most essential during periods of transition, when values and institutions are losing their relevance, and the outlines of a worthy future are controversy.
The penalty for excessive ambition – what the Greeks called hubris – is exhaustion, while the price for resting on one’s laurels is progressive insignificance and eventual decay. Step by step, leaders must fit means to ends and purpose to circumstance if they are to reach their destinations. As Winston Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm, “Statesmen are not called to settle easy questions. They often settle themselves. It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.” At another instance, when a student asked Churchill about leadership, Churchill said, “Study History, Study History. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft”. Churchill was himself a prodigious student and writer of history who well understood the continuum within which he was working. History teaches by analogy, through the ability to recognize comparable situations.
Most leaders are not visionary but managerial. But during periods of crisis, whether war, rapid technological change, economic dislocation, the riskiest course of all. In fortunate societies, such times call forth transformational leaders. Their distinctions can be categorized in two types: the statesman and the prophet. Ordinary leaders seek to manage the immediate, great ones attempt to raise their society to their visions. Here I must ask the important question that do individuals matter I history? Great leaders mattered because they transcended the circumstances they inherited and thereby carried their societies to the frontiers of the possible. In this article, we shall reflect back on the lives of three great individuals who altered the course of history and their nations by filling in the shoes of leadership in the modern world, and they shall serve as a case study for the aspirant leaders at Nova.
Konrad Adenauer
During winter of 1945-46, fuel shortages obliged even Konrad Adenauer, who was to become chancellor four years later, to sleep in a heavy overcoat. Adenauer was by his background, fortuitously cast for a role that required at once the humility to administer the consequences of unconditional surrender and the strength of character to regain an international standing for his country among the democracies. Adenauer’s father, Johann, was determined to provide his children with educational and career opportunities. As a student, Adenauer achieved a reputation for commitment through his habit of plunging his feet into a bucket of ice water to overcome the fatigue of late-night studies. The coming decades of his life brought difficulty and instability. Adenauer escaped his fate by travelling peripatetically, never staying in one place for more than twenty-four hours. At a January 1946 Congress of the CDU’s important members in the British occupation zone in Herford, Westphalia, Adenauer elaborated on his principles and consolidated his leadership of the nascent party. Adenauer’s first public speech after the end of WWII was a preview of his subsequent political leadership. Adenauer asked an audience of thousand in the severely damaged main hall of the University of Cologne how it was possible that the Nazis had come to power. They had then committed ‘great crimes’, he said, and Germans could find their way toward a better future only by coming to terms with their past. In this way, Adenauer was proclaiming a strategy of humility. Germany needed to abandon many of its previous policies and attitudes, particularly the opportunistic manipulation of its geographic position. In September, the Bundestag voted for a chancellor who, by the constitution, required an absolute majority and who could only be removed by an absolute majority vote for a named successor. Although Adenauer was elected by a margin of only one vote in this parliament of a rump state, he managed to win four consecutive elections, serving fourteen years, something which speaks volumes about his political acumen. For a demoralized and defeated society, the passage to the restoration of democratic sovereignty presents one of the most difficult challenges to statesmanship. The victors are reluctant to grant an erstwhile enemy the legal authority, much less the capacity, to recover itself. He considered German rearmament to be necessary for the sake of Europe as well as for the recovery of Germany’s political identity. Having first discouraged public debate on the subject so as not to interfere with progress toward German membership in European institutions. In his six fateful years, Adenauer had brought his country from post-war partition, restrictions under the Occupation Statute and reparations to participation in the European community and full membership in NATO. The strategy of humility had achieved its goal of equality in a new structure for Europe that Adenauer’s inauguration had signified. Let us dive into the Chancellor’s office to grasp the prevalent thought process behind his leadership. In the office, the chairs and sofas dominated with a minimum technical paraphernalia, it had the character of a living room than a centre of power. His authority derived from his personality, which combined strength with dignity. His face left partially rigid by an accident in his forties, conveyed a staunch message, one was entering a world guided by principles and immune to slogans and pressure. He used to speak calmly, only occasionally raising his hand for emphasis. He was always well prepared on contemporary issues and never spoke about his personal life. Adenauer’s policy was based on treating the partition of the country as provisional, he believed that unification would come eventually through the dismantling of the soviet satellite orbit, the Federal Republic’s superior economic growth, the strength and cohesion of the Atlantic Alliance and internal tensions arising within the Warsaw Pact. Great leadership is more than an evocation of transitory exultation; it requires the capacity to inspire and to sustain vision overtime. Politics without a conscience tends towards criminality. Politics is a pragmatic action for the sale of moral ends. For his part, Konrad Adenauer did not linger over posterity’s judgement. When asked how he wished to be remembered, he simply replied “He had done his duty.”
Charles De Gaulle
There is not much literature available on the early life of Charles De Gaulle apart from the knowledge that he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the army before being promoted to a Brigadier General for his outstanding command of an armoured Brigade. Then, later on, he was appointed as a senior advisor in the Ministry of Defence. After Hitler’s attacks on France and subsequent destruction of France, De Gaulle was present in London, from where he organized a resistance movement against the government of France who desired to surrender to Hitler. To the majority of his countrymen, he was unknown and unpopular, a junior minister in the government who resisted against the policies of government. Before 1940, De Gaulle had been known as an excellent solider and strategic analyst but nothing suggested that one day he would emerge as a mythic leader. In 1915, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre in recognition of his outstanding leadership in daring reconnaissance missions in the no man’s land. He was a leader who had been forged in the battlefield. De Gaulle had learned German in school, and while in prison, he consumed German newspapers with the appetite of an eager student and the curiosity of a journeyman military analyst. He wrote extensively of the German war effort, read novels, engaged in spirited discussions of military strategy with his fellow prisoners and even delivered a series of lectures on civil-military relations throughout French history. Much as he pinned to return to the front, internment was his graduate school. It was also a crucible of solitude. In his prison notebook, the twenty-six-year-old de Gaulle wrote: “Dominating oneself ought to become a habit, a moral reflex acquired by a constant gymnastic of the will, especially in the tiniest things: dress, conversation, the way one thinks.” A sensitive reader and author of poetry as a schoolboy, de Gaulle was withdrawn into solitude, a price of statesmanship. Under normal circumstances, with his battlefield experience, promotion to Brigadier General and intellectual brilliance, de Gaulle might have aspired to top command in the army and after another decade or so of service, perhaps to a position in the French cabinet. That he would, instead, emerge as the symbol of France itself was scarcely conceivable. Yet leaders who alter history rarely appear as the endpoint of a linear path. He conjured up visions that transcended objective reality, in the process persuading his audiences to treat them as fact. For de Gaulle, politics was not the art of the possible but the art of the willed. “Reasons of state”: that is the flexible pursuit of the national interest based entirely on a realistic judgement of circumstances. Under de Gaulle, France would now seek to exploit the multiplicity of states in Central Europe by encouraging their rivalries and exploiting their divisions in a manner that would ensure its own status as always stronger than any possible combination of them. During WWII, an important question faced de Gaulle: how to realise his vision with such meagre forces? De Gaulle understood that he had few military options. He therefore decided to focus on creating a geographical base for legitimacy by rallying to his side the dispersed forces of the French forces. De Gaulle became a symbol of France’s political recovery by having a staunch stance against his allies to keep France’s conquered territories. Indeed, his impulse, consistent and in many ways heroic, to defend France’s historic identity in the face of great power disparities became a prerequisite to restoring France’s greatness. De Gaulle understood that before long, his vision need to be realised in France itself. He carefully prepared himself for that battle. In dealing with Churchill and Roosevelt, de Gaulle acted as if he were already a head of a government and never lose sight of the mission whose major task would come after victory. The extraordinary metaphysical elevation of de Gaulle’s oratory expressed his faith in the singularity of his country. The liberation of France was treated as a purely French achievement. By proclaiming it to be so, he was persuading his listeners that it was so, the creation of political reality by sheer force of will. The unflinching physical courage he displayed in those days helped to cement his leadership of France. The most notable citation by de Gaulle sums up his struggle, “The passionate have lived, the reasonable have survived.”
Throughout his leadership of the Free France, de Gaulle’s statements and actions had evoked a common theme: to reconstruct a legitimate and powerful French state, which alone could restore order after the liberation and deal with the Allies as an equal in the endgame against Germany. Forgetfulness, paradoxically, is sometimes glue for societies that would not otherwise cohere. By the end of 1945, French were living in a state of spiritual as well as material penury. Reforms that I more placid times might have been achieved in decades were unveiled in weeks. French women were able to exercise the right to vote for the first time, fulfilling de Gaulle’s longstanding conviction that a modern society required a universal suffrage. De Gaulle demonstrated that revolutionary changes did not require a revolution. He stood between communists and free market liberals, renters and property owners, recalling the equipoise the Athenian Lawgiver Solon displayed toward the rich and the poor of his society. “Before them both I held my shield of might, and let not either touch the other’s right”. In his years of power, de Gaulle took France from a destructed nation towards regaining its prominence at the world stage.
The prophet is defined by his vision while the statesman is defined by his analytical ability and diplomatic skill. The prophet is in the quest of the absolute, and for him compromise can be a source of humiliation. For the statesman, compromise can be a stage on a road made up of comparable adjustments accumulations of nuance but guided by the vision of the destination. De Gaulle defined his goals in the visionary mode of a prophet, but his execution was in the mode of a statesman. The legacy of leadership needs to be inspirational not solely doctrinal. De Gaulle led and inspired his followers by example and not by prescription. De Gaulle had to define his vison while he was in the process of implementing it, and it was the French people whom he had to convince at distinct stages. The price that needs to be paid for leadership is unceasing self-discipline, the constant taking of risks, and a perpetual inner struggle. One day somebody said to Napoleon as they were looking at a noble monument, “How sad it is?”, “Yes” came the reply “As sad as Greatness”.
Lee Kuan Yew:
Many have heard of the miracle of Singapore but few have known the genius statesman behind that miracle. Lee kuan yew was raised with his extended family- including seven cousins in his maternal grandfather’s house, where his parents shared a single room with their five children. From these childhood experiences, filial piety, frugality, and a prizing harmony and stability were early imprints on his mind. A clever but at times a rebellious student, the twelve-year-old Lee graduated at the top of his primary school class, thereby gaining admission to the Raffles Institution alongside 150 of the best students of all ethnicities and classes in Singapore and Malaya who had been admitted exclusively on the basis of merit. Then as now, the Raffles Institution was the most rigorous English language secondary school in Singapore and the training ground of the city’s future elite. They were all part of the easy old boy network nurtured by the British colonial education system. He dutifully made plans to study law in London, being placed first in Singapore and Malaya in the senior Cambridge examinations. Convinced that the welfare was the highest form of civilized society. Lee was an admirer of post war reforms of prime minister Clement Attlee’s Labor government as well as Indian Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s statist economic policies. By the time of Lee’s return to Singapore in August 1950, two major problems lingered: housing and corruption. Lee has returned with the intention of practicing law but was quickly drawn into politics. At age thirty-one, he founded the People’s Action Party(PAP), within five years, galvanized by his fearsome energy, it dominated the island’s political landscape. After Lee’s PAP secured a parliamentary majority in May 1959 elections, Lee was appointed Prime Minister, a position he held for three decades. Lee appointed an impressive cabinet including an economist and a journalist. Lee included businessmen in his cabinet and chose them to lead the various development boards. Lee moved quickly to eradicate corruption, his rigorous enforcement of Singapore’s laws buttressed its reputation as a safe place to do business. Lee famously said” You need men of strong character, good mind, strong convictions. Without that Singapore cannot make it. In PAP’s first nine years in power, Lee set aside one third of the budget for education. Similarly, Lee made public health a priority, within one generation, Singapore transformed itself from a disease ridden slum into a first world metropolis. After Singapore combined in the Malaysian Federation, Lee’s immediate concern was to build a military capable of deterring Indonesian aggression. Lee said that there are books to teach you how to build a house, repair engines, or write a book but he did not find a book on how to build a nation. He later remarked that “A nation is great by its size alone but it is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people and the quality of their leaders which ensures it an honorable place in history”. That is why Lee adopted “Let History Judge” as his operating maxim. While building an economy, he prioritized textile manufacturing, followed by simple electronics and ship repair, a stepping stone to shipbuilding. While other leaders of newly independent states rejected multinationals, Lee recruited them. He later said about this that “others will not invest in a losing cause; it must look to be a winning cause”. Greening the city became a high priority, reducing air pollution, planting trees and designing infrastructure to incorporate natural light. Singaporeans could be fined for jaywalking, neglecting to flush a toilet or littering. Lee even requested a weekly report on the cleanliness of the restrooms at Changi Airport- which for many travelers would provide a first impression of Singapore. He gave urgent priority to education. He frequently revised the nation’s industrial and social targets upwards. The strategy worked.
In the decades to come, Lee would be admired for his candor as much as for his intelligence by presidents and prime ministers around the world. Lee was respected by leaders of states far more powerful than his own to a unique degree because he furnished insights that enabled them to grasp their own essential challenges. Lee’s reading of foreign affairs was like his analysis of Singapore’s domestic requirements, based upon his perception of objective reality. Lee wrote” When I travel, I am watching how a society, an administration is functioning. Why they are good?”
An assessment of Lee’s legacy must begin with the extraordinary growth of Singapore’s per capita gross domestic product from 517$ in 1965 to 156,777$(2025). The annual GDP growth averaged 8% well into the 1990s. It is one of the most remarkable economic success stories of modern times. He prized the ethnic diversity of Singapore as a special asset, working assiduously to prevent outside forces from intervening in domestic disputes and thus also preventing his country’s independence. Lee believed he was put into this world to accomplish progress for his society and to put it into the extent possible, the world at large. He was disinclined to waste the time allotted to him. Lee told an interviewer three years before his death, “It was circumstances that created me”. Citing a Chinese proverb, he said, “A man cannot be judged until his coffin is closed.” Every evening when he was in Singapore, Lee sat by the beside of her beloved wife and read to her aloud books, sometimes poems including Shakespeare. Most significantly, Lee statesmanship illustrates that the best determinants of a society’s fate are neither its material wealth nor other conventional measures of power but rather the quality of its people and the vison of its leaders. As Lee said,” If you are just realistic, you become pedestrian, plebian, you fail. Therefore, you must be able to soar above reality and say, this is also possible”.
Concluding Remarks
The period in which these leaders had grown up was transformative in a cultural sense, the political and social models of the west were changing from an aristocratic model of leadership to a middle-class and meritorious model. The origins of these leaders far from power lent them perspective, allowing them to articulate the national interest and transcend the conventional wisdom of the day. Another factor common to each leader was a devout religious upbringing. These religious habits instilled in them self-mastery and preference for taking the long view, two essential attributes of statesmanship which these leaders exemplified. Similarly, each understood the importance of solitude, these leaders benefited from the stillness and reflection. A leader does not undertake fundamental economic reforms or seek peace with historic adversaries or build successful societies without offending entrenched interests. Such is the price of making history.
The change driven by technologies which mediate our experience of the world and our acquisition of information, all this has developed without understanding its long term implications for leadership. Under these conditions, reading a complex book carefully, and engaging with it critically, has become as counter-culture an act as was memorizing an epic poem in the earliest print age. Deep literacy is engaging with an extended piece of writing in such a way as to anticipate an author’s direction and meaning. Ubiquitous and penetrating yet invisible, deep literacy was the background radiation of the period in which these leaders came of age. Intense reading can help leaders cultivate the mental distance from external stimuli and personalities that sustain a sense of proportion. When combined with reflection and the training of memory, it also provides a storehouse of detailed and granular knowledge from which leaders can reason analogically. More profoundly, books offer a reality that is reasonable, sequential and orderly. Most importantly for leadership, reading creates a “skein of intergenerational conversation”, encouraging learning with a sense of perspective. Finally, reading is source of inspiration for leaders. For political elite to render meaningful public service, education and character is necessary. As we have seen, leaders with world historical impact have benefited from a rigorous and humanistic education. Such an education begins in the formal setting and continues for a lifetime through reading and discussions with others. Good character does not assure worldly success, or triumph in statecraft, but it does provide firm grounding in victory and consolation in failure. At the beginning of the article, the test of leadership was described as the capacity for analysis, strategy, courage and character. The criterion by which to judge a leader in history remains unchanged: to transcend circumstances by vision and dedication. It is the capacity of leaders to understand the situation in which their societies found themselves, an ability to devise a strategy to manage the present and shape the future, a skill in moving their societies towards elevated purposes, and a readiness to rectify shortcomings. We cannot choose our external circumstances but we can always choose how we respond to them. It is the role of leaders to help guide that choice and inspire their people in its execution.
Published in NOVA, May 1st, 2026.