Question: Is it possible for leaders to demonstrate truly altruistic behaviour?

I’m currently reading – and enjoying – ‘Leading’ by Sir Alex Ferguson. By his own admission Sir Alex was surprised to have been invited by Harvard University to speak to MBA students and senior executive leaders about his views on leadership. This interest inspired him to collect his thoughts and capture them in a single text.

Despite recognising that his world is substantively different from most business organisations, the metaphor of sport and games is often used as a model for explaining aspects of leadership, management and economics.

This is certainly the case in terms of ‘Game Theory’, which is the study of situations where the result is influenced by how other participants decide to behave.

Take a simple game of noughts and crosses, tic-tac-toe, or Xs and Os (depending upon your cultural background). As you play the game you are influenced by how your opponent behaves, i.e. where she places her O to your X. In that sense your decisions are dependent upon your opponent’s.

Now let’s consider more advanced games than Xs and Os. In a game of football or soccer the coach will set out tactics prior to the game that take into account the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. As the game progresses these tactics may have to be altered to take account of how the opponents are responding, i.e. the coach’s leadership decisions are being influenced by decisions made by other participants.

The challenge of translating Game Theory into the world of leadership is usually one of semantics, the logic of which goes something like this: “Games involve opponents, those whom I lead are not my opponents, therefore game theory has no relationship to my behaviour as a leader.”

But I would suggest that the behaviour of every leader can be explained through reference to Game Theory. For the reality is that the challenge of leadership is essentially about enabling the organisation’s, team’s, group’s or corporation’s goals to be achieved. In that sense the leader’s behaviour is informed by these goals. That behaviour might be seductive, or inspiring, or commanding, or persuasive, or selfless, or generous, or deferential, or analytical, or whatever actions will allow the leader to comfortably achieve their goals.

That behaviour will change depending upon what the other participants (not necessarily opponents) are doing. These participants might be employees, customers, students, competitors, governors, policy makers, or anyone whose decisions can have an impact upon the leader, and their objectives.

It’s this interplay that underpins the leader’s behaviour, i.e. the leader’s behaviour does not happen in isolation from others and is driven by an awareness of how it relates to the short-term, or long-term, achievement of the organisation’s goals.

Such an assertion would imply that no leader’s behaviour is truly selfless. The definition of selflessness is: having little or no concern for oneself, especially with regard to fame, position, money, etc.

This often equates with the notion of altruism, where the individual is concerned with the welfare of others with no thought to their own interests or needs.

Yet true selflessness is a rare commodity in the world of leadership, especially where the individual leader is charged with having responsibility for meeting the needs of their own country, organisation, family, employers, or employees.

In such circumstances the leader must balance out the likelihood of ‘wins’ and ‘losses’ when taking decisions to act one way or another.

If we were to frame this from the perspective of the ‘beautiful mind’ of John Nash, the Nobel Prizewinner for economics, we might be able to breakdown and understand the ‘selfless’ leadership act to be a subtle form of self-interest.

Nash’s world of Game Theory goes a long way to help us to explain the behaviour of leaders, especially when faced with difficult decisions as they seek to reach a form of equilibrium. This is most notably represented in the cold war conflict where mutually assured destruction was prevented.

Now I can think of some leader’s whose behaviour appears to have little regard for their well-being or benefit. However, when I step back a bit further I see that it’s very difficult to say that their behaviour is not informed and driven to achieve the organisation’s goals. Such remarkably self-forgetful people interact with other participants in a ‘knowing’ fashion to achieve their goals – even when the outcome of that behaviour might be construed as ‘win-win’.

As ever academics have explored such selfless leadership behaviour and categorised and named them as: selective altruism – choosing when it suits the circumstances; reciprocal altruism – symbiosis; and, advantageous altruism – servant leadership. The apparent linking motivation between all of these versions of altruism is essentially intertwined with the needs of the organisation.

Viewed from such a perspective even the seemingly selfless acts of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can appear difficult to separate from the wider goals of the organisation, such as name recognition, employee motivation, recruitment, etc.

The question posed at the start of this article was: Is it possible for leaders to demonstrate truly altruistic behaviour?

To my mind it’s much more difficult for a leader to be altruistic than it is for an individual who is unencumbered by fulfilling an organisation’s goals. However, regardless of the dominance of ‘Game Theory’ interplay I think that a defining feature of great leaders is the truly altruistic act – which is totally devoid of any organisational gain.

Such acts might be few and far between but the inspirational leader will have the courage to act beyond the needs of the organisation – in fact possibly even against the interests of the organisation – in order to meet the needs of others.

I was told a story this week by my mother-in-law that revealed one of the most extraordinary altruistic acts, which – although not representative of a leader – demonstrates the humanity that must underpin such behaviour.

Jen Forrest 1900 – 1975, was my wife’s grandmother. She was “poor in money, but rich in friends”, which was all that concerned her. In the 1930’s her husband Andrew was employed as a mill worker on a three-day week such was the impact of the depression. Regardless of their own poverty, Jen was the town’s version of social services and she was known throughout the community as a person who would always put the needs of others beyond her own.

The following poem recounts a time when Jen took a pair of stockings off her own legs to give to a friend to allow her to attend her own husband’s funeral.

The final few lines perhaps connect with what should be the true inspiration for altruistic acts.

Funeral Stockings

She closed the door
On her grieving friend,
But only for an instant,
Before returning,
With a pair
Of threadbare stockings,
Removed without
A second thought,
To save a widow’s shame,
And here we are,
Eighty years on,
Recalling a selfless act,
Whilst the ladies
Of the town,
Who bought their silks,
Have long departed,
In the grasping anonymity,
That comes to those,
Who never gave
Their last.