LEADERSHIP STRATEGY: DO NOT TAKE THE FREEDOM (AND WILLINGNESS) TO SPEAK FOR GRANTED

Feedom speaks up

On February 4-11, 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin came together for a conference at Yalta to decide the shape and fate of Central and Eastern Europe. In what many call a ‘sell-out’, Roosevelt gave in to Stalin’s insistence that Russia be given de facto control over the countries falling inside what he considered a ‘safety zone’, including Poland, Hungary, The Baltics, Ukraine, The Czech Republic, Albania, Yugoslavia and the Eastern 1/3 of Germany. Churchill, mistrusting Stalin’s intentions, insisted on getting Russia’s leader to promise to allow democratic elections in Poland, a promise which was not kept.  

by Dr. John J Scherer

The Wall

 What came next for citizens living in CEE was the communist experiment, surrounded by a wall, where, as my friends over here put it: ‘Everyone supposedly owned everything, but no one really had anything’. 

• Scarcity. One Polish colleague told about standing in a queue over a block long as a young boy for 6-8 hours each week, waiting to buy bread and milk, only to be told before he got to the store that there wasn’t any.
• Trust was also an issue: ‘We had to be careful who we talked to, or even made eye contact with, because we never knew who was working for the secret police.’ As a result, people tended to trust their family and a few close friends. Everyone else was treated with what I would call ‘careful courtesy’.
• Mistakes could be costly. ‘Don’t screw up!‘ was the mantra for people at work. ‘Wait to be told what to do; that way it’s not your fault when something goes wrong.’
• Mission was often non-existent. ‘The important thing is to have a job, regardless of whether or not that job fits your abilities or interest. What you want is not important.’ As another Polish saying goes, ‘It doesn’t matter if you are standing up or lying down, your job and your 2.000zl a month is yours.’
• Authority was something imposed from above and was not really respected or valued, and people developed an automatic suspicion of leaders.

 ‘The Wall’ Comes Down

  In 1970, disgusted with another drastic hike in food prices, Polish dock workers from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk marched on Party Headquarters, creating a disturbance heard around the world. Not wanting to be seen as weak, the Soviet government cracked down, which only strengthened the Poles’ deep yearning for freedom. In 1980, this movement formally became a trade union, taking the name Solidarnosc (‘Solidarity’). In the Fall of 1989, with the weakening of the Soviet Union’s political hold on its Western entities, and a surging tide of Polish nationalism, Solidarnosc exploded into a series of nationalistic uprisings all across Central/Eastern Europe (CEE). Within months, Poland – and the rest of CEE – was free from foreign domination for the first time since Hitler’s blitzkrieg of September of 1939.

  Letting Your Voice Be Heard

 Imagine being suddenly told that you are free after 45 years of having much of your life determined by the government. How long would it take for you to discover what your parents and grandparents fought for – or only dreamed of having?   The very first time I gave a presentation in Poland six years ago – to a company’s 400 Sales Managers from across CEE – like I usually do, I stopped 5-10 minutes into the talk, and invited people to speak with someone nearby about what I had been saying. What they liked, didn’t like, what surprised or excited them. After a few minutes, I tinked a glass and asked them to share with me – and the group – what they had been saying with their partner. Silence!  I thought it might be a time lag with the translation, so I invited them again. Silence! So, like a good consultant (‘When in doubt, gather data‘) I said, ‘This has never happened to me before. What’s going on? Why is no one responding?’

 At least a full minute went by before a woman on the front row called me over and whispered – in English, fortunately: ‘Janek, we are not used to having our opinion asked for’. I thought that might be a reflection of the company’s culture, but then a man on the other side of the aisle called me over and whispered, ‘In the old days (code for ‘under communism’), there was no upside to speaking out in a group—only  risk.  Their responses stunned me. The enormity of what was happening in response to my ‘simple’ request to share their thoughts dawned on me, and I was actually speechless for a moment or two.   ‘OK’, I said. ‘I’d like you to imagine that in here, with me, for this next hour, you are safe and that I am VERY interested in anything you have to say.’ Slowly, very slowly, people began to speak out, and by the end of my talk it was as if a dam had burst, as more and more people raised their hands – and their voices – to be heard.

What a lesson—for me as well as them. I realized that liberty has provided us with many benefits and how much we in the West take for granted.