Leadership and Character, or a Little Touch of Harry

Abstract

What can we learn from Shakespeare’s Henry V concerning the nature of leadership in business studies? According to Albert Danielsson, contemporary discussions of leadership tend to view the subject almost exclusively from below - i. e. from the perspective of the led - an attitude which obscures the challenges of leadership, especially in an age of high technology. Leadership must involve guidance through coordination based on trust. Paradoxically, leadership is therefore institutionalized and yet requires individuals in order to institutionalize the requisite confidence in established procedures. Since the maintenance of credibility and trust is essential to leadership, it is argued that leadership cannot be institutionalized without qualities of character. This leads the author to identify elements relevant to the role of character in leadership in Shakespeare’s tetralogy, Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. The tetralogy, it is argued, can be taken as an epic of leadership to the extent that Henry comes to embody the virtues that were so clearly lacking in Richard and his father. His character incorporates the public and the private, the institutional and the personal in a seamless unity. Shakespeare presents us with an ensemble of example and counter-example for distinguishing real leadership from its counterfeits. The chapter contends that literary modes of presentation such as the tetralogy play an important role in showing us how to understand and represent such a nebulous phenomenon as character. The result of an absence of leadership/character qualities may be seen in certain damaging practices of the “post-business” society, such as the hostile take-over.