Evaluating leaders — Competence, Convictions and Character

[I wrote this on 14 Apr 2021. It was first published on wongyann.medium.com ]

An unlikely intersection about three things I’ve been thinking about (Christian leadership, Asian-style conservatism and the unstable leadership transition of the PAP) led to this post. In my opinion (and in my former experience as a teacher and a middle manager) we tend to evaluate leadership (including when deliberating future leaders) on too few criteria. I’m going to suggest 3 criteria here (unfortunately they all start with “C”), and briefly discuss two more Cs — credibility and charisma.

#1 — Competence

Competence, the first C, is perhaps the easiest and least controversial. Competence entails all the aptitudes, abilities and skill sets required to perform the job of a leader, which (for most leadership roles) includes a certain degree of intelligence and the ability to make sound judgements under pressure. Some folks are tempted to include certain personality traits under this category, which I disagree(unless somehow it’s necessary for that particular leadership role). I think leaders can vary across a whole spectrum of personalities and leadership styles, although different personalities (and leadership styles) do have certain strengths and weaknesses that the individual leaders will be well served to be self-reflexive about.

One thing to take note about choosing future leaders is the problem of “the Peter Principle”, i.e. we often select future leaders from a pool of candidates who have arisen to prominence using a skill set which is irrelevant (or even antithetical) to being a good leader, thus setting them (and the organization) up for failure. The civil service uses the concept of “current estimated potential (CEP)” to circumvent the Peter principle. Much has been written and critiqued about the CEP approach elsewhere, and I won’t discuss it here.

Another approach is to subject your leadership candidates to a long runway of leadership apprentice, where he/she practices leadership within a smaller unit/team while trainers and mentors come alongside the candidate to both nurture as well as to evaluate the candidates. For such an approach, the organization must be willing to accept that some candidates will fail the evaluation, and not to be tempted to see such candidates as “sunken costs” which the organization must push through no matter what. A rigorous leadership selection process is resource intensive, but a steep investment might be still worth it not just to ensure the right person gets the job, but perhaps more so that the wrong person does not get the job.

In my own experience in schools as well as in the civil service, we often narrow down competency to a mix of intelligence + productivity. I invented the word “zai-ness” to describe this particular mix many years ago. (Not surprisingly, “zai-ness” is quite closely aligned with the concept of “merit” when comparing students in a meritocratic race). Not only do I feel that this measure of competency is too narrow, but it also suffers from the Peter Prinicple. In the school context, a zai classroom teacher does not necessarily make a zai Head of Department, not just because the skill sets are different (leading adult teachers =/= managing students), but also psychological factors such as how the educator feels about herself and her role, the mental drain of leadership-level meetings etc.

#2 — Convictions

I think this is the criteria which in Singapore we least understand and least think about. Our convictions are a result of value judgements we developed over the course of our own lives, and are heavily (if not entirely) influenced by our own lived experiences. Different people have different convictions because they have different lived experiences. In a school context, different educators have different philosophies of education, and what kind education is considered “good education”. In a church context, Christians from different denominations may have different convictions on what makes good church governance (shaped by slightly different readings of the Bible, but also shaped by how they were influenced by other Christians, and their own positive or negative experiences with Christian leadership). In a country context, different political parties have different convictions about what makes good governance of a country. Much has already been written about the PAP’s own conviction in pragmatism and technocracy (among other things) as the best way forward to govern Singapore.

For a leadership selection point of view, convictions matter greatly (and arguably even more so that competency) because while competencies can be nurtured over time, convictions stay relatively immutable. Some organizations might require their future leaders to be closely aligned with the current leaders on certain issues of convictions (and for the case of the church, rightly so). For other organizations (like profit driven companies), convictions matter little as long as leaders deliver on pre-established bottom lines.

Back to the context of Singapore’s political future, we (as citizens) should learn to separate the difference between the PAP choosing its next leader (as a political party) and what we as citizens we would like to see from our next PM. That is because the incumbent 3G leadership’s convictions on good governance may not mirror our own, and furthermore as a political party, there would be some priority placed on perpetuating their convictions which they believe strongly to be true (be it pragmatism, technocracy or what not). [Note: I am aware that the 4G leaders are asked to determine among themselves who will be the “first among equals”, but it is the 3G who determines who gets to be candidates in the first place, and (I suspect) this may help to explain why certain politicians such as Halimah Yacob, Tan Chuan Jin and Tharman were ruled out from consideration years prior.]

#3 — Character

In some ways, this is the most controversial criteria. I have met organizations who care little about their leader’s moral character as long as they deliver results. I am going to argue that this is mistaken. All leaders in all organizations, no matter what our convictions of good leadership are, are asked to be servants to some parties outside of themselves. Even for a for-profit company, the CEO is asked not just to maximize profits, but to serve (in some fashion) the employees under his care, his clients, as well as his shareholders. The bare minimum character requirement of any leader is when he is making a decision which would pit his own self-interest against his responsibility of serving those he is asked to serve, he would have the moral fortitude to choose the latter and not the former. Not every leader meets such bare minimum requirements.

For other organizations, and especially the church, the list of character requirements goes way higher than that bare minimum. (Thankfully, the bible is explicit about this and goes in some detail on character requirements of a church leader). The big problem for character requirements is evaluation. Character is easy to fake and to “perform” if you know what behaviors people are looking out for. It is perhaps for this reason why moral scandals feels like a betrayal, be it a CEO embezzling money, a church leader enabling and protecting sexual predators, or a politician involved in marital infidelity (two recent Singaporean politicians, Michael Palmer and Yaw Shin Leong have stepped down in recent years because of this). We feel our leaders betrayed us when they reveal themselves to be someone to be different from who we thought they were.

There is an interesting interaction between our own convictions and our own evaluation of character. Returning back to the example of Palmer and Yaw, not everybody agreed that their adultery was a reasonable cause for them to resign from Parliament and deprive Singapore of their service. This is because we (the citizens) have differing convictions on what makes a good politician, and whether marital fidelity is a necessary indicator of sufficient moral character to be a good politician. Another interesting example is the case of Ivan Lim, who had to step down from running in the 2020 elections after being accused of being elitist and condescending. I wonder if Ivan Lim was a politician in the 1970s, people would have been much more forgiving of his character limitations (or maybe even viewed that a desirable trait) than they would have been in 2020.

Here’s a more recent example: just a few weeks ago, Minster of Education Lawrence Wong evoked the argument of “let’s be careful not to import culture wars to Singapore” in parliament when talking about MOE’s position on transgender students. In the eyes of some citizens, that he would make this argument in public is more than sufficient to label him as a “transphobe” and lacking moral character to serve in office (where he is responsible for the hundreds of thousands of students under his care). Others disagree. Again, this is because we hold different convictions on what kind of people we would like our political leaders to be, and we evaluate their character through the lens of our own convictions.

That being said, I do think there is enough overlap for most organizations to pay some attention to the character of leadership candidates. No ideological faction has a monopoly on nasty, cruel, self-interested, power-hungry or self-righteous individuals. For most organizations, it would be in the organization’s best interests to be able to detect and rule out candidates who exhibit copious amounts of such character flaws from leadership contention (yet be reasonable enough to realize that no one is totally free from character flaws at all).

Credibility and Charisma

I’m going to talk briefly about why I think “credibility” and “charisma” are both unhelpful concepts when used to evaluate leaders. Both cannot be defined precisely, and both are also evaluated through the lens of our own convictions.

“Credibility” to me just refers to the very subjective sense we feel when we feel that someone can be “trusted”. That is not to say we don’t offer evidence of someone’s credibility (usually some narrative of “track record”), but what we count as evidence is subjective and changes from person to person. Some felt that Lawrence Wong’s work in leading the nation through the COVID pandemic counts towards his track record, but others would argue that his position on transgender students has robbed him of all his credibility.

I argue that “charisma” works similarly, but at a more visceral and less deliberative level. When we say someone is charismatic, it is because we feel charmed and drawn to that person on a visceral level. Yet, is charm a strictly objective trait, or is it a subjective resonance between the charmer and the charmed? Calvin Cheng recently wrote about how Lee Kwan Yew was a strongly charismatic figure, which was why Singapore could survive without other charismatic politicians since LKY was around. Yet, was LKY universally praised for his charisma? Here’s a litmus test — if someone said the same things word-for-word LKY did, today instead of in the 1960–70s, would he still be considered charismatic today, or would he receive widespread revulsion for being condescending, heavy handed and bigoted?

LKY apologists may argue that he would be better at “reading the times” and would change his words and rhetoric accordingly. That may very well be true, but it doesn’t contradict my point about how “charisma” is evaluated through subjective filters. I think we massively underappreciate how much our historical and social situation shapes not just our deliberative evaluations on what traits makes a good leader, but even our visceral evaluations such as “hey I like this guy”.

I would argue that in the 1960s, Singaporeans were yearning for leadership figures which are strong-willed, assertive, and “have a backbone” because those were the leadership qualities which we admired then, and made us feel safe then. But in 2020, we’re yearning for leadership figures who are soft-spoken, gentle, authentic, kind, compassionate and empathetic, because these are now the leadership qualities which we admired, and make us feel safe now.

That doesn’t mean that Singapore politicians can’t eventually catch on and start “performing” certain behaviors to “manufacture credibility” which is in no way related to their competency (incidentally, this is the PAP’s argument for meritocracy, pragmatism and technocracy). It just means that — despite our best efforts — evaluating and choosing a future leader, be it for a company, school, church or a nation, is much more reliant on historical contingencies and plain chance (or “destiny” if you prefer) than many of us would have liked or hoped.