7. Plato on Leadership

Management consultants can achieve nothing without corporate leaders to sponsor their work, because they can have no executive authority within their clients’ organisations. A group of corporate leaders, rather than a single individual, is likely to sponsor management consultants’ work in a large, complex organisation. Management consultants may have some influence over the membership of the groups that sponsor their work, and how they perform their roles, so they need to have a point of view about the kind of leaders they need as their sponsors. Leaders are typically characterised as people who can bring about transformational organisational change, by contrast with managers, whose expertise is said to lie rather in dealing with day-to-day operations. Plato provided a complex and nuanced account of leadership in the “Republic”, in which knowledge of the enduring truths of the Forms was the fundamental characteristic of a leader. This account resonates with some modern leadership theory, which emphasises the need for leaders who are committed to enduring principles and values. While Plato focuses on the centrality of leaders’ intellectual and moral qualities, his ideas are quite compatible with leaders’ involvement of a wide community of people in giving effect to their visions.