Passion and discipline: Don Quixote lessons for leadership

In his short film on leadership, Standford emeritus professor James March suggest Don Quixote’s example as a model for modern leaders. According to his perspective, the three characteristics we can learn from Quixote are imagination, commitment and joy. The idea behind this film is that rational over-thinking can hinder the leader’s aims.

The beginning of the film is misguiding. With a beautiful Spanish guitar as background music, we see alternating scenes of Spanish countryside scenes, Quixote’s wanderings, and different examples of before and after utterances from leaders like Lyndon B. Johnson, Bill Gates, Robert, Mac Namara and Dennis Green. Professor March juxtaposes modern uses of leadership, based on realistic expectations and clear successes, nothing farther from Quixote’s history of failures, with the persistence and self-knowledge that Quixote represents. What March wants to state from the beginning is that Quixote teaches us that the critical concerns of leadership are not technical questions of management or power; they are fundamentally issues of life. Quixote teaches us that life is to be challenged that the passion and discipline of a willful human spirit is a vital element of being a leader.

Imagination is the first characteristic we take from Quixote’s example. Imagination is necessary for leaders; it is the base of their vision, and Don Quixote is a good example of seeing what others don’t see, and not as a silly delusional behavior, but as a way to dream about where you want to get as a leader.  To be persistent with imagination it is necessary to be stubborn, some times oblivious of consequences. The core message from Quixote is that imagination is an arbitrary act of will, a passionate declaration of the human spirit, a refusal to accept the constraints of reality. A good leader should be uncompromisingly willful, attentive not to reality but to the sense of what ought to be. I cannot agree more with professor March. The examples he uses are up lifting and real, and we are invited to follow those examples: Corey Booker may be the most powerful one.

The second characteristic is commitment. And professor March asks what justifies commitment to a course of action, what justifies persistence in pursuing a vision? In a world that praises the logic of consequences, we explain our actions in terms of the favorable consequences we expect, the favorable things that would happen. But in many cases, experience leads to disillusion and disillusion leads to a retreat from commitment. But illusions are not broken when they are pursued not while expecting predetermined consequences, but as the natural obligation of his identity; it is a matter of self-knowledge. This was a surprising argument to justify self-knowledge: if you pursue what you want not because the honor, the fame or the money you will get, but for being consistent to your deepest identity things would no longer can be measured in terms of success or failure, but in terms of coherence with one’s own values.

The third characteristic is joy. Professor March describes it as an essential element of life and leadership. Life is full of comedy and tragedy, dark and light, joy and sadness. Laughter is an essential response to this combination. A good humor, music, games, celebrations and festivities, are as important as the solemnity of life, because all these things transforms the routines of business into moments of pleasure.

The last part of the film is dedicated to explain the three types of joy Quixote teaches to leaders. The first one is joy in engagement, and professor March describe it by saying “whoever you are be with your whole heart, not piece by piece, not part by part”. The second is Joy in identity, knowing who you are is going to give you the freedom to pursue your real interests, as opposed to those imposed by society. Probably the most profound quote of the fim is this one: “Quixote reminds us that if we trust only when trust is warranted, love only when love is returned, and learn only when learning is valuable, we abandon an essential element of our humanness.” The third characteristic is joy in beauty. And March explains that beauty is not a price that we seek to possess, but rather we try to act so as to be worthy of beauty.

I believe that this movie reflects the long experience of a seasoned leader. Professor March is inviting leaders to open their eyes and expand their views on leadership. In general, I consider this film a wonderful way to think about the difficulties of leadership, but also about the difficulties of life.