Okay, so existentialism and business or even leadership are not terms that are often heard in conjunction with each other. To me, this causes a somewhat furrowed brow and the occasional lofted eyebrow, given the relationship between existential concerns and business leadership. However, perhaps this situation is unsurprising. ‘Existentialism’ and all its linguistic derivatives, after all, are terms that often create a sense of the unknown, of something not quite graspable, to most people who hear or read it. Existentialism seems to be something ‘out there’ that only philosophers and academics who can decipher the writings of Jean Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard and others can come close to understanding.
Some do use the word to add a sense of fatality to their argument without, perhaps, fulling understanding the term. The New Statesman’s headline in June 2023 “The mortgage crisis is an existential threat to the Tories”, for example, would seem to hail the end of the Conservative Party. This isn’t really the case though as, despite interest rates hitting 17% in 1979 and the Tories losing the next election, the party still exists, and it will continue to do so after this next election too. Whilst existentialism is, as the name suggests, about existence, and we all face a range of real threats to our existence, it is much more about how we live our lives than the ending of them. So, it seems to me that there is a need to explore what existentialism is and its relationship to leadership.
Existentialism and Business Leadership
At their hearts, both are about ‘ways of being’, whether that be ways of being a leader, or more broadly, ways of being authentically yourself. Both have a focus on relations and relationships, whether these be between us and others, or between ourselves and the world around us. Both are concerned with freedom, choice, and responsibility and how we accept and exercise these. Both explore and deal with uncertainty, risk, and associated anxieties. Crucially, both have a focus on decision making and how we do this in the most effective and meaningful way.
This comparability goes deeper and becomes more nuanced the further we explore both. For example, a significant part of leadership is about creating meaning and purpose for the people who work for us, whilst how we derive meaning and purpose from our lives is central to existentialism. Leadership is about articulating, modelling, and demonstrating a set of values that others can subscribe to, whilst existentialism is about understanding the values that drive us and where they come from.
This relationship between leadership and existentialism is also apparent when we look at leadership approaches. For example, Authentic Leadership is, in effect, rooted in existentialism, given that existentialism is fundamentally about how we can live authentically. Authentic Leadership stresses the role of ethics and integrity in leadership and includes a requirement for self-knowledge, transparency in relations, and self-regulated positive behaviours in leaders. Existentialism teaches these as a means to live authentically. However, Authentic Leadership is not, as some have critiqued it, about laying the entirety of our souls bare for everyone to see, nor is it about an uncontrolled expression of self, warts and all, in front of all our staff. Equally, existentialism is not about very public expressions of self-reflection or the articulation of the anxieties we feel. It is far more about how we reflect internally to deal with these anxieties and make choices that are rooted in authenticity and our responsibilities to ourselves and others.
So, for me, leadership is an existential act. It is a way of being in the world. As such, existential understandings of ourselves and how we lead are both profoundly insightful and essential for effective leadership approaches that allow room for us to be authentically ourselves. Existential understandings of our values and beliefs, and of what inform these provide the clarity necessary to authentically embody values-driven leadership. They provide depth to our sense of purpose and the ways in which we draw meaning from our work and our lives. Existential understandings of how we respond to uncertainty and the anxieties that this creates in us provide the insights required to make authentic and effective decisions, despite the uncertainties that exist. Existential understandings of how we lead provide us with the vision to provide authentic, purposeful, and meaningful leadership to everyone we lead, no matter who we are or, indeed who we lead.
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