Interview with
Ruth Girardet
"The diversity of the group that the Aspen Institute brings together is, in itself, valuable, because it allows people to listen to different ways of interpreting the world."
- Ruth Girardet, Non-Executive Director, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Ruth, the world around us is changing on an almost daily basis, with so much more uncertainty and a crisis at every corner. There seems to be a lack of leadership. In these troubled times, what kind of leaders do we need?
It’s a big question. Clearly, we are looking for values-based leaders and we are looking for leaders who can access the values that drive them and are able to articulate those values. What is also important at the moment is to have leaders who are able to take a pause, who aren’t rushing to conclusions, and who aren’t rushing to public statements. I think we all must be able to take a step back occasionally and take our time. When the outside world is really difficult, that’s more important than ever.
There is a great essay by Keats (the poet) where he writes about where he gets his creativity from. He talks about negative capability, which is the ability to bare not knowing and to live with not knowing. I actually think a lot of leaders need to hone their ability for negative capability, so they need to be able to actually bare the fact that sometimes we can’t know. And now is one of those times.
You also have made it one of your missions to foster good leadership, to foster values-based leadership. You do it in your work at the university as well as your work in the leadership seminars. What made you decide to travel that journey?
It comes out of my own professional experience to be honest. I worked as a senior executive in a large retailer, and when I took the role, I had not fully understood how much leadership mattered and how much good leadership mattered. I was reasonably blasé about the idea: as long as I do my job well, we will accomplish good things. And it was only after a change in senior leadership that I realized how important it was to me that the people I worked for created an environment where we understood values and had a clearly expressed leadership vision.
In my experience, few people have the opportunity to take some time out and really consider what they hold most dear and what is at the core of their beliefs. This seminar is a great opportunity to take that time and create that contemplative space. I consider it a huge privilege to be involved in creating those spaces.
You actually helped to create our Aspen Leadership Seminar. What is your favorite part about it?
There is a secret part which I won’t share. *Laugh*.
I think the very first five minutes are my favorite five minutes. As you know, we send out these very substantive readers, and there are some challenging texts in there. I think a lot of the participants sort of think we are not really going to go there and then in the first five minutes, when everybody is sitting down and we have set out the rules of the road and we have given a little bit of context, one of us (moderators) will go: “So, what does Aristotle think about this?" And you can just feel it in the room, how everybody goes: “Wow, we are actually going to do this, we are actually going to read Aristotle?”. Yes, we will. And I really like that moment.
Last question I want to ask you: Do you have a favorite philosopher?
I will pick an old one and a new one. Every time I read the texts that we use in this seminar, I read the “Menu”. I think there is a huge amount in the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant that is important for us today, and it’s for me at the root of what I believe about human dignity. There are a lot of things that are really difficult, so I don’t want to say that they aren’t, but that fundamental idea of human rights rooted in the idea of human dignity really appeals to me.
Outside the canon of what we read, my current favorite philosopher is a German philosopher who's teaching in the United States called Yascha Mounk. He is a political philosopher and he writes about the rise of populism. He also writes about identity politics and the way in which the extreme right and the extreme left are re-enforcing some of their narratives at the moment, and I find that very interesting.