The term “leadership crisis” has been mentioned many times in recent weeks to characterise the current political impasse. As we celebrate the 42nd anniversary of the Victory Day of Bangladesh, it is more urgent than ever that we examine what leadership means in the context of Bangladesh, how a “crisis” in leadership has come about and what we can do to overcome it.
Dhaka Tribune recently sat down with Ejaj Ahmad, founder and president of Bangladesh Youth Leadership Centre (BYLC) that aims to create a new way of thinking about and teaching leadership in Bangladesh.
What was your motivation behind starting the BYLC? What do you think it can do to address some of the problems that we see in our society today, particularly in the political arena?
I was trained as an economist and although I studied abroad I came back to Bangladesh in 2003 because my heart was here and I started working as a research economist. While working with projects funded by the World Bank, UNDP and the Ministry of Commerce, I realised that the main reason that Bangladesh is poor is not because of money but because of our mindset.
Unless we can change the mindset and behaviour of people, we cannot change Bangladesh. I also realised that the main challenge facing our country is a lack of leadership and I wanted to do something about changing the quality of leadership in Bangladesh.
To set up your own organisation requires a lot of courage and a lot of money and I had neither. So I took a safer option and I went back to graduate school in the US. I was at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard for two years where I studied public policy and leadership. I came back to Bangladesh in 2008 to launch BYLC.
The reason I wanted to work with young people is because when I started BYLC I myself was fairly young and I thought young people would listen to me. The other reason is that more than 50% of the population in Bangladesh is below the age of 25, and therefore I thought any intervention targeted towards the development of the country should have a focus on youth.
Looking at the current political context, there are several things that come to mind – I think what we are seeing is a dearth of leaders who are compassionate, who care about others. We need leaders who engage with their hearts. At the same time you need leaders who are competent. Unfortunately, in our society today we see that either there are people who are compassionate but don’t have enough resources or are not competent enough. Or, people who are competent but who don’t care about others. For good leadership you need a combination of both. Competence and compassion are values we strive for at BYLC and these are the attributes we try to instill in young people through our leadership programme.
In recent years we have also witnessed several youth uprisings - passionate young people have came together at Shahbag and at the Shapla Chattar. While these movements demonstrated the willingness of the youth to engage, I think they also brought to the fore the divisions that exist in our society that for many years have been neglected. I think a root cause of Shahbag and Shapla Chattar is the divided education system – between English and Bangla medium and madrasa school systems. BYLC is the first organisation in Bangladesh that brought together students from these diverse backgrounds on a common platform to learn about leadership and then go to the community and practice what they learned in the classroom.
Let’s talk a little bit about the challenges that young people in Bangladesh face. For example, an education system that doesn’t encourage leadership, cultural norms that privilege age and status, and a political context that seems out of reach for a lot of people, to name a few. Young people who are capable of exercising a lot of compassion and competence might not want to engage with the political system as it exists right now. Drawing on your experience from working with BYLC, do you think such a grassroots approach can overcome some of these systemic challenges?
I think any sustainable movement has to start from the grassroots. However, the challenge with this approach is that it takes time. Change will not happen overnight.
You mentioned a few things for example, deference to authority. There is a common misconception in our society where we often relate authority with leadership. Authority is about the chair, the position. It’s a noun. Leadership is an activity it’s a process that anyone, regardless of their position in the authority structure can participate in.
The value of thinking of leadership in this way is that you empower young people to take ownership of their own problems in life. Instead of looking to authority to solve all our problems, we need to take ownership to solve our own problems. Because if the whole country is in a mess, if the system is in a mess and you are part of the system then you’re also contributing to this mess. It might be true that the politicians have a larger part in this mess but they are not the only stakeholders. You and I are also stakeholders in the system and acknowledging this is important.
Second, because of a cultural deference to age, it is difficult for young people to get attention and attention is the currency of leadership. However, I think young people can learn creative ways of engaging with authority and of turning authority figures into allies to make progress. So, I don’t see our work as being at the peripheries, work at the core is what Bangladesh needs.
I think change and adaptation will take time and that is also one of the undervalued qualities of leadership you need to ripen the issue, you need to give time for things to mature. The ability to diagnose a problem and to determine the right time to act is necessary.
You need people who are reflective who are committed to action, but who can also think. We need a combination of thinkers and doers. My assumption is that if you have a combination of these then people will have the courage to step outside of their comfort zone, to step out of the status quo and to work together to make progress.
Regarding our education system, I think there is one major flaw. Our education system rewards everything at an individual level; but leadership is not about “I”, it’s about “we,” about “us.” Leadership is not about promoting yourself or getting the limelight or to rise to a position of authority. Because we see leadership as being synonymous with power, everyone is running to get that power, but no one is thinking about whether Bangladesh is moving forward, whether we are making progress, building a more inclusive society or ensuring economic and social justice? I think this is due to a lack of understanding of what leadership means.
I am wondering a bit also about the motivation of young people and the pressures that they face at an individual level. They face enormous economic and social pressures – to succeed in the job market, make enough money to survive, be respected by their communities. So, even if they want to contribute to their community and country, they might be suffering from a lack of “bandwidth” to fit these issues in. How do you build resilience among your students to withstand these pressures of the real world? As far as I understand, the courses are usually not very long. So, how do you make sure that the graduates carry forward what they have learned?
I approach this issue with a sense of humility. Ultimately, it comes down to how you see the purpose of your life, about what really matters. I think the goal of human beings cannot be just to survive. I think the bigger purpose is to thrive, to grow in new ways, to connect to something that is bigger than yourself and to contribute to a larger cause.
In our course we try to challenge students to think about this larger purpose. In addition to giving students tangible skills, we help them question and explore what their purpose in life is. If you can connect to something that is bigger than yourself then I think that gives you resilience to disappoint people around you and to take the path less travelled. Of course, it is a difficult enterprise.
However, I also want to make clear that changing the world doesn’t mean you have to be poor or that you have to give up everything. We usually meet two types of young people in our courses – the type who are very ambitious, about their own goals and their careers and the other type who are very idealistic and they want to change the world.
I think you need a balance. Aspiration is your desire to do good for others and ambition is what you do for yourself. You need to find a balance between your ambition and aspiration. So, Bangladesh can be a priority but your ambition can also be a priority.
Helping people figure out how to make their lives meaningful is an integral part of teaching leadership. Leadership is not letting others define who you are. I think leaders are “originals.” They are not Xerox copies of other people’s expectations. Leaders learn from others but write their own stories. And how many of us can say that? What other people say don’t matter. What matters is, are you being true to yourself? That’s a conversation that people need to have with themselves and if these conversations can be facilitated then I think young people can make more informed choices about their lives and that’s what we try to do.
The media it seems also has a crucial role to play in changing people’s views about what is important and to highlight courageous work being done by youth.
Yes, absolutely. I think it’s unfortunate that we live in a glamour-obsessed world where things need to be seen as being “cool,” especially to the youth, to be attractive. Whereas, the work of leadership is difficult, and not necessarily glamorous or “cool.”
Focusing on the wrong things, such as glamour, is also part of the reason why we have a leadership crisis in Bangladesh, because that’s what the voters want. Our politicians are telling us what we want to hear, they are not engaging in leadership. They just want our authorisation to represent us in parliament. The task of leadership, on the other hand, is to help people face difficult reality and to collectively mobilise people to make progress. It’s a collective process, not an individual process.
There needs to be a paradigm shift in how we think about and approach leadership. I think the idea of the “lone hero” is no longer useful. Leadership now has to be about teams, groups, collective vision and shared purpose.
Since we have been conditioned to look for the wrong qualities in our leaders, we end up picking the wrong leaders to represent us. This is what we want to change through the work of BYLC. If young people can be taught what good leadership looks like, how to measure it and how to practice it then when they look at the politicians in the country they will know what qualities to look for. And that will have an enormous impact.
