Sistemas de acondicionamiento e instalaciones

The question of how to educate leaders has long exercised the minds of philosophers, educationists and policy-makers, as well as those of some leaders themselves. Both Plato and Aristotle had famous, even if not altogether successful, attempts at educating leaders, notably Dionysus II of Syracuse and Alexander the Great of Macedonia respectively.

Machiavelli’s attempt to educate the younger Lorenzo de Medici also springs to mind. Today it is no different. We all know how the education of future leaders preoccupies most of the world’s governments and business schools. It is the subject of innumerable policies, schools and executive development programmes and sustains armies of advsiors, consultants, executive trainers and coaches

But returning to England at the age of 26, I was someone curious to explore the British institution, the public school, in its recent form which evolved in

the 18th and 19th centuries as the breeding ground for political and military leaders.

A chance meeting took me to one such iconic public school. Eton College.

For all its controversy and attraction, one thing I believe Eton teaches is creativity and imagination. The school was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI, whose dream was to build boys of good character, competent at reading, Latin and music. The scholars were to be housed, clothed, fed and educated for free. Throughout nearly five and a half centuries, the college has never closed, despite wars, floods and fires. There are now over 1,000 fee-paying boys who live in 24 houses in the care of housemasters. The pupils arrive at Eton at the age of thirteen and remain there for five years.

If you follow their progress after Eton, many of them take up leadership positions of significance. That sparked in me a curiosity about who is behind, or rather inside this institution: who is Tony Little, the Headmaster who leads it today? Tony was at Eton during the 1960s, but he doesn’t look or sound like an Old Etonian. With his refreshing wit, his Harry Potter specs and sociable, unassuming manner, Tony relishes the point that the students learn as much outside the class as inside and from their peers as much as their teachers. He is clear that nurturing imagination and a creative instinct is key to building leadership instinct in children:

Firstly, imagination helps growing minds solve problems by allowing them to think through different ways to deal with different, or difficult, situations. Secondly, imagination allows the young brain to practise real-life skills for the real world. Thirdly, an imaginative instinct instills a rich vocabulary by expressing yourself, your ideas and existing concepts in new ways.

Adults who were imaginative children often become problem-solvers, innovators and creative thinkers.

For example, in Eton, concerts will be held at the same time as exams – because it teaches pupils, in later life, how to deal with more than one issue at a time and make choices between two equally attractive options.

Furthermore, theatrical plays have no prompters, no safety nets, no chance to start over – you have to jump in and pick up as you go. The college’s new Greek theatre places the actor in the middle. Just as in life, we, the actors, are centre stage. There is nowhere to hide and nobody to feed us our lines. Going back to my leadership ‘stage and script’ theme right from the first chapter, this bodes really well.

As I observed the boys at Eton, I realised imagination and creativity are also essential ingredients in ambiguity. In Tony’s words, ‘Students are in a class with people they don’t naturally all get on with, but they cannot opt out of it. They need to be creative in building pathways in connecting with these people who are different from us. “Different-ness” and

“Difference” are treasured at Eton for stretching the boundaries of one’s mind. “Learning to get on with people you don’t like” brings children back to earth. It helps them create, invent, stretch new ways of forging connections. Again, this groundwork for life prepares children for the fact that they will not always be able to work with the people they naturally prefer.’

The lessons and examples in Eton come fast and furious. It is something I have always felt that education and learning are not exclusively classroom based or confined to childhood, but a 24/7, life-long process that is integral to our very being. Again it reminded me of what my grandfather said about how we never stop going to school. The more we understand that we can learn with almost every breath we take and from everything and everyone around us, the more open and fertile we can become. This is yet another of the many reasons I decided to leave the golden key ring on the cover open, because our learning is never complete and open minds open more possibilities. This reaches beyond the usual concept of a time and place for education and in turn reaches out to other aspects of our development.

Which brings us back to leadership. The UK as a media or nation can sometimes be obsessed by ‘bad leadership’. What you focus on is what you get. My question is, what stops us from developing our equally strong positive obsession about ‘good leadership’?

Finally, for creativity to be nurtured, Tony shared with me how the mindset of assessment versus achievement is a discerning difference – a very necessary one. ‘In schools and universities, most of us are trained to develop an assessment mindset (getting the answers right, getting all of them right and getting them before anyone else gets them) which further instills an ethos of fear of making mistakes, risk aversion and lack of lateral thinking’. This resonates with Alife Kohn’s point on adverse effects of test scores and grades, as we saw in the Instinct chapter.

Achievement, on the other hand, is about accomplishment. The quality, depth and a sense of uniqueness in how you achieve what you achieve is part of an organic cycle which nurtures curiosity which, in turn, instills

creativity. It helps us be different while being integrated to the world, as we read in the chapter on Self.

You can be highly assessed on your knowledge, but it is what you do with what you know. How you integrate and how you perfect the blend of your ingredients.