The Chinese have a saying that a fish rots from its head, so are we seeing the beginning of the end of the leadership/succession issue at FIFA?
Instead of securing the trust of its stakeholders, including those who play the game at (literally) grass roots level , FIFA has just displayed the classic mistake of attempting to secure power for the incumbents and displaying monumental lack of empathy or emotional connection with the people it is supposed to represent.
This is also part of the current zeitgeist towards Governments and other NGOs where leaders are merely motivated by self-perpetuating interest. We have other examples of MPs expenses, allegations of impropriety by rich, famous and political leaders who have simply abused the power of their office. This is an international issue affecting all parts of the globe; FIFA is just the latest example.
Going back philosophically even the Ancient Greeks struggled with societies that were democratic, oligarchic or just plain tyrannical at various points in their history, so there is no one model of governance that works on every occasion.
So how can we choose better leaders, or indeed do we just get the leaders we deserve?
The Beautiful game?
FIFA will say that there leaders have been democratically elected. If those in power are correctly selected by an electorate’, then there will be a reduction of distrust and cynicism towards them. This begs the question of how the electorate decides. Even in Ancient Greece there were disenfranchised parts of the population at various times.
Some would say that selection is made on the basis of the espoused values of the leader. Manifesto commitments have been broken many times due to circumstance change once in office, so hindsight is not a reliable indicator of how and electorate behaves..
I think this is probably a function of backing the person and their values as a reliable indicator of suitability for office. If you walk round Sepp Blatter’s home village they have the utmost respect for the man, the global village has lost this, so how come there is this mismatch. Has Sepp simply lost it on the basis that the organisation has too many stakeholders, vested interests and divergent views, if so how did this come about? He has repeated the mantra that he acknowledges the organisation needs reform and he is the best man to do the job, but how did he allow this in the first place on his (long term) watch? How did his vison of beauty that he had for the organisation transform itself into a model of ugliness and behaviour that we now see?
Plato may have the answer (back to ancient Greece) , perhaps Mr Blatter no longer displays the love of wisdom and beauty that got himself elected in the first place and that, like many other leaders we are just talking about corruptive power. Or indeed he takes the notion of justice, truth and fairness to extremes and believe that leaders should lead and ‘slaves should be slaves’ so views and habits become entrenched and not open to change due to external pressures, so adherence to the status quo and clinging on to power is a strong belief and legitimisation for their prolongation.
Sepp Blatter simply lost his love of beauty, desire to understand all there is and stopped asking questions. He forgot his basic training in business and economics and stopped thinking. This stopped him relating to his constituency.
If he has studied basic business and economics, he would understand, or at least recognise the right question to ask and draw lessons from the wider community and relate to problems such as China’s economic slowdown, the financial meltdowns and bailouts of EU nations ( especially Greece!), the debt issues of the US Government or large Corporate collapses such as Enron or Worldcom, and ensure that the Governance of FIFA was fit for purpose. –
Leaders who understand this connectivity understand that change is a pre requisite for an appropriate and beautiful response
Training
Footballers train every day to keep their skills sharp, Sepp Blatter simply didn’t show up for training so his skills in developing business and public relations became stale, the very attributes that got him elected in the first place. To use a Plato metaphor he simply retreated metaphorically and physically into his ( FIFAs) cave and lost his skill base and awareness of life outside.
Conclusion
We should choose our leaders using the criterion of wisdom gained via their own natural curiosity and love of training (learning) because learning involves receptiveness to new ideas and change and we would gradually reduce our distrust towards those who govern. This is because training means the refinement not only of one’s intellectual capabilities, but also exposure to other and perhaps more beautiful ways of thinking/doing/behaving since the very process of training requires the exercise of thought and analysis. Skills, information and knowledge are attained through constant reinforcements and exposure to new experiences. Fundamentally this is a platonic thought. In present day elections where we can see only the sanitised and public face of the candidates, the assessment of the suitability of a leader can only be based on superficialities. The day of reckoning comes with a heathy dose of sceptical hindsight when the leader comes up for re-election, even then , because of the checks/balances and processes that exist, the re-election may not prove reliable. (FIFAs processes again).
We can see how engaged philosophy can be with the theory and practice of leadership.
Beauty and Virtue remains in all of us, the trick is to remain true to your ideals and not be distracted by personal agenda’s or even delude yourself that what you are doing is fundamentally right. The basis of a football game is that there will be a winner and a loser. So too with FIFA; you cannot always win, or get your own way. It is no good taking your ball home if you disagree. If you want to improve you simply have to train harder and be more receptive to what people are telling you.
Even if it means its time to go……
