Leadership Vaclav Havel was born in 1936 into a middle-class Czechoslovakian family with intellectual and artistic interests. He showed early enthusiasm for reading, writing, and the theatre. But after the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia in the late 1930’s followed by the Communist takeover in the 1940’s, he was expelled from some schools and denied entry into others because of his upper-class “bourgeois” background. Because of his class background his employment opportunities were also severely limited. First he worked as a chemist’s assistant while also publishing his first critical essays. Between 1957 and 1959, Havel entered the army as was required. In the army he produced his first play, You’ve Got Your Whole Life Ahead of You, and organized a troop theater to stage it. The play is about a solider who chooses the truth and morality and refuses the temptation of an easy undeserved promotion. Only after the play was close to winning a top prize at a military theater competition did officials investigate Havel’s background and suspect a hidden message in the play’s sly humor about critical aspects of Communist army culture. After the performance the play was condemned as anti-army and the theater company had to return all the awards it had won. In addition to experiencing and reflecting on the conflict between himself and the army, Havel for the first time met with people outside his fairly intellectual friend and family circle and he formed friendships with and learned from those whose lives and in some cases values were quite different than his own. He later talked of the value of forming teenage friendships across lines of race, nationality, social class and gender. After the army Havel became a well-known playwright. Still ineligible for “management” because of his families privileged background, he got a job as a stagehand at the Theater on the Balustrade, with the promise of being able to participate creatively in the work of the theater. He stayed eight years, wrote some of his best plays in that time and rescued the theater from bad management by doing everything from building sets to, organizing the paperwork and touring schedule, helping the director make decisions about contracts, the social heart of the company as well. Largely because of his precense and what over his whole lifetime is referred to as his genius for developing “working friendships” the divisions among roles at the theater—director, actor, stage crew, etc. were often not organized according to formal hierarchy but instead with mutual respect and much humor. In 1967 Havel was invited to become the editor of Tvar, a magazine for young writers that chose not to support any particular viewpoint or ideology but simply published diverse works they considered good. In 1968 hard-line Communists seized power in government and censorship and political repression became very strong. Many talented artists and writers were silenced, imprisoned, or forced into exile. Havel chose to remain in Czechoslovakia despite the oppressive political and artistic climate. Yet in the early 1970’s he was banned as an author and he and his wife Olga lived in a sparse country home outside of the city (Prague). In 1977, he then took a lead role in drafting an opposition declaration called Charter 77 and the Communist party responded with massive arrests. He spent five years in prison and was repeatedly interrogated and beaten. He said he was committed to “breath some positive significance” into the experience and wrote letters to his wife that were published widely. He came close to dying but because he was well-known throughout the world and the government was concerned that his death would cause embarrassment, they released him in 1984. He returned to his country cottage and wrote some of his most political and personal plays. MGT303 EXAM POOL QUESTIONS When a peaceful vigil turned into a clash between students and police on November 17th, 1989, Havel immediately traveled from his cottage in Prague. The following day students continued their demonstration, called for a public show of support. On November 19, Havel announced the formation of the Civic Forum which united all opposition groups. He spoke to over 200,000 students gathered on the cities central square and threatened a general strike on November 27th if their demands for an investigation of Nov. 17th, the release of political prisoners, and freedom of the press were not met. During the next several weeks Havel spoke at demonstrations, organized strikes, discussed the tactics of the movement with contacts and allies, and negotiated the peaceful resignation of the government and the Communist Party. He also oversaw the formation of a new Federal Assembly, allowing the election of new members who represented the opposition. The newly formed Federal Assembly unanimously elected Vaclav Havel as President of Czechoslovakia. Although Czech society was feeling rage and hatred toward the old rulers, Havel emphasized that it was not necessary to come together “against.” The state of the society was not only the responsibility of the former Communist rulers and party members but of all citizens. According to Havel, “We are all—though naturally to different extents—responsible for the operation of totalitarian machinery. None of us is just a victim: we are all also its co-creator.” Havel saw the biggest problem for his country not the ruined outer trappings—its dead economy, poor school system, polluted environment or average life-span of less than sixty years of age. Havel said, “the worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we got used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only for ourselves.” His positions on foreign politics also reframed the role of Czechoslovakia on the world scene. He refused to hold prejudice against other countries based on previous historic misfortunes. His first foreign visit as President was to Germany, where instead of attacking the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, he publicly apologized to the Germans who were expelled from Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Nazi regime. His position was highly controversial and sparked debates in Czechoslovakia but it clearly showed that Czechoslovakia had new leadership. The popularity of his ideas facilitated the return of Czechoslovakia to European society and the country received an invitation to join NATO and the European Union. ?Now:
• Describe trait, behavioral, and situational approaches to leadership and analyze the extent to which you believe each approach does or does not apply to the leader in question.
• Given your analysis of the leader, describe what the leader’s organization could do to ensure a “supply” of more leaders like him/her in the future.