“It is foolish to think that we can create functional teams or families as long as we each want to be the star that shines, rather than a link in the chain of humanity.”

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The following is excerpted from a speech given to the World Business Academy earlier this year by Claire Nuer, founder of Learning as Leadership (LaL), World Business Academy Fellow and Trustee, and Member Consultant of Peter Senge’s Society for Organizational Learning (SoL). These excerpts are translated from French.

Claire: I want to share a little about my journey and the questions that have driven me for a long time. I was born in 1933 in the Jewish ghetto of Paris; not a wonderful idea to be born at that time in that place. Then, as today, many people were talking about commitment: grand ideas about defending noble values such as “work, family, nation.” We were all talking about recreating the world. We didn’t call it “a new paradigm,” we called it “a new order,” but it was no different. The communists, the capitalists, the nationalists, the leftists, the fascists, and all the other “ists” – everybody wanted to make a difference. That is what I grew up hearing as a young child, and yet it all led to unprecedented destruction.

Today as well, we all want leaders who make a difference. We talk about the need for clear vision, passion, enthusiasm, commitment. Hitler provided that to millions of people, as did Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. These people and others, hoping to make a difference for their people, but only for their people, led us to some of the worst destruction, massacres, and genocide in the history of mankind.

The perpetrators of these crimes were not barbarians, but well-educated people like you and me. Millions of men and women, leaders, scientists, philosophers, physicians, professors, artists, engineers, bankers, and business leaders became killers without whom such destruction would have been impossible. This has always posed a big question for me, because it shows me our daily responsibility; if we do nothing to take a stand, then we become implicit participants.

During the Holocaust, for example, businesses made a fortune exploiting racism and hatred for their own financial gain. Witnessing that led me to ask myself, if I had been born in Germany in 1923 instead of the Jewish ghetto in Paris in 1933, would I have been a Nazi? It is not an easy thing for me to consider. I wish I could say, “Who me? Impossible!” The thought alone gives me vertigo.

But if I look at my own behavior today – with my colleagues, my daughter, my husband, mostly with my husband – when I know that I am right, or when I fear that somebody is going to “make me wrong,” what do I do? What do you do? Every day in subtle ways we “kill” each other with our thoughts. We kill with our anger, our prejudices, and our strong attachment to being right.

We fear for our own survival or loss of power. How can we learn from our awareness of this process? How can we become leaders who will not perpetuate this kind of destruction? How is it, in fact, that we become killers in the first place?

Babies are born learners; they are constantly learning, and once they learn something, once they know, they let it go and move on to something else. But as we grow older and take on the culture of our environment, we lose this natural state and begin to do the opposite. We hold on to what we know and more and more chase after acknowledgment – and so we hold on to our certainties, to being right.

Our need for love and compassion is replaced with the constant search for other people’s acknowledgment. In a world of acknowledgment, however much we wish to be equal, equality is never enough. For our ego, equal is not possible; our ego needs “more than.” Our ego seeks “more than” in order to be acknowledged. “More than,” however, means pushing others down, being right over them, “killing” others by word or deed. When I operate in this ego-system, I cannot be a functional team member. It is foolish to think that we can create functional teams or families as long as we each want to be the star that shines, rather than a link in the chain of humanity.

Learning about the prison of our ego takes a lifetime, but the shift, the decision to leave the prison, requires just one second. Once we really see what we no longer want, sensing it at a cellular level, we see very clearly that there are two contexts we can choose to create: one of destruction or one of humanity. Each time we have a decision to make, we can assess whether we prioritize a humane or a destructive context. Life becomes much simpler and clearer.

As we work on no longer being killers and enemies, we enter into a place that is very different, that of the “eco-system.” In the eco-system, we operate beyond competition, where there are no stars; we are all a link in the chain, adding upon each others’ strengths and giving support for each others’ weaknesses. We are safe and we make others safe to be and to express who they really are.

I am not speaking about a rosy Utopia. In this space there is compassion, trust, and communication, and creating that often demands going through our greatest fears. Instead of protecting ourselves, as we do in the ego-system, and perpetuating problems, we take the risk to surface tough issues and communicate directly about them. We find and use our own inner resources and support others in a way that brings us towards our collective goals, whether those are the goals of a marriage, a school, or a company.

But operating in this new way can create disturbance. Pioneers have always created disturbance and turbulence, and that is the difficult part: Are we ready to bear with that for the sake of our goals for peace and humanity?

Please do not walk away without changing anything within yourself. You can make that decision I have been describing right away. Do you want to remain a “killer”? Do you want to contribute to “killer” families, “killer” schools, “killer” companies, and “killer” countries? When you decide that you do not, that clarity already provides you with a different starting point to experiment with something new.

That something new can be strongly shaped by your life goal, what I call a “noble goal.” A noble goal in life is one that supports everyone. It supports all of humanity as well as myself as an individual human being. When I am guided by my noble goal, and support others in whatever situation I find myself, then I am no longer a “killer.” When I am vigilant moment by moment, I am at choice about in what context I choose to put my thoughts, decisions, and actions. This state of choice, which allows us to operate from a context of humanity, is the first step towards bringing about radical change in our world that protects all living beings on the planet.

Claire was an international consultant and lecturer who, as a survivor of the Holocaust and cancer, turned a lifetime of challenges into a commitment to creating a humane context for today and future generations. She pioneered a set of conceptual and practical tools for business leaders from around the world to learn leadership and personal mastery skills for healthier and more productive teams, companies, families and communities.

Claire's work and legacy continue on through Learning as Leadership’s leadership coaching, consulting, and training programs.

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