Useful reflections on leadership from another era of uncertainty

Who was Dag Hammarskjold and what did he leave for us more essential today?

So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live, or die, in vain. Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war. – John F. Kennedy

I doubt that there are many people who remember Dag Hammarskjold in America. As he rose to be the second, and perhaps most influential Secretary General of the UN, even his biographer later noted his rise was "that of a brilliant economist, an unobtrusive technician, and an aristo-bureaucrat."

Despite his rise from public obscurity, Eisenhower was to acknowledge that he knew no man who worked harder, and President Kennedy is believed to have said: “…in comparison to him, I am a small man."

I suppose there are many reasons to learn about him in these days of uncertainty and rise of a very new global order societally, politically, economically, and technologically. It was a mark of his commitment to look at the world bottom up – to understand rising nations coming out of decades of colonialism and war on their own terms – that when he died prematurely in a plane crash in 1961 rumors began (that provocatively continue today) that he was assassinated for disrupting the old order.

I learned only recently, and am embarrassed I did not know this sooner, that while he never wrote a memoir, he did keep something perhaps more revealing of him. And more useful today for those of us contemplating our motivations, purpose, and what we build and why.

His posthumously published Markings are one-part spiritual wrestling, one part admonishment, one part haiku and one part as we like to share on social media today: “top rules to live by.”  He began writing down brief reflections in his twenties and did so up until his death.

I will post my annual writeup of recommended books read in a month or two but wanted to call this one out as worthy of having on our end tables right now – not reading end to end necessarily, but picking up for reflection as we move quickly through what feels like, and very well may be, an exponentially changing and accelerating world.

Here are a few examples of many that grabbed me:

From 1925- 1930

Thus it was

I am being driven forward

Into an unknown land.

The pass grows steeper,

The air colder and sharper.

A wind from my unknown goal

Stirs the strings

Of expectation.

Still the question:

Shall I ever get there?

There where life resounds,

A clear pure note

In the silence

1950

A modest wish: that our doings and dealings may be of a little more significant to life than a man’s dinner jacket is to his digestion. Yet now a little of what we describe as our achievement is, in fact, no more than a garment in which, on festive occasions, we seek to hide our nakedness.

It is not the repeated mistakes, the long succession of petty betrayals – though, God knows, they would give cause enough for anxiety and self-contempt – but the huge elementary mistake, the betrayal of that within me which is greater than I – in a complacent adjustment to alien demands.

Don’t be afraid of yourself, live your individuality to the full. Don’t copy others in order to buy fellowship or make convention your law instead of living the righteousness. To become free and responsible. For this alone was man created, and he who fails to take the Way which could have been his shall be lost eternally.

1952

Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.

1953

Maturity: among other things – not to hide one’s strength out of fear and, consequently, live below one’s best.

1954

Never at your destination – The greater task is only a higher class in this school, as you draw closer to your final exam, which nobody else will know about, because then you will be completely alone.

So long as you abide in the Unheard-of, you are beyond and above – to hold fast to this must be the First Commandment in your spiritual discipline.

1956

Do what you can – and the task will rest lightly in your hand, so lightly that you will be able to look forward to the most difficult tests which may be awaiting you.

Thanks to your “success,” you now have something to lose. Because of this – as if suddenly aware of the risks – you ask whether you, or anyone, can “succeed.” If you go on in this way, thoughtlessly mirroring yourself in an obituary, you will soon be writing your epitaph – in two senses.

Gratitude and readiness. You got all for nothing. Do not hesitate, when it is asked for, to give your all, which, in fact, is nothing for all.

It was when Lucifer first congratulated himself upon his angelic behavior that he became the tool of evil.

Be grateful as your deeds become less and less associated with your name, as your feet ever more lightly tread the earth.

1957

The most dangerous of all moral dilemmas: when we are obliged to conceal truth in order to help the truth to be victorious. If this should at any time become our duty in the role assigned to us by fate, how straight must be our path at all times if we are not to perish.

Clad in this “self,” the creation of irresponsible and ignorant persons, meaningless honors and catalogued acts – strapped into the straight jacket of the immediate. To step out of all this, and stand naked on the precipice of dawn – acceptable, invulnerable, free: in the Light, with the Light, of the Light. Whole, real in the Whole. Out of myself as a stumbling block, into myself as fulfillment.

He who is challenged by Fate does not take umbrage at its terms.

“To fail” – Are you satisfied because you have curbed and canalized the worst in you? In any human situation, it is cheating not to be, at every moment, one’s best. How much more so in a position where others have faith in you.

Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward – your destiny – are here and now.

1961

Sleepless questions

In the small hours:

Have I done right?

Why did I act

Just as I did?

Over and over again

The same steps,

The same words:

Never the answer.

On the path of the others

Are resting places,

Places in the sun

Where they can meet.

But this

Is your path,

And it is now,

Now, that you must not fail.