Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

She’s also written several award-winning books on leadership development. You can peruse and purchase them here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created Nancy by Bill Griffith
• The Five Lost Superpowers: Why We Lost Them & How to Get Them Back by John Reid, et al
• The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

As Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011, George A. Papandreou understands leading in turbulent times. A public servant for many years, he served, among other posts, as Minister for National Education and Religious Affairs and as Minister of Foreign Affairs before following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps to become Greece’s Prime Minister. His election to office after the devastation of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 came with a mandate to increase transparency and reduce corruption in Greece’s government while humanizing globalization and its economic effects on Greek citizens. Challenged by time and global financial markets, he made the difficult decision to implement austerity programs and cuts that appeased the Eurozone and the pressures of the global economy. For his work in 2010 “Making the Best of Greece’s Worst Year,” Foreign Policy magazine named him a Top 100 Global Thinker.

Transcript
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Speaker 1 0:07
I’m delighted to welcome George Papandreou as our next guest, as the Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011 George papandreo understands leading in turbulent times. Welcome George. Let’s talk a little bit about your history and how did you get here?

Speaker 2 0:21
I was born in the States, and I grew up first years of my life in California. It happened my father had left Greece when he was somewhat of a young man. The reason was that he was there was an authoritarian dictator in Greece, and he was opposing it and jailed and beaten up and decided that he wouldn’t be safe in his own country. So he was a refugee. And later on, some years later, I also was a refugee. Horrible family left. There was another dictatorship from Greece in the 60s, and I went to basically, were in Sweden and then in Canada. So I traveled quite a bit. But my grandfather was also a refugee. Six times in his life. He was having jailed or exiled fighting for democracy. And my great grandfather also. So I have a deep empathy for what refugees go through, but I also have seen that the narratives we now have about refugees are very wrong. When you are a refugee, first of all, it means you are person that wants some change because you aren’t happy with your country. You’re coming from a place where something bad was happening, war, dictatorship, could be a natural catastrophe, but you want to see change, we should see refugees as a potential for really changing their society. And I had this experience because I was in Sweden, and then I returned to Greece after the dictatorship and gone into politics and took leadership positions at some point, the Swedish Prime Minister Paul rugby. He was later assassinated. He invited me to one of his campaigns. And what he wanted to do is to talk to the Swedish people about why it was important to have refugees in Sweden, why they were probably where they were accepting refugees from different parts of the world. And he would ask me to speak, and I in Swedish because I had lived in Sweden. And then he would say, refugees are important because they are change engines. They go back to their homes. They go back to their countries when the situation allows, and they bring with them a lot of skills that they’ve learned, practical skills. It could be political skills. It could be the fact that they’ve seen democracies work. Let’s say a refugee in the US. Many people may stay here, they integrate, but others will go home, and they will certainly keep ties with their homes. That means that they will have seen, and that was something of my experience. They would have seen a different society. They would have seen that things can be different, that you don’t have to have these dictatorial regimes, or you can function in different ways, or how you organize your schools, or how you innovate and so on. And Philippa now was saying we had in Sweden, Bruno kreisky, who became the Chancellor of Austria. We had Billy Brandt, who became the Chancellor of Germany. We had Oliver temple, who became the head of the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela’s party. And they were all in exile, and then they became change agents. So why don’t we see refugees as future engineers and architects of democratic and peaceful societies and diverse societies. Investing in them is, in fact, investing in the future of these countries. And it’s very important for another reason, because we are so interconnected now that a problem in Syria, we know, becomes a problem in our societies, in Europe or in United States or anywhere else in the world. So we are interconnected, therefore we need to see leaders and people can be changing agency patrons, refugees can be as investment in a better world and in the more just society and more peaceful world too.

Speaker 1 3:31
It’s such a flip on its head, given some of the rhetoric we’ve been hearing recently that refugees are problem, and I recognize there are challenges. There are financial situations and integration and teaching languages short term. There are definitely complications that I don’t think you’re saying we should ignore Absolutely.

Speaker 2 3:53
This is one thing we have to deal with, and our capacity as societies to bring in new populations. Is there a certain amount of how would you say of the influx that hits certain periods of time? It also means that we should develop policies to help integrate, investing in education and skills, but not seeing them as passive, not seeing refugees as passive, seeing them as people who can be entrepreneurial. I know in parts of the United States or Syrians have created startups and have been very useful for their cities. The Syrians are great cooks. They have great culinary skills. There are possibilities, but yes, we do need always, not only help them, but help society, integrate them. If we don’t do that, then, of course, it becomes more of a contentious issue, and neighborhood and school. Remember when we had Albanians come to Greece, we had hundreds of 1000s, and we had to provide for schooling for them, and a lot of them were undocumented. I was in Ministry of Education. I said, it’s better to have them school than to have them out of school after two or three or four years. They’re not employable, unemployable. Marginalized, move into crime. They won’t be able to participate in society. The fact that they got into schools, they became great students, very hard working people, contributing to the economy and integrated. They speak Greek. Can’t tell the difference. This is, I think, the kind of approach we need. And walls will just not work. People find ways to get around walls. And not only that, but with walls, you will keep out the good guys. And if there are some criminals, and they will be, these guys will be able to find ways around the walls. But the average person who is just looking to see for a better life because they have political or what other problems in their country, they will have more difficulties. But then you will lose that opportunity.

Speaker 1 5:40
You’re speaking globally, and I’m speaking of just a single data point, but I had a young friend a decade ago when the Hutu and Tutsi fighting was happening in Africa, and there was a young man from Eritrea who lived in our neighborhood and just very industrious and a brilliant young man. We benefited from his presence. Keeping him out. Wouldn’t have served. He probably would have died, and now he became a productive member of our little community,

Speaker 2 6:09
absolutely and having been a refugee, first of all, I learned the fact that I was in Sweden and Canada also brings memories and bonds and appreciation and love, and when Hold out your hand to help that is respected and that’s appreciated and that will be remembered. So these people will become more patriotic than many others. They will really say, I love America, or I love Sweden. Of course, their difficulties, and they will different cultures, but they will say, this country has, you know, opened its arms that is very much appreciated. And of course, I appreciated the fact that Sweden opened up their arms to us and provided us with the safety and work and education and even the experience, the friendships, the ties you made. This is also very important for business, for trade, and even for the fact that we are living in a more global world. If you are in a community and you’re different groups that should be seen as this is a window to understanding different cultures, and that is good for our younger generation to be able to have this contact, because that’s the kind of world we’ve been

Speaker 1 7:09
living in. At least for me, it seems that the more ties we have, a friendship, the more peaceful world we reside

Speaker 2 7:14
within, absolutely and the more understanding we have of each other. There are different traditions, and sometimes they’re difficult, but I would say, on the whole, we have much more in common. And if you bring out that commonality and use the diversity, the positive diversity, as learning and fun and celebrate as we’re in a globalizing society, we will have to be able to create a world where we have some basic values we all agree on. And so that, in a sense, is what there’s a German philosopher talks about this for Europe, but I think it’s false for the world. We all have our national or ethnic backgrounds, and we’re very proud of our identities, and we are patriotic to our countries, but we may need now to think of being patriotic to values. Oh, I like that. I have not heard that. Yeah, when you say constitutional patriotism, it’s basically or patriotic to values, and patriotic to values will unite us. So we share these values. And to do that, you need dialog, you need integration. You need people to talk about these issues and their differences. And I think building that that means that we can build and govern this global world which is bringing us together in a better way.

Speaker 1 8:15
You shared a story this morning about that idea of uniting disparate communities and countries with what you did in building the bridge with Turkey as prime minister of Greece. Can you share that? Because again, it sounds like we have windows of opportunity to create those alliances.

Speaker 2 8:35
It’s partly when, sometimes when the stars align, but then you have to use the opportunity, and that’s the time when you have to, sometimes you have to, sometimes you have to take a risk. That time, the recent Turkey were almost at the brink of war, there was a sort of sense that we can never live together. We’re eternal foes. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, I had to, I have to see if we can try. I was lucky to find a good counterpart on the other side, also Ismail Chen, who was the foreign minister of Turkey, we decided to do a simple thing, to have a dialog. And even though that was taboo, you don’t want to have anything to do with the enemy. But that dialog opened up a window. We started seeing that there are certain areas where we actually had common interests, where we actually could benefit. We started working on the more easy issues, but still very important. So could be things like avoiding double taxation. So your company from Turkey comes to Greece, or from Greece goes to Turkey, they don’t pay taxes twice. Business, investment, tourism, and then we start getting into more difficult issues, like energy, working together, we went to issues like demining our borders, or people would these were important issues, and there was an opportunity out of a crisis, a very difficult crisis, an earthquake, and the earthquake took place in Turkey, and I decided that a few months into my term as administrator, I said, rather than just say the normal thing, like we were so sad and condolences, I said, let’s help them. Even though they are foes or their sins are foes, they. First of all, human beings, and they need our help. That’s where I think you can tap into sometimes hidden desires or hidden dreams that people have, because, okay, people were unhappy and our relations were not good, but then didn’t mean that they didn’t want to see good relations. So when you tapped into that, it came out, it was expressed. It was permissible to express that. And there was a huge outpour of help, and gave blood and blank blankets medicine. We sent over grade of firemen. One of the most emotional things was when Greek firemen pulled out a Turkish boy from under the rubble, and he was alive. And all the Turkish newspapers said thank you in Greek. So we built on this opportunity, and not only that, but I think what we saw, both myself and it is my other side, was that in dealing with these kinds of problems, or any kind of problem, the more you include people in making and owning the solution, or owning the whole process of change, the more you are affected. So what happened is, all of a sudden, people took this on themselves. So diplomacy was not between two foreign ministers. Diplomacy started to be between people, between citizens, and that was what we called people’s diplomacy. And it was great. It was ended up being writing cookbooks, Greek recipes, soap operas where Greek woman would marry Turkish men, or the opposite, so on and watch it, or positions, or football and basketball games. Together, Women’s Association, local government, business to business, and that ended up also as a really important cooperation. We also saw that working together, we could be influential for peace in the region. The Balkans had Kosovo War, so we started working on humanitarian issues. We tried to get a message of peace to the Middle East. We went together to meet with Agnew Sharon and Yasser Arafat. We were able to show that these were important things, the Olympic Games for Atlanta. Now, the basic reason the Olympic Games ever took place in ancient Greece was to create peace. There was three cities that were warring amongst each other. They decided that they had to ask the think tank of the time, which was in Delphi, the Oracle. And they the Oracle said, Why don’t you organize big festival? And they went to Olympia, and it was a festival of culture and games, and they decided that they signed, they actually signed a peace agreement. It said, every time we do the Olympics, we will have no fighting and no wars. And it was a peace agreement that held for over 1000 years. So we thought, let’s renew this. And we signed a declaration Ismail, and myself and we went around the world to get signatures. We got Bill Clinton to sign it, John Perez, Arafat and Nelson Mandela, very important personalities. So it just shows that out of a small window of opportunity, if you really build on it, you can create a momentum and hopefully bring out the best in people.

Speaker 1 12:43
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Speaker 3 12:49
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Speaker 1 13:49
There’s so how did you go about it? And specifically with an eye for recommendations that people listening to the show can take on to move forward with dissonance in their lives.

Speaker 2 14:01
We recognize that we did have differences, and differences were in approaches. What we saw differences, for example, Island Cyprus is a divided Island, northern part occupied by Turkey some decades ago, still divided, and we knew this was very difficult issue to solve. We said, let’s begin by talking about the issues where we can build trust, and then get to the phonier issues and talk about them and see if we can actually solve these. There will be differences in interests. These are usually the underlying problems, and then a lot more problems are created. But I think what’s important is to actually identify the interests of both sides, because sometimes what I felt was, when I met with my counterpart, I said, I feel a threat, because you’ve got this big awning right by our islands, and you just engulf one and take it over, and we have to be ready with our Air Force. And then he looked at me and said, We’re not going to do that, but we’re very worried, because if you look around Turkey. There’s this arc of these orthodox nations we feel surrounded. So all of a sudden there were two different approaches, and we were looking and seeing, what are our common interests? Because these were maybe overblown images of the threat. Maybe if we looked at the actual interest, that the problem was not so big, or at least we could sit down and try to solve it. So I think first of all, identifying the real interests, seeing where we can work together, seeing where there are differences, and if there are differences, being able to say, let’s see if we can deal these peaceful way. I’m not the honor to say there’s just a simple kind of thing, fairy dust, and that’s not going to happen. Yes, you have to be bold. You have to be open. But building trust, having open dialog and creating the space where you can actually talk about the more difficult issues is a first step which may lead to actual solutions and when situations

Speaker 1 15:51
so what is your proudest moment as prime minister?

Speaker 2 15:55
Maybe the happiest moment was when I was elected, because that was before I had to take on all the very difficult burden of dealing with the crisis. There were a number of moments, I think, when I was able to actually push through some important reforms, and when you see them actually having a result. So reform in education, higher education, bringing in transparency into the public sector. We knew there was money wasted in corruption, I decided that what we should do is put everything online, all experiences online, from central government to local government. All of a sudden, everybody saw where the money was going. It was funny. Sometimes it was also very useful, because then we could say this is costing us too much, or something’s fishing here, let’s see how change it. Or for example, I remember we had a huge problem in the pension system, because in Greece, the patients go for medical prescriptions, go to doctors, and then they build the pension system. And what was happening was we were having multinationals giving kickbacks to doctors, and they were over prescribing, and that was bad for their health. It was automatically health for the pension system. So we put in electronic prescriptions. So online prescriptions, the doctors had to basically say why they put that ailment, and that simple act cut the cost by 50% and I would say other countries should now look at that too, as medical costs are very high for us, it was 3 billion. May not sound very much in the US, but it was in Greece. Is basically all as much as we get in all property taxes. Wow. Times when I could see these such a reforms building it would be, this would be very positive, bringing women into positions of power. It was the first cabinet that had not 50% but 1/3 women. It was the first time we had top positions of the government from none to a third. Wasn’t a nun, none. There were one or two. Sometimes, okay, there were 989, and that was a big change, and I was very proud of that too. So what’s next for you? Sometimes in life, you let times, need the times think through. I continue to be active. I am head of an organization which is called the Socialist International now. And for the American audience, the word socialist is a Tabu word, but a Democratic socialist, which means basically a progressive person who wants to see more equality and wants to see more justice and very democratic and open societies. We are about 150 parties around the world, all the progressive labor parties and Democratic parties around the world, from the ANC Mandela’s party to the Labor Party in Israel, Chile in Mexico. Now the Congress Party in India, European parties, NDP in Canada. There are under 50 parties, and about 50 of them are in government. So that’s one thing I do. But what I’m hoping to do is that’s one of the reasons why I’m here at this leadership conference, is to find a beautiful Greek island. We have many that is willing to host a leadership center where we can bring in young leaders from the area we live in. And Greece is a stable country, but we are surrounded by areas which have a lot of problems, Balkans, Turkey, Ukraine, the Black Sea, Middle East, Syria, Libya. I would like to see that in the Mediterranean, young leaders get together talk about leadership issues, how we can change, how we can bring peace, how we can go from a conflict mode to a more diverse and tolerant society, and really make that area of great, positive, peaceful and growing prosperous. And so that’s one of my dreams, which I’m doing right now.

Speaker 1 19:19
If I think of legacy that seems massive.

Speaker 2 19:23
It is massive being in education and educating leaders who will tomorrow play important roles in their societies, and hopefully positive ones is I think, an important contribution I myself with whatever experience I have accumulated will be able to use that, but I’m going to bring in other people with experience, either academic or research, but also practitioners, who will be helping out in this type of an activity. Sometimes you say, if you can save one life, or if you can make a small difference, that makes you very, very happy. And Greece, I had to take very difficult decisions as a leader during financial crisis. Yeah, but I was able to save Greece from bankruptcy. It was a very painful people and it was painful for me to pay requisitions decisions, but if I had been able to, I did save lots of people, even more opinion, what they sustained with this adjustment process. That’s something that I feel. Contribution. I made some important contribution,

Speaker 1 20:21
huge to save a country from bankruptcy. Can you share one or two things that you did that allowed that to happen

Speaker 2 20:28
in many countries? I think all of countries, because of globalizing economy, are being put under pressure to adapt and change. Sometimes the type of adaptation is one that creates cleavages and fragmentation injustices. So you feel people feel alienated. I’ve seen here in the United States, politics of the United States, but it’s in Europe. It’s in many of the countries where people feel there’s a loss, there’s a betrayal, there’s a lack of prospect. People who had a sense that they could have access to education or a secure job, better standard of living are now feeling that companies are leaving, they’re outsourced and so on. So what I have seen is that countries that have strong institutions, strongly democratic institutions, that really can represent the sort of average Main Street, man or woman, countries that are very transparent, countries that also have important safety nets, how the ones that can adapt more easily to the issues of this globalizing economy. Because what you need to do is be able to protect people from risks. Okay, they have to take risks, but also be able to make sure they don’t fall off a cliff, and then also help them when they change. So it’s education, retraining and so on. What I see in the world is making our societies more just individually is important. And then secondly, what is very important is to see how we cooperate. What I took away from the crisis in Greece, we had to do our own homework, make sure we were transparent, and use the money better, invested well and opened up to global investment so on. But at the same time, this was a global problem. There was a financial crisis. Banks around the world. Markets were scared. The rating agencies had overrated AAA bonds here United States, they were now over compensating and cutting us down all the time. We’re going to show we’re really tough. And there are other issues too, climate change, pandemic. We need to see how we cooperate.

Speaker 1 22:21
Yet, what is keeping you up at night, given what you’ve learned, what

Speaker 2 22:25
keeps me up at night is that facing these difficult problems and some of the pain that our societies are going through and many of us are feeling, there are those that promise false solutions, too easy, maybe, but that makes it welcome, because if you can offer me a very simple solution, I’ll take it, but these simple solutions are no solutions. So what I see is this growth of fear of politics, of fear of demagoguery, of trying to scapegoat the other is the problem, sometimes denying what some of the real problems are. And that has created more of a tribalism or nativism, fearing of the other and people always, when they have this insecurities and uncertainty, they think that sort of an authoritarian type of leader will be the solution. And I think that’s the opposite. Don’t need to build walls. We need cooperation. Climate change, for example, is not going to be stopped by any kind of a wall. Even refugees will not be, pandemics will not be stopped by walls. So we need to cooperate. Secondly, we need to build solutions based on research science facts, and we need to build up a sense of solidarity with problems around the world. That is the challenge, and I feel that if we don’t live up to that, then we will see a more fragmented world. I would make it bit of a of an example of what I mean. Again, going to the Olympics, the Epix is based on the idea of fair competition with rules based you win if you are good athletes. You win if you compete well and you’re out on your merits, not because you’ve got power, not because you have from some family, not because you are rich, it’s because you will, you did well, and not only that, but it promotes a sense of peace. You know, this is fair competition. It’s also peaceful competition. The ancient Roman arena was the opposite. You throw in Gladiators, you throw in the fight. It’s a reality show for blood. Who wins is basically or who dies is the whim of the crowd, or maybe even more so, the whim of the Emperor. So this is power, for power’s sake, no rules. And I would not want to see our glow looking like an arena, like a Roman arena. I would like it much more see it more like it would be games where we have common values, we respect each other, their competition and peaceful competition.

Speaker 1 24:45
So that was where we started. Common values, yes, building collaboration across boundaries, I ask with the voice of the listener. For some people, this seems so unattainable, they may live in a community that’s up. Odds with drugs and heroin overdoses and all of the things that folks face in their daily lives. What one thing or two things? And I realize it’s a much more complex issue than this, but if I am an individual who wants to do something,

Speaker 2 25:15
first, one has to really think about their own self and what their own values are. Think about them. You’d be critical about them also. But what is it that inspires you look around and see what problems, injustices, difficulties, and work on that now. But I would say work on that, not through creating more hatred or more animosity or more divisions. See how you can mobilize the best in people to work together to solve these problems. Try to get deeper into why problems exist. So if there are drug problems, warning people, somebody could say, put them in jail. Is that the solution? I know in Greece, when we put people in jail, they just find drugs in jail. So that’s not solving the problem. Not only that you basically deny them the possibility of maybe rehabilitating or dealing with if they’re hard drugs. So there are different types of solutions we need to look at. I would say also that if we look around sometimes in our communities, we can find examples of solutions. It is not an art community. We can look at other communities in our countries, or look around the world and see what other people have done. There’s a lot of innovation. There is a lot of experimentation. And democracy. Our democracies, we should think of politics because we think of innovation, usually in industry, science, in technology, we should think of politics as merit for innovation. We can’t experiment on people like you would do in a lab, but you can think of the experiments, the live experiments that already exist, and think about that, and we live. And if you want to think of a smartphone or an iPhone or an Android or whatever, let’s think of this platform, which would be the common values, and keep those common values, but then let all these applications grow. So actually, creating a framework of common value is not something that’s going to constrain us. It will allow fertile ground for 1000s and 1000s of new ideas to help solve problems in our lives. So a liberating structure, that’s right, you need a structure, but it has to be a structure that sets us free and opens up our creativity.

Unknown Speaker 27:22
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Speaker 5 27:36
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