Trait Theory of Leadership Moses and Mandela Comparison

A Tale of Two Leaders

Introduction

There are many theories of leadership, from Great Man theory to trait theory to situational theory. Though they are all different in their orientation, there is a great deal of overlap from one to the other—and this is because at the end of the day leaders, no matter how they are approached, all tend to have some of the same things in common: they are good communicators, they have a vision that they want to communicate, they tend to want to change a bad situation for the better; they tend to put others first; they tend to have noble values and ideals; they tend to be willing to sacrifice everything in order to reach their goal or objective; they tend to be selfless, giving themselves over wholly to the vision and to whoever is willing to help bring that vision to fruition. Whether these leaders are born to lead, whether they are made into leaders by the situation in which they find themselves, whether they develop or have the traits that are characteristic of great leaders—it is all up for interpretation. However, because great leaders tend to have several traits in common, trait theory is an enticing leadership theory from which to analyze two leaders—Nelson Mandela and Moses.

Mandela and Moses: Two People There to Save Their People

If there is one trait of great leaders that they all seem to have in common it is this: they are not there to serve their own interests; rather, they are there to serve the interests of their people—those in their community, those who follow them, those who work for them, those who are in need of their assistance. They put people before profits. They put people before their own lives even. They put the vision they have for their people above their own safety and security. Nelson Mandela famously said, “I am prepared to die,” in 1964, in his most famous speech at his trial just before being sent to prison where he would spend years before his triumphant return. What was Mandela prepared to die for? He was prepared to die for the ideal that he held in his head and in his heart. He stated to his judges: “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, My Lord, if it needs to be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die” (Mandela, 1964). Mandela wanted whites and blacks in South Africa to live in harmony, and for that vision he was prepared to serve a harsh jail sentence. Yet his perseverance and commitment to the cause eventually led to his vision coming to fruition.

When Stanley Milgram conducted his experiments on obedience, he saw that people were willing to obey the “trusted authority” so long as they believed that person to know what he was about. Milgram (1974) showed that people would even harm others if an authority told them to do so. Such people would be called followers: they do not take action on their own authority, but rather give up authority to someone else and simply deign to take orders from that person. What do they lack in terms of character, personality, vision or strength of will? People who lead are the opposite of such individuals. They lead from an inner conviction that they are right. They lead because they do not know of any other way to go about life. They have to lead; everything in them tells them that they must do so—especially when they are focusing on the face of injustice, as was the case with Mandela, and as was the case with Moses.

Moses was a bit different from Mandela, however. Moses did not want to lead. He did not want to be the man to draw attention to himself. He was actually not even a very good public speaker and had Aaron speak for him. While it is not uncommon for leaders to have their own propaganda ministers, especially if they are the heads of state, as Moses could certainly be called, it is somewhat unique from a trait theory perspective that Moses should become the face of the Hebrew people without having a penchant for public speaking or much of a desire to be a leader in the first place (Grimard & Morris, 2018). Mandela wanted to lead; he saw the injustice and wanted to confront it in South Africa. He fought against apartheid because he believed it was the right thing to do. Moses also saw the injustice of how the Egyptians were treating the Hebrews—but it was because he himself was a Hebrew and he sympathized with their plight while he himself enjoyed a life of privilege, raised as an Egyptian by way of adoption.

Still, Moses was not uninterested in the mission God called him to perform. He at length finally consented to do as God bid him to do, and this was no small task in and of itself, for it required bravery and strength of will to march up to Pharaoh and announce that he should free the Hebrews or face the wrath of God. Moses might have been a reluctant leader at first, but his determination and courage showed forth as soon as he took the task upon himself. His devotion to God showed forth from that moment on, in fact, and the first books of the Old Testament have been attributed to his hand, a further indication of his conviction (Calvin, 2018). Thus, it is not a stretch to identify conviction as the main trait that both Moses and Mandela shared: each was convinced of the utter, fundamental truth of which he was after. Mandela was convinced of the truth of the ideal for South Africa; Moses was convinced that the Hebrews should be freed and that God willed it so and would protect His people.

Mandela’s Vision

Every great leader tends to be dedicated to something. Even if the personalities of great leaders vary from one to the next, it is mainly the cause that the leader is remembered for. Gandhi had a much different personality from Malcolm X; yet both are remembered as great leaders because both believed in, lived for and died for a cause. George Washington, Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine all had much different personalities, yet they all participated in one way or another for the fight for American independence and for the Enlightenment ideals. Yet it is Thomas Paine, who more than any other Founding Father, believed whole-heartedly in those ideals. Whereas, the signers of the Declaration of Independence paid lip service to the notion of equality, Paine actually believed in it and hated that the Founding Fathers were going to allow slavery in the nation they had just fought for and won (Claeys, 2020). For Paine (1776) it was a matter of common sense that all men should be considered equal and independent. He went so far as to join the French Revolution in Paris to show his support for and solidarity with the revolutionary ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment.

Mandela’s vision was not really any different from Paine’s. He, too, believed in equality and fraternity, and his vision for South Africa was like that of King in America: it was a vision in which people could live in harmony, as one community, instead of divided by politics of race and hatred. Mandela stated in his speech that he stood against dominance of any one race over another. He was not a supremacist but rather one who believed firmly in equality and wanted all in South Africa to live as equals. He clung to his vision from the beginning to the end, and when apartheid was ended, Mandela was celebrated as a hero because it was his vision that had helped to bring South Africa to that pivotal moment in history. Mandela’s vision was for a multicultural South Africa in which every person of every background could have a place and live in peace (Radhakrishnan, 2019). Like any leader of a corporation or a nation, he communicated the vision, committed himself to the vision, and went to the very wall for the vision, inspiring followers all over the globe as he did so. Great leaders never do anything in vain, for even if they are locked up or even killed, their words and vision live on, and the spirit they promoted never really dies. Even though he was locked away, Mandela was never far from the minds of South Africans or even from those concerned with the plight of people of all races and the need for equality. His vision and his insistence upon that vision were so strong that it transcended time and space and himself. That is another common trait among great leaders: their focus transcends the immediate and gravitates towards the universal. Part of the reason for that is because at bottom all great leaders are servant leaders, and it is the service to the idea or to the ideal or to the people who stand to benefit from change that effects the transcendent (Tanno & Banner, 2018).

Moses’ Mission

Moses was not so much a visionary as he was a man on a mission. If some leaders bring an innovative and revolutionary vision or change to a place, others come with a mission and do not stop until that mission is executed. In either case, the commitment is the same: the leader would have to be dragged away by wild horses before he would quit the vision or mission. So it was for Mandela, and so too was it for Moses.

Moses’ mission was not of his own design but rather given to him by God. Yet, like any good soldier, he made that mission given him his own. For this reason, Josephus has stated that Moses was a mighty warrior. And he was that way even before turning his energy and strength to God; for Josephus says that Moses was a mighty warrior who fought for the cause of the Egyptians (Church of Christ, 2020). Moses was not someone of insignificance. On the contrary, he had proven his mettle and his valor, and his determination and courage were attributes and traits that defined him. Moses was one who received commands and obeyed them.

However, he was used to receiving commands from men—not directly from God. The mission that God gave him to do at first seemed overwhelming. Moses did not feel that he was worthy of the mission or that he was the man for the job. Yet God persisted and Moses finally submitted, for just as a soldier submits to a commander, Moses realized he must submit to God. Thus, who obeyed when God sent him to Egypt to give the message to Pharaoh: “Then the LORD said to Moses, \\\\\\\"Go to Pharaoh and tell him that this is what the LORD says: \\\\\\\'Let My people go, so that they may worship Me.’” (Exodus 8:1). It was not for himself that he went, but rather because he had been given a mission. That mission was one in which he could very well lose his life. After all, he was standing before the most powerful person in Egypt—just as Mandela much much later in history would be standing before the judges, who would hold his fate in their hands. Moses, however, was not standing before Pharaoh awaiting a verdict on his own life. Rather, he was standing before Pharaoh to make a demand, to convey a message from God to the most powerful man in Egypt. Moses was there to confront a ruler, man to man, in the name of God. Moses was there on a mission.