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The Chorus (2004)

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Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

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Outliers: The Story of Success [Gladwell, Malcolm] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Outliers: The Story of Success

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Leo Tolstoy

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Count ( Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy[note 1] (/ˈ t oʊ l s t ɔɪ , ˈ t ɒ l -/ ;[1] Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой,[note 2] tr. Lev Nikoláyevich Tolstóy; [lʲef nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj] listen ); 9 September [ O.S. 28 August] 1828 - 20 November [ O.S. 7 November] 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.[2] He received multiple nominations for Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906, and nominations for Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902 and 1910, and his miss of the prize is a major Nobel prize controversy.[3][4][5][6]

Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, , , and (1852-1856), and Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. Tolstoy's fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Family Happiness (1859), and Hadji Murad (1912). He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays.

In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession (1882). His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), were to have a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Tolstoy also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing, particularly Resurrection (1899).

The Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility who traced their ancestry to a mythical nobleman named Indris described by Pyotr Tolstoy as arriving "from Nemec, from the lands of Caesar" to Chernigov in 1353 along with his two sons Litvinos (or Litvonis) and Zimonten (or Zigmont) and a druzhina of 3000 people. While the word "Nemec" has been long used to describe Germans only, at that time it was applied to any foreigner who didn't speak Russian (from the word nemoy meaning mute). Indris was then converted to Eastern Orthodoxy under the name of Leonty and his sons - as Konstantin and Feodor, respectively. Konstantin's grandson Andrei Kharitonovich was nicknamed Tolstiy (translated as fat) by Vasily II of Moscow after he moved from Chernigov to Moscow.

Because of the pagan names and the fact that Chernigov at the time was ruled by Demetrius I Starshy some researches concluded that they were Lithuanians who arrived from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At the same time, no mention of Indris was ever found in the 14th - 16th-century documents, while the Chernigov Chronicles used by Pyotr Tolstoy as a reference were lost. The first documented members of the Tolstoy family also lived during the 17th century, thus Pyotr Tolstoy himself is generally considered the founder of the noble house, being granted the title of count by Peter the Great.

Life and career

Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southwest of Tula, Russia, and 200 kilometers (120 mi) south of Moscow. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy (1794-1837), a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Countess Mariya Tolstaya (née Volkonskaya; 1790-1830). After his mother died when he was two and his father when he was nine, Tolstoy and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University, where teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn." Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow, Tula and Saint Petersburg, leading a lax and leisurely lifestyle. He began writing during this period, including his first novel , a fictitious account of his own youth, which was published in 1852. In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. Tolstoy served as a young artillery officer during the Crimean War and was in Sevastopol during the 11-month-long siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55, including the Battle of the Chernaya. During the war he was recognised for his bravery and courage and promoted to lieutenant. He was appalled by the number of deaths involved in warfare, and left the army after the end of the Crimean War.

His conversion from a dissolute and privileged society author to the non-violent and spiritual anarchist of his latter days was brought about by his experience in the army as well as two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860-61. Others who followed the same path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed a public execution in Paris, a traumatic experience that would mark the rest of his life. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." Tolstoy's concept of non-violence or Ahimsa was bolstered when he read a German version of the Tirukkural. He later instilled the concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his A Letter to a Hindu when young Gandhi corresponded with him seeking his advice.

His European trip in 1860-61 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugo's newly finished Les Misérables. The similar evocation of battle scenes in Hugo's novel and Tolstoy's War and Peace indicates this influence. Tolstoy's political philosophy was also influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, then living in exile under an assumed name in Brussels. Apart from reviewing Proudhon's forthcoming publication, La Guerre et la Paix ( War and Peace in French), whose title Tolstoy would borrow for his masterpiece, the two men discussed education, as Tolstoy wrote in his educational notebooks: "If I recount this conversation with Proudhon, it is to show that, in my personal experience, he was the only man who understood the significance of education and of the printing press in our time."

Fired by enthusiasm, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana and founded 13 schools for the children of Russia's peasants, who had just been emancipated from serfdom in 1861. Tolstoy described the school's principles in his 1862 essay "The School at Yasnaya Polyana". Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived, partly due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. However, as a direct forerunner to A.S. Neill's Summerhill School, the school at Yasnaya Polyana can justifiably be claimed the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education.

Personal life

The death of his brother Nikolay in 1860 had an impact on Tolstoy, and led him to a desire to marry. On 23 September 1862, Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, who was 16 years his junior and the daughter of a court physician. She was called Sonya, the Russian diminutive of Sofia, by her family and friends. They had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood:

The marriage was marked from the outset by sexual passion and emotional insensitivity when Tolstoy, on the eve of their marriage, gave her his diaries detailing his extensive sexual past and the fact that one of the serfs on his estate had borne him a son. Even so, their early married life was happy and allowed Tolstoy much freedom and the support system to compose War and Peace and Anna Karenina with Sonya acting as his secretary, editor, and financial manager. Sonya was copying and handwriting his epic works time after time. Tolstoy would continue editing War and Peace and had to have clean final drafts to be delivered to the publisher.

However, their later life together has been described by A.N. Wilson as one of the unhappiest in literary history. Tolstoy's relationship with his wife deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. This saw him seeking to reject his inherited and earned wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works.

Some of the members of the Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the 1905 Russian Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Soviet Union, and many of Leo Tolstoy's relatives and descendants today live in Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. Among them are Swedish jazz singer Viktoria Tolstoy and the Swedish landowner Christopher Paus, whose family owns the major estate Herresta outside Stockholm.

One of his great-great-grandsons, Vladimir Tolstoy (born 1962), is a director of the Yasnaya Polyana museum since 1994 and an adviser to the President of Russia on cultural affairs since 2012. Ilya Tolstoy's great-grandson, Pyotr Tolstoy, is a well-known Russian journalist and TV presenter as well as a State Duma deputy since 2016. His cousin Fyokla Tolstaya (born Anna Tolstaya in 1971), daughter of the acclaimed Soviet Slavist Nikita Tolstoy ( ru) (1923-1996), is also a Russian journalist, TV and radio host.

Novels and fictional works

Tolstoy is considered one of the giants of Russian literature; his works include the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina and novellas such as Hadji Murad and The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Tolstoy's earliest works, the autobiographical novels Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852-1856), tell of a rich landowner's son and his slow realization of the chasm between himself and his peasants. Though he later rejected them as sentimental, a great deal of Tolstoy's own life is revealed. They retain their relevance as accounts of the universal story of growing up.

Tolstoy served as a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment during the Crimean War, recounted in his Sevastopol Sketches. His experiences in battle helped stir his subsequent pacifism and gave him material for realistic depiction of the horrors of war in his later work.

His fiction consistently attempts to convey realistically the Russian society in which he lived. The Cossacks (1863) describes the Cossack life and people through a story of a Russian aristocrat in love with a Cossack girl. Anna Karenina (1877) tells parallel stories of an adulterous woman trapped by the conventions and falsities of society and of a philosophical landowner (much like Tolstoy), who works alongside the peasants in the fields and seeks to reform their lives. Tolstoy not only drew from his own life experiences but also created characters in his own image, such as Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei in War and Peace, Levin in Anna Karenina and to some extent, Prince Nekhlyudov in Resurrection.

War and Peace is generally thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written, remarkable for its dramatic breadth and unity. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical with others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander I of Russia to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. Tolstoy's original idea for the novel was to investigate the causes of the Decembrist revolt, to which it refers only in the last chapters, from which can be deduced that Andrei Bolkonsky's son will become one of the Decembrists. The novel explores Tolstoy's theory of history, and in particular the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon and Alexander. Somewhat surprisingly, Tolstoy did not consider War and Peace to be a novel (nor did he consider many of the great Russian fictions written at that time to be novels). This view becomes less surprising if one considers that Tolstoy was a novelist of the realist school who considered the novel to be a framework for the examination of social and political issues in nineteenth-century life. War and Peace (which is to Tolstoy really an epic in prose) therefore did not qualify. Tolstoy thought that Anna Karenina was his first true novel.

After Anna Karenina, Tolstoy concentrated on Christian themes, and his later novels such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) and What Is to Be Done? develop a radical anarcho-pacifist Christian philosophy which led to his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. For all the praise showered on Anna Karenina and War and Peace, Tolstoy rejected the two works later in his life as something not as true of reality.

In his novel Resurrection, Tolstoy attempts to expose the injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of institutionalized church. Tolstoy also explores and explains the economic philosophy of Georgism, of which he had become a very strong advocate towards the end of his life.

Tolstoy also tried himself in poetry with several soldier songs written during his military service and fairy tales in verse such as Volga-bogatyr and Oaf stylized as national folk songs. They were written between 1871 and 1874 for his Russian Book for Reading, a collection of short stories in four volumes (total of 629 stories in various genres) published along with the New Azbuka textbook and addressed to schoolchildren. Nevertheless, he was skeptical about poetry as a genre. As he famously said, "Writing poetry is like ploughing and dancing at the same time". According to Valentin Bulgakov, he criticised poets, including Alexander Pushkin, for their "false" epithets used "simply to make it rhyme".

Critical appraisal by other authors

Tolstoy's contemporaries paid him lofty tributes. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who died thirty years before Tolstoy's death, thought him the greatest of all living novelists. Gustave Flaubert, on reading a translation of War and Peace, exclaimed, "What an artist and what a psychologist!" Anton Chekhov, who often visited Tolstoy at his country estate, wrote, "When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature." The 19th-century British poet and critic Matthew Arnold opined that "A novel by Tolstoy is not a work of art but a piece of life."

Later novelists continued to appreciate Tolstoy's art, but sometimes also expressed criticism. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "I am attracted by his earnestness and by his power of detail, but I am repelled by his looseness of construction and by his unreasonable and impracticable mysticism." Virginia Woolf declared him "the greatest of all novelists." James Joyce noted that "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!" Thomas Mann wrote of Tolstoy's seemingly guileless artistry: "Seldom did art work so much like nature." Vladimir Nabokov heaped superlatives upon The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina; he questioned, however, the reputation of War and Peace, and sharply criticized Resurrection and The Kreutzer Sonata.

Religious and political beliefs

After reading Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Tolstoy gradually became converted to the ascetic morality upheld in that work as the proper spiritual path for the upper classes: "Do you know what this summer has meant for me? Constant raptures over Schopenhauer and a whole series of spiritual delights which I've never experienced before. ... no student has ever studied so much on his course, and learned so much, as I have this summer"

In Chapter VI of A Confession, Tolstoy quoted the final paragraph of Schopenhauer's work. It explained how the nothingness that results from complete denial of self is only a relative nothingness, and is not to be feared. The novelist was struck by the description of Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu ascetic renunciation as being the path to holiness. After reading passages such as the following, which abound in Schopenhauer's ethical chapters, the Russian nobleman chose poverty and formal denial of the will:

But this very necessity of involuntary suffering (by poor people) for eternal salvation is also expressed by that utterance of the Savior ( Matthew 19:24): "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore, those who were greatly in earnest about their eternal salvation, chose voluntary poverty when fate had denied this to them and they had been born in wealth. Thus Buddha Sakyamuni was born a prince, but voluntarily took to the mendicant's staff; and Francis of Assisi, the founder of the mendicant orders who, as a youngster at a ball, where the daughters of all the notabilities were sitting together, was asked: "Now Francis, will you not soon make your choice from these beauties?" and who replied: "I have made a far more beautiful choice!" "Whom?" " La povertà (poverty)": whereupon he abandoned every thing shortly afterwards and wandered through the land as a mendicant.

In 1884, Tolstoy wrote a book called What I Believe, in which he openly confessed his Christian beliefs. He affirmed his belief in Jesus Christ's teachings and was particularly influenced by the Sermon on the Mount, and the injunction to turn the other cheek, which he understood as a "commandment of non-resistance to evil by force" and a doctrine of pacifism and nonviolence. In his work The Kingdom of God Is Within You, he explains that he considered mistaken the Church's doctrine because they had made a "perversion" of Christ's teachings. Tolstoy also received letters from American Quakers who introduced him to the non-violence writings of Quaker Christians such as George Fox, William Penn and Jonathan Dymond. Tolstoy believed being a Christian required him to be a pacifist; the consequences of being a pacifist, and the apparently inevitable waging of war by government, are the reason why he is considered a philosophical anarchist.

Later, various versions of "Tolstoy's Bible" would be published, indicating the passages Tolstoy most relied on, specifically, the reported words of Jesus himself.

Tolstoy believed that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner self-perfection through following the Great Commandment of loving one's neighbor and God rather than looking outward to the Church or state for guidance. His belief in nonresistance when faced by conflict is another distinct attribute of his philosophy based on Christ's teachings. By directly influencing Mahatma Gandhi with this idea through his work The Kingdom of God Is Within You (full text of English translation available on Wikisource), Tolstoy's profound influence on the nonviolent resistance movement reverberates to this day. He believed that the aristocracy were a burden on the poor, and that the only solution to how we live together is through anarchism.[citation needed ]

He also opposed private property in land ownership and the institution of marriage and valued the ideals of chastity and sexual abstinence (discussed in Father Sergius and his preface to The Kreutzer Sonata), ideals also held by the young Gandhi. Tolstoy's later work derives a passion and verve from the depth of his austere moral views. The sequence of the temptation of Sergius in Father Sergius, for example, is among his later triumphs. Gorky relates how Tolstoy once read this passage before himself and Chekhov and that Tolstoy was moved to tears by the end of the reading. Other later passages of rare power include the personal crises that were faced by the protagonists of The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and of Master and Man, where the main character in the former or the reader in the latter are made aware of the foolishness of the protagonists' lives.

Tolstoy had a profound influence on the development of Christian anarchist thought. The Tolstoyans were a small Christian anarchist group formed by Tolstoy's companion, Vladimir Chertkov (1854-1936), to spread Tolstoy's religious teachings. Philosopher Peter Kropotkin wrote of Tolstoy in the article on anarchism in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his predecessors in the popular religious movements of the 15th and 16th centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of Jesus and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his talent, Tolstoy made (especially in The Kingdom of God Is Within You) a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. He makes a searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state, and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of Jesus he deduces the rule of non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike.

During the Boxer Rebellion in China, Tolstoy praised the Boxers. He was harshly critical of the atrocities committed by the Russians, Germans, Americans, Japanese, and other western troops. He accused them of engaging in slaughter when he heard about the lootings, rapes, and murders, in what he saw as Christian brutality. Tolstoy also named the two monarchs most responsible for the atrocities; Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany. Tolstoy, a famous sinophile, also read the works of Chinese thinker and philosopher, Confucius. Tolstoy corresponded with the Chinese intellectual Gu Hongming and recommended that China remain an agrarian nation and warned against reform like what Japan implemented.

The Eight-Nation Alliance intervention in the Boxer Rebellion was denounced by Tolstoy as were the Philippine-American War and the Second Boer War between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics. The words "terrible for its injustice and cruelty" were used to describe the Czarist intervention in China by Tolstoy. Confucius's works were studied by Tolstoy. The attack on China in the Boxer Rebellion was railed against by Tolstoy. The war against China was criticized by Leonid Andreev and Gorkey. To the Chinese people, an epistle, was written by Tolstoy as part of the criticism of the war by intellectuals in Russia. The activities of Russia in China by Nicholas II were described in an open letter where they were slammed and denounced by Leo Tolstoy in 1902. Tolstoy corresponded with Gu Hongming and they both opposed the Hundred Day's Reform by Kang Youwei and agreed that the reform movement was perilous. Tolstoys' ideology on non violence shaped the anarchist thought of the Society for the Study of Socialism in China. Lao Zi and Confucius's teachings were studied by Tolstoy. Chinese Wisdom was a text written by Tolstoy. The Boxer Rebellion stirred Tolstoy's interest in Chinese philosophy. The Boxer and Boxer wars were denounced by Tolstoy.

In hundreds of essays over the last 20 years of his life, Tolstoy reiterated the anarchist critique of the state and recommended books by Kropotkin and Proudhon to his readers, whilst rejecting anarchism's espousal of violent revolutionary means. In the 1900 essay, "On Anarchy", he wrote; "The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power ... There can be only one permanent revolution-a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man." Despite his misgivings about anarchist violence, Tolstoy took risks to circulate the prohibited publications of anarchist thinkers in Russia, and corrected the proofs of Kropotkin's "Words of a Rebel", illegally published in St Petersburg in 1906.

Tolstoy was enthused by the economic thinking of Henry George, incorporating it approvingly into later works such as Resurrection (1899), the book that played a major factor in his excommunication.

In 1908, Tolstoy wrote A Letter to a Hindu outlining his belief in non-violence as a means for India to gain independence from British colonial rule. In 1909, a copy of the letter was read by Gandhi, who was working as a lawyer in South Africa at the time and just becoming an activist. Tolstoy's letter was significant for Gandhi, who wrote Tolstoy seeking proof that he was the real author, leading to further correspondence between them.

Reading Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You also convinced Gandhi to avoid violence and espouse nonviolent resistance, a debt Gandhi acknowledged in his autobiography, calling Tolstoy "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced". The correspondence between Tolstoy and Gandhi would only last a year, from October 1909 until Tolstoy's death in November 1910, but led Gandhi to give the name Tolstoy Colony to his second ashram in South Africa. Besides nonviolent resistance, the two men shared a common belief in the merits of vegetarianism, the subject of several of Tolstoy's essays.

Tolstoy also became a major supporter of the Esperanto movement. Tolstoy was impressed by the pacifist beliefs of the Doukhobors and brought their persecution to the attention of the international community, after they burned their weapons in peaceful protest in 1895. He aided the Doukhobors in migrating to Canada. In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Tolstoy condemned the war and wrote to the Japanese Buddhist priest Soyen Shaku in a failed attempt to make a joint pacifist statement.

Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy become more and more occupied with the economic theory and social philosophy of Georgism. He spoke of great admiration of Henry George, stating once that "People do not argue with the teaching of George; they simply do not know it. And it is impossible to do otherwise with his teaching, for he who becomes acquainted with it cannot but agree." He also wrote a preface to George's Social Problems. Tolstoy and George both rejected private property in land (the most important source of income of the passive Russian aristocracy that Tolstoy so heavily criticized) whilst simultaneously both rejecting a centrally planned socialist economy. Some assume that this development in Tolstoy's thinking was a move away from his anarchist views, since Georgism requires a central administration to collect land rent and spend it on infrastructure. However, anarchist versions of Georgism have also been proposed since. Tolstoy's 1899 novel Resurrection explores his thoughts on Georgism in more detail and hints that Tolstoy indeed had such a view. It suggests the possibility of small communities with some form of local governance to manage the collective land rents for common goods; whilst still heavily criticising institutions of the state such as the justice system.

Tolstoy died in 1910, at the age of 82. Just prior to his death, his health had been a concern of his family, who were actively engaged in his care on a daily basis. During his last few days, he had spoken and written about dying. Renouncing his aristocratic lifestyle, he had finally gathered the nerve to separate from his wife, and left home in the middle of winter, in the dead of night. His secretive departure was an apparent attempt to escape unannounced from Sophia's jealous tirades. She was outspokenly opposed to many of his teachings, and in recent years had grown envious of the attention which it seemed to her Tolstoy lavished upon his Tolstoyan "disciples".

Tolstoy died of pneumonia at Astapovo train station, after a day's rail journey south. The station master took Tolstoy to his apartment, and his personal doctors were called to the scene. He was given injections of morphine and camphor.

The police tried to limit access to his funeral procession, but thousands of peasants lined the streets. Still, some were heard to say that, other than knowing that "some nobleman had died", they knew little else about Tolstoy.

According to some sources, Tolstoy spent the last hours of his life preaching love, nonviolence, and Georgism to his fellow passengers on the train.

A 2009 film about Tolstoy's final year, The Last Station, based on the novel by Jay Parini, was made by director Michael Hoffman with Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Sofya Tolstoya. Both performers were nominated for Oscars for their roles. There have been other films about the writer, including Departure of a Grand Old Man, made in 1912 just two years after his death, How Fine, How Fresh the Roses Were (1913), and Leo Tolstoy, directed by and starring Sergei Gerasimov in 1984.

There is also a famous lost film of Tolstoy made a decade before he died. In 1901, the American travel lecturer Burton Holmes visited Yasnaya Polyana with Albert J. Beveridge, the U.S. senator and historian. As the three men conversed, Holmes filmed Tolstoy with his 60-mm movie camera. Afterwards, Beveridge's advisers succeeded in having the film destroyed, fearing that documentary evidence of a meeting with the Russian author might hurt Beveridge's chances of running for the U.S. presidency.

Bibliography

References

1. ^ Martin E. Hellman, Resist Not Evil in World Without Violence (Arun Gandhi ed.), M.K. Gandhi Institute, 1994, retrieved on 14 December 2006

2. ^ Vitold Rummel, Vladimir Golubtsov (1886). Genealogical Collection of Russian Noble Families in 2 Volumes. Volume 2 // The Tolstoys, Counts and Noblemen. Saint Petersburg: A.S. Suvorin Publishing House, p. 487

3. ^ Ivan Bunin, The Liberation of Tolstoy: A Tale of Two Writers, p. 100

4. ^ Nemoy/Немой word meaning from the Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary (in Russian)

5. ^ Tolstoy coat of arms by All-Russian Armorials of Noble Houses of the Russian Empire. Part 2, 30 June 1798 (in Russian)

6. ^ The Tolstoys article from Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1890-1907 (in Russian)

7. ^ "Author Data Sheet, Macmillan Readers" (PDF). Macmillan Publishers Limited.

8. ^ "Ten Things You Didn't Know About Tolstoy". BBC.

9. ^ Rajaram, M. (2009). Thirukkural: Pearls of Inspiration. New Delhi: Rupa Publications. pp. xviii-xxi.

10. ^ Tolstoy, Leo (14 December 1908). "A Letter to A Hindu: The Subjection of India-Its Cause and Cure". The Literature Network. The Hindu Kural

11. ^ Parel, Anthony J. (2002), "Gandhi and Tolstoy", in M.P. Mathai; M.S. John; Siby K. Joseph (eds.), Meditations on Gandhi: a Ravindra Varma festschrift, New Delhi: Concept, pp. 96-112

12. ^ Tolstoy, Lev N.; Leo Wiener; translator and editor (1904). The School at Yasnaya Polyana - The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy: Pedagogical Articles. Linen-Measurer, Volume IV. Dana Estes & Company. p. 227.

13. ^ Susan Jacoby, "The Wife of the Genius" (19 April 1981) The New York Times

14. Feuer, Kathryn B. ^ Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace, Cornell University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8014-1902-6

15. ^ Valentin Bulgakov (2017). Diary of Leo Tolstoy's Secretary. Moscow: Zakharov, 352 pages, p. 29 ISBN 978-5-8159-1435-3

16. ^ editor on (8 September 2009). "Sommers, Aaron (2009) Why Leo Tolstoy Wouldn't Supersize It". Coastlinejournal.com. Archived from the original on 23 November 2017.

17. ^ Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre (2009). The Contemporary Relevance of Leo Tolstoy's Late Political Thought. International Political Science Association. Tolstoy articulated his Christian anarchist political thought between 1880 and 1910, yet its continuing relevance should have become fairly self-evident already.

18. ^ Kropotkin, Peter (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition. New York : Encyclopaedia Britannica. p. 918. Anarchism

19. ^ William Henry Chamberlin, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Ohio State University (1960). Michael Karpovich, Dimitri Sergius Von Mohrenschildt (ed.). The Russian review, Volume 19. Blackwell. p. 115.(Original from the University of Michigan)

20. ^ Wenzer, Kenneth C. (1997). "Tolstoy's Georgist Spiritual Political Economy (1897-1910): Anarchism and Land Reform". The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 56 (4, Oct): 639-667. doi:10.1111/j.1536-7150.1997.tb02664.x. JSTOR 3487337.

21. ^ Parel, Anthony J. (2002), "Gandhi and Tolstoy", in M. P. Mathai; M.S. John; Siby K. Joseph (eds.), Meditations on Gandhi : a Ravindra Varma festschrift, New Delhi: Concept, pp. 96-112

22. ^ Tolstoy, Leo (1892). "The First Step". ... if [a man] be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because ... its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling - killing. Preface to the Russian translation of Howard William's The Ethics of Diet

23. ^ Mays, H.G. "Resurrection:Tolstoy and Canada's Doukhobors." The Beaver 79.October/November 1999:38-44

24. ^ Tolstoy: Principles For A New World Order, David Redfearn

Further reading

Craraft, James. Two Shining Souls: Jane Addams, Leo Tolstoy, and the Quest for Global Peace (Lanham: Lexington, 2012). 179 pp.

Lednicki, Waclaw (April 1947). "Tolstoy through American eyes". The Slavonic and East European Review. 25 (65).

Trotsky's 1908 tribute to Leo Tolstoy Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

The Life of Tolstoy: Later years by Aylmer Maude, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1911 at Internet Archive

Why We Fail as Christians by Robert Hunter, The Macmillan Company, 1919 at Wikiquote

Why we fail as Christians by Robert Hunter, The Macmillan Company, 1919 at Google Books

External links

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Count ( Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy [note 1] (/ˈ t oʊ l s t ɔɪ , ˈ t ɒ l -/ ;[1] Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой,[note 2] tr. Lev Nikoláyevich Tolstóy; [lʲef nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj] listen ); 9 September [ O.S. 28 August] 1828 - 20 November [ O.S.

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Culture and Leadership: They’re Simply Two Sides of the Same Coin

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The good news is that culture has caught on as a concept. but leading culture expert Edgar Schein, says it's just as a "word" and people need to be aware that 90 percent of their behavior is driven by cultural rules and not personality.

Schein, a best-selling author and Professor Emeritus with MIT Sloan School of Management, shared this and other key insights about culture and leadership in the second part of a recent interview with CultureUniversity.com.

He continues to be troubled by the misuse of the word "culture" and the "failure of people to see that culture is not this surface phenomenon, but it is our very core, that we live in culture, we display a culture, and we are always driven by the culture."

Leaders create culture

Schein believes that:

Culture and leadership are two sides of the same coin. When organizations start or when groups start there is always a leader who has a preferred way of doing things, and those preferences by definition are going to be imposed on the group members. If you don't like the way I run this group, I'll replace you. The leader's values and preferences are the first ways that a group or organization does things and if that works it becomes eventually the culture of that group. So in a very real sense, founders and leaders create culture."

In an established organization, "the way in which they've always done things limits what a leader can do, even what defines a leader in that organization." A leader can't just walk in and do things their way," he said. "The system will not let you."

Schein pointed out that,

"Once IBM is IBM, once GE is GE, only certain kinds of leaders will be tolerated. When Carly Fiorina came to Hewlett-Packard, she immediately raised hackles all over the place because she was too flamboyant, she wanted to do expensive stuff, so that limited the amount that she could do as a leader. So you can see that culture constrains leadership in a mature company just as leaders create culture in a young company."

Leaders should use humble inquiry

Schein believes leaders should not focus on changing culture but on solving business problems and he outlined this and other insights in part one of his interview.

His most recent book, Humble Inquiry - The Gentle Art of Asking and Not Telling, outlines an approach leaders should utilize to build trust and surface real issues and potential solutions to those business problems.

He explained it this way:

Humble inquiry is creating a climate in which you display, through your asking genuine questions, an interest in the other person such that they will want to tell you the truth about what really is going on. Now why is that important? I think the major pathology in all organizations that I've seen is that upward communication is very faulty.

Subordinates know lots of things that would make the place work better or safer that they for various reasons withhold. If you survey them and ask 'why aren't you telling your boss what is really going on, they'll say 1) he shoots the messengers, 2) I used to tell him but he never really took any interest in it, or 3) I tell him but they never fix anything so I no longer have any incentive to tell.'

Now, if I'm right and that is the problem, the only way to cure that is for the boss to change his behavior, to go to that subordinate and engage in humble inquiry. Say to that subordinate, 'I'm really interested in what you see in how we can be safer and better and what not, and I'm listening.' If the boss doesn't do that, we are going to continue to have accidents and low quality products because the information isn't surfacing."

We all have experience with the Humble Inquiry

All of us know how to be humbly inquiring. We do it with our friends, relatives, children and parents, so it's not a skill we don't have. (The issue is) "when we take it to the work place, for some reason we think we should now get stiff and formal.

The switch I have to learn to make, if I'm an old leader and I'm dissatisfied and want to change this, is I have to wake up to the fact that these subordinates are people and I have to get interested in them. If I get interested in them and curious, the behavior will become natural. It is not a new skill, it is applying an old skill in a new setting and recognizing its relevance."

Leaders should "orchestrate"

Edgar Schein had some interesting insights into why more leaders don't apply humble inquiry.

The larger culture of management says: once you're a manager, now you have the right to tell other people what to do which is really how a lot of young managers behave. They think, ' OK, now I'm the boss, so I get to tell.' This culture of 'tell' is very congruent with Western capitalist culture because our whole foundation is built on the higher you go, the more you know and the more you can tell people what to do.

Work now is a highly distributed process where lots of things have to play together for the product to go out the door and so it's no longer a case of where the manager can tell what to do. The manager now has to orchestrate, create relationships and make sure everything works together.

I don't think very many managers have figured that out. They still think they're the boss rather than the orchestrator."

Do you agree with the need for leaders to focus on humble inquiry and being an "orchestrator"?

This post originally appeared on CultureUniversity.com with a full interview video and transcript.

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Culture and Leadership: They're Simply Two Sides of the Same Coin

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The good news is that culture has caught on as a concept. but leading culture expertÂ Edgar Schein, says itâ€™s just as a â€œwordâ€ and people need to be aware that 90 percent of their behavior is driven by cultural rules and not personality.

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Follow the leader Suli Breaks

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Follow the leader | Suli Breaks | TEDxHousesofParliament

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Are Athletes Good Role Models?

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The term role model is defined as "a person whose behavior, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, especially younger people" ( Random House Dictionary). Accordingly, a brain surgeon or airline pilot can be a role model for similarly motivated boys and girls. Role models may have a considerable impact on a person's values, education, and chosen training objectives. For example, they have been shown to have significant effects on female students' self-confidence in pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) fields.
What about sport stars as role models?
There's a history of speculation and argument about athletes taking on the status of role models. In 1993, Nike ran a ground-breaking TV commercial from early April through the end of the NBA playoffs. The ad featured Charles Barkley proclaiming "I am not a role model." At the time, he was a superstar hoopster for the Phoenix Suns, and his comment generated quite a stir, as he staunchly defended his position.
What was so controversial about what "Sir Charles" said?
He emphasized that athletes' ability to make baskets or catch touchdown passes has nothing to do with being a role model. That is, having sporting ability doesn't automatically qualify a person to be a role model. Rather, Barkley believed that's a job for parents. I agree and would include teachers and coaches who spend a huge amount of time with kids and influence their upbringing and future success.
Like it or not, our society has a strong dependence on athletes as role models for children and adolescents.
Athletes are role models whether or not they choose to take on the responsibility, and whether they are good or bad role models. But athlete "hero worship" wasn't always as prevalent as it is today. There was a time when others served as America's role models (civic leaders, clergy, legal and medical experts, etc.). It might be argued that the shift reflects decay in our nation's moral standards.

On the other hand, some exceptional athletes have important messages for their fans. For example, former heavyweight boxing champ Lennox Lewis made a significant contribution to youngsters' understanding of appropriate masculine behavior, when he made a public service announcement that "Real men don't hit women." The point is clear: Athletes have an incredible opportunity to use their celebrity power to positively influence the next generation.
What are the qualities that make an athlete a good role model?

Enthusiastic about being a role model. The athlete welcomes the platform for promoting positive societal change-a willing crusader for good.

Altruistic mission. The athlete uses the position to share messages of inspiration and hope-a selfless drive to benefit others.

Makes a commitment to behaving in ways that reflect high moral values. The athlete acts in ways that support personal integrity.

Presents himself or herself in a realistic and responsible manner. "I'm not a role model because I'm a superstar jock, but because I'm a great person." The athlete also helps fans realize that he or she isn't perfect. After all, role models are only people with weaknesses and flaws. They're not immaculate idols.

Freely devotes time and energy to community activities. The athlete makes appearances at neighborhood events, serves on local boards, works with charity organizations, etc.

Champions a mastery goal orientation. The athlete focuses on personal effort and accomplishments instead of making comparisons with others. In a sense, mastery oriented people compare themselves with themselves. They can feel success and satisfaction when they have learned something new, seen skill improvement in themselves, or given maximum effort. Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden captured the essence of a mastery orientation in his famous definition of success: "Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you are capable." (For more information, see my Psychology Today blog titled "How to Be a Winner".)

Possesses a keen sense of empathy. The athlete has the capacity to share or recognize emotions experienced by others. Empathy involves putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing how much you can truly understand them. It includes caring for others and having a desire to help them. Empathy motivates pro-social behavior designed to aid in solving communal challenges. As emphasized by Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "When you show empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That's when you can get more creative in solving problems."

Displays a healthy balance between striving for excellence and having fun in the process. The athlete promotes the virtues of working hard to achieve goals and the importance of enjoying the journey.

A word of caution is warranted.
Youngsters who believe their sport heroes are the most fantastic people in the world and can do no wrong are vulnerable to disappointment. Why? Because examples of fallen stars are many, such as Alex Rodriguez and Lance Armstrong who admitted to the use of performance enhancing drugs. When a revered athlete goes astray, it can create disillusionment and even trauma. So, here's the bottom line: Kids shouldn't be allowed to become too attached to athletes as role models.
Do you want to learn more about parenting and coaching young athletes?

The Mastery Approach to Parenting in Sports and Mastery Approach to Coaching are research-based videos that emphasize skill development, achieving personal and team success, giving maximum effort, and having fun.

To access the videos, go to the Youth Enrichment in Sports website.

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The term role model is defined as "a person whose behavior, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, especially younger people" ( Random House Dictionary). Accordingly, a brain surgeon or airline pilot can be a role model for similarly motivated boys and girls.

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The True Meaning of Leadership - Taught by Our Children by Rasmus Hougaard

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Today, while the rest of the world was asleep, children and students in New Zealand woke up, skipped school, and instead flocked together in more than 20 cities around the country to kick off the Global Climate Strike. As morning arose over Australia, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, the same thing happened in more than 2000 cities across 123 countries. It's estimated that millions of people under 20 years old took to the streets.

This is a historic event. Never before have children and young adults organized a global protest, and rarely has the world seen a protest of this scale and scope.

Today is a day that politicians and corporate leaders should note. Why? Because today a new standard for leadership has emerged.

It all started with a 16-year-old Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg. At the age of 9, she became depressed when she learned that we humans are destroying our planet, as we simultaneously post happy, celebratory pictures on social media. She sensed a collective condition of self-deception.

At 15, she decided to take the only action she felt available to a teenager. She went on strike from school, exclaiming that there's no point in studying if we have no future. She created a small banner that read "School strike for the climate" and started a one-person protest in front of the Swedish parliament.

At first, she was ridiculed. But she persisted. She deeply understood that it was the only rational thing to do. After six months of standing outside in the Nordic weather, the media started to pay attention.

Greta is now considered by many to be an oracle. She's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and invited to present at multiple global forums, including giving a TED talk. While speaking to an assembled crowd of billionaires, heads of state, and celebrities at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in a matter-of-fact way, she said, "Adults keep saying we owe to the children to give them hope. But I don't want your hope. I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want you to act if as the house was on fire."

At the United Nations Climate Summit, she asserted, "You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You're not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden, you leave to us children. You say you love your children above all else, and yet you're stealing their future in front of their very eyes. "

Fearless, she speaks truth to power. We all know that we're approaching the irreversible climate events that threaten to make earth uninhabitable. Thousands of scientists have documented the trends, the causes, and the likely outcomes - all beyond any reasonable doubt. Still, governments and companies fail to acknowledge this reality, let alone agree on or implement a solution.

Multiple dictionaries define leadership as "the action of leading a group of people or an organization." Any sensible understanding of leadership should focus on the greater good, and especially on the greater good for the long term. In this light, the formal leaders of the world - governments, foundations, think tanks, and corporations - have failed. Miserably.

But today something changed.

Greta Thunberg has inspired a whole new generation of emerging leaders; young people all over the world who take responsibility, who organize themselves around caring for our one and only planet, and who advocate for the long-term greater good.

Today is a day for politicians and corporate leaders to take note. If they care about votes or customers, they must put climate change at the top of their agenda. Like Greta and the young people she's inspired, they must begin to lead for the long-term greater good.

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The True Meaning of Leadership - Taught by Our Children

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Today, children and students all over the world have skipped school, and instead flocked together in more than 2000 cities across 123 countries to participate in the Global Climate Strike. It's estimated that millions of people under 20 years old took to the streets.

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Being the Boss in Brussels, Boston, and Beijing by Erin Meyer

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In Brief

The Problem

Differences in leadership culture can create unexpected paradoxes. American bosses, for example, think of themselves as egalitarian, yet to the famously hierarchical Japanese, they can come across as dictatorial. Such contrary perceptions often undermine managers operating outside their home countries.

Why It Happens

Managers often fail to distinguish between two important dimensions of leadership culture: attitudes toward authority and attitudes toward decision rights. On the first dimension, Americans are certainly more egalitarian than the Japanese. But Americans typically practice top-down decision making, whereas the Japanese have a strong tradition of building consensus.

The Solution

Leadership cultures fall into one of four categories depending on how they score along the two dimensions. Managers going into a new cultural environment must figure out which category they are moving to and adjust accordingly.

Cultural differences in leadership styles often create unexpected misunderstandings. Americans, for example, are used to thinking of the Japanese as hierarchical while considering themselves egalitarian. Yet the Japanese find Americans confusing to deal with. Although American bosses are outwardly egalitarian-encouraging subordinates to use first names and to speak up in meetings-they seem to the Japanese to be extremely autocratic in the way they make decisions. As a Japanese manager living in the United States and working for Mitsubishi put it: "I couldn't figure out how to adapt my approach from one day to the next, because the culture was so contradictory and puzzling."

Problems like this manager's are widespread. In many years of researching, consulting, and teaching executives and managers in hundreds of global companies, I've found that it's common for people from different countries to grapple with mutual incomprehension. Often that's because managers fail to distinguish between two important dimensions of leadership culture.

The first of these is the one we're most familiar with: authority. How much attention do we pay to the rank or status of a person, and how much respect and deference do we pay to that status? On this dimension, the Japanese are clearly more hierarchical than Americans. The positions are reversed, however, when we look at the second dimension: decision making. Who calls the shots, and how? Does the boss decide, or does the team decide collectively? On this dimension, which is often overlooked, the Japanese are more consensual than Americans.

Approaches to authority and decision making are not the only ways in which cultures differ, but they are arguably the most important in the leadership context. And if international managers confound the two, they will make mistakes in adapting their leadership styles to the cultures and situations at hand. (For a more general treatment of cultural differences, take a look at my May 2014 HBR article, "Navigating the Cultural Minefield.")

In this article, I explore the two dimensions and how they affect global leadership effectiveness, focusing particularly on how attitudes toward decision making impact global teamwork. I conclude by mapping selected cultures along both dimensions and comparing the resulting expectations about the role of the leader.

Attitudes Toward Authority

Over the past century, the biggest leadership trend in the U.S. and parts of Western Europe has been the abandoning of hierarchical management processes for a more facilitative, egalitarian approach. Command-and-control has been replaced with empowerment. Managers have been trained to stop telling their employees what to do and instead move to "management by objective," open-door policies, and 360-degree feedback. Early on, addressing the boss by first name rather than title became the norm. Company hierarchy further dissolved when the CEO began "management by walking around," having impromptu discussions with people at all levels without even letting their supervisors know. Then the corner office yielded to open-plan spaces. Since most management literature and research still come out of the U.S., business school education has largely reinforced this trend.

But attitude toward authority is one of the most striking points of difference across cultures. In Nigeria a child learns to kneel or even lie down as a sign of respect when an elder enters the room. In Sweden a student calls her teachers by their first names and, without implying any disrespect, feels free to contradict them in front of her classmates. Unsurprisingly, the management approach that works in Lagos will not get the best results in Stockholm.

Understanding this disconnect is important. In general, the greatest business opportunities lie in the big emerging economies, which include Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and Turkey. In nearly every case, these are cultures where hierarchy and deference to authority are deeply woven into the national psyche. The management orthodoxy of pushing authority down in the organization does not fit easily into the emerging-market context and often trips up Western companies on their first ventures abroad.

Take the case of an American firm I worked with two years ago. I'll call it Chill Factor, as it delivers innovative cooling solutions to consumers and small businesses. For the previous 15 years, Chill Factor had been training its employees in the latest egalitarian leadership methods, encouraging low-level workers to show initiative, while teaching the bosses to leave their doors open, accept 360-degree feedback, and set objectives rather than issue edicts. Additionally, the business had set up the flattest organizational structure possible. This progressive culture helped the company attract talent and keep employees inspired and engaged. The entire workforce was humming with creativity and innovation.

After decades of success in the U.S., Chill Factor took a big jump and negotiated a joint venture with a company in Hangzhou, China. But within weeks the Chill Factor managers were complaining about the lack of initiative shown by their Chinese staff. As one manager related to me:
My Chinese employees don't see it as their job to have ideas or make suggestions to their leaders. They just follow instructions. Subordinates do not volunteer solutions but simply present problems. Their measure of success is to do what they are told, when they are told, and to do it well. But I expect them to produce new ideas and to give the bosses information so that we can make the best decisions for the benefit of the business.
In a session with a group of American executives and a dozen of their Chinese colleagues, I asked the Chinese managers to work as a small group and give advice to the Americans about how to handle their Chinese staff more effectively. They huddled and then presented their recommendations:

Because Chill Factor now wants to succeed in China, we hope our American colleagues could kindly make some changes:

1. Before attending a meeting with your staff, prepare more ideas for yourself.

2. Be more specific with directions to your employees.

3. Have your own plan before allocating work to your subordinates.

The American managers were dumbfounded and asked for elaboration. "The most surprising comment from our Chinese colleagues," one Chill Factor executive later explained, "was that we were perceived not just as incompetent but as arrogant, because we didn't take the time to explain to our staff carefully and in detail what we wanted them to do and how." It was a valuable learning moment for this firm, which began to pull back on some of the egalitarian practices that it had so long taken for granted as the best approach.

Of course, those who already have some international experience might not be surprised that Chinese managers defer to their bosses and that American attitudes toward status don't travel well. But understanding differences in attitudes toward hierarchy and status, as we've noted, isn't the whole story.

Attitudes Toward Decision Making

Many executives and managers assume that in more-hierarchical societies, decisions will be made at the top by the boss, and in more-egalitarian cultures, decisions will be reached by group consensus. Yet on a worldwide scale, we find that hierarchies and decision-making methods are not always correlated.

The U.S. is a striking example. American business culture has become more and more egalitarian over recent decades, but consensual decision making is clearly not the norm. American companies favor quick and flexible decisions, so decision-making power is vested in the individual (usually the boss). With a disdain for "analysis paralysis" and a belief that "any decision is better than no decision," the American manager may solicit input from his or her team but ultimately is the one to make the final determination. And in most cases, the team members not only are fine with this but expect it. The U.S. can thus be described as an egalitarian culture where decisions are made top-down.

In top-down decision-making cultures (India, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, and Russia are other examples), decisions are made quickly, but they are subject to change as new input or arguments arise. When people in these cultures say they've reached a decision, the decision is not a firm commitment but a placeholder that can later be adjusted.

Contrast that with what happens in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and Sweden. If you've collaborated with companies in those countries, you might have noticed that a lot of people seem to be involved in the decision-making process, and it takes a long time to negotiate group agreement. However, once a decision gets made, implementation is surprisingly quick, because details and stakeholders were aligned while consensus was being reached. In these consensual cultures, it's as if the word "Decision" has a capital "D," representing a commitment that can't (and shouldn't) be easily changed.

Either system can work well, and both have their advantages. Small "d" top-down decision making is particularly suited to industries where the pace of change is fast and speed to market trumps product perfection. Big "D" consensual cultures are great for industries where development timelines are long and perfection of the product is essential. It's perhaps no surprise that two big "D" cultures-Germany and Japan-are among the world's greatest car-manufacturing nations.

Problems arise, however, when members of a single team have different norms of behavior. What happens, say, when a consensual big "D" Japanese company acquires a top-down small "d" American business? This was exactly the situation when Suntory became the majority shareholder in Beam (maker of Jim Beam whiskey). The success of this acquisition reveals some useful strategies for navigating safely through big "D"/small "d" collaboration.

As is the tradition in Japan, Suntory managers used a consensual big "D" system of decision making. One of them explained:
In Suntory the management structure is hierarchical, but decisions are most often made by group consensus. Mid-level managers discuss a proposal among themselves and come to a consensus before presenting it to managers one level higher. The next-higher-ranking managers then discuss the proposal themselves and come also to an agreement. If they collectively believe in the initiative, they pass it on for approval at the next level, until it gets to the top.
Two words define this consensual process, so common in Japanese companies. The first is nemawashi-the practice of speaking with each individual stakeholder before a meeting in order to shape the group decision and develop agreement in advance. The second is ringi, which involves passing a proposal around level by level, starting at the bottom and then working through the layers of middle and senior management before arriving at the top.

This system works beautifully, provided everyone understands and follows it. The problems at Suntory and Beam arose because managers on one side didn't understand how managers on the other side made decisions. The experience of one American manager from Beam provides a nice illustration:
There was a problem and a decision had to be made, which required a trip to Japan. The Japanese director in charge would be present, so I thought this would be the perfect moment to impact his direction. I prepared some slides for a meeting, along with my proposal. During the meeting, it became apparent that the decision had already been made by the group beforehand and was different from my proposal. Trying to discuss and convince during the meeting had no effect at all.
Learning the approach of the other culture and adapting accordingly is obviously important. Through trial and error and by asking questions, the Beam manager came to see that his assumptions about how and when decisions would get made was entirely a result of his experience working in the U.S. Over time, he learned to give his input much earlier at Suntory. But if you're managing the collaboration of two groups with different systems for reaching decisions, being flexible and adapting your individual style are not enough. You must also be explicit about the process of decision making. Define whether decisions will be made by consensus or by the boss. Establish whether 100% agreement is needed. Clarify whether a deadline for the decision is necessary and, if one is set, how much flexibility there will be for changes afterward.

Consider the case of a German-American collaboration I worked on. Early in the project, team members from both countries discussed a major decision ahead of a meeting with the company's big boss in the U.S. The team formed a point of view, and everyone seemed united on it. But during the actual meeting, after a very short discussion, the boss announced her decision, which ran counter to the team's recommendation. The Americans all agreed with the boss without a word of pushback. The German team members, however, were deeply unhappy about this turn of events, concluding not only that the American boss was arrogant but also that their American colleagues were two-faced.

Of course, these perceptions weren't exactly helping the relationships among the team members. But the situation became particularly fraught when it came to the meaning of the word "decision." One German team member explained:
At the end of a short meeting the boss would announce, "Great! We have a decision." For a German, when you say "We will do this," it is a promise. You can't just change your mind casually tomorrow. So we Germans would spend days working on the implementation. And then one of the Americans would call us up and casually mention that we were taking another direction, or the boss would show us more data suggesting a different path.
For the first several months of collaboration, the Germans could not shake the feeling that their American teammates were disingenuous. One manager spoke to his American boss about the situation, and the conversation was illuminating for both of them. The German commented, "I then understood that for an American, a decision is simply an agreement to continue discussions. And if you are American, you understand that. But for a German, who considers a decision a final commitment to march forward on a plan, this can cause a lot of confusion."

To get the collaboration on track, the two leaders organized an off-site retreat. The team members discussed their assumptions about how decisions should get made and what the word "decision" means in each of their cultures. They developed a system for collectively arriving at decisions and determining how flexible those would be, using the big "D"/small "d" distinction. In subsequent meetings, an American might be heard to say, "Great! Decision made!" only to pause and clarify, "Decision with a small 'd,' that is. We still need to run this by our colleagues at home, so don't start working on it yet." With the cultural difference brought to the surface and acknowledged, the collaboration took off.

The Four Cultures of Leadership

Making a clear distinction between attitudes toward authority (from hierarchical to egalitarian) and attitudes toward decision making (from top-down to consensual) goes a long way in helping leaders become more effective in a global context. It turns out that countries are quite broadly scattered across the two dimensions, as you can see from the exhibit "Mapping Leadership Cultures," which plots the positions of 19 countries within four quadrants. Let's look at the main expectations people have of leaders in each quadrant.

Consensual and egalitarian: Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden

Early in my career, I worked as the only non-Dane on an eight-person team. As an egalitarian American, I thought it was great when my boss told me that decisions would be made by consensus. But then the e-mails started. First from him: "Hey, team, for the annual face-to-face in December, I thought we would focus on being more client-centric. What do you think?" Then from a team member: "Hi, Per. Great idea. But wouldn't it be better to focus the meeting on how to market our services more successfully?" And from someone else: "I think it would be most effective to have presentations from all team members about their individual client strategies." And then everyone began sending responses to one another, ending with: "Erin, we haven't heard from you. What do you think?" Consensual decision making sounds like a great idea in principle, but people from fundamentally nonconsensual cultures can find the reality frustratingly time-consuming.

If you are to thrive in this quadrant, therefore, you need to go in with the following approach to leadership:

Expect the decision making to take longer and to involve more meetings and correspondence.

Do your best to demonstrate patience and commitment throughout the process, even when diverging opinions lead to lengthy ongoing discussions.

Don't expect the boss to jump in and decide for the group. The boss is a facilitator, not the decider.

Resist the temptation to push for a quick resolution. Take the time to ensure that the decision you make is the best one possible, because it will be difficult to change later.

Consensual and hierarchical: Belgium, Germany, Japan

A French director of Deutsche Bank once told me: "When I moved to Germany, I was aware that both our cultures are rather hierarchical. So I continued to make decisions as I would have in France, which was basically-after some good debate-to tell the group what I'd decided, even when I knew many people had opposing opinions about what should be done." When the director received feedback from his first 360-degree review, he was upset by complaints from his German staff that he wasn't inclusive. Eventually he realized that the Germans expected him to invest considerably more time in winning their support before coming to a decision-more than would have been necessary in a French organization.

If you likewise are not used to a consensual, hierarchical culture, be aware that in this quadrant:

If you're the boss, your team will defer to your decision, yet desire and expect to be part of the decision-making process. Make a point of soliciting opinions and input from your staff.

Be patient and thorough. Invest the time necessary to get each stakeholder on board.

Once a group decision begins to form, take special care to listen to those with dissenting opinions.

Focus on the quality and completeness of information gathered and the soundness of the reasoning process. Remember that in this quadrant, decisions are commitments that are not easily altered.

Top-down and hierarchical: Brazil, China, France, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia

We've already visited this quadrant in the company of those Americans who moved to China with Chill Factor and perceived their Chinese staff as lacking initiative, while the Chinese viewed the new U.S. managers as incompetent.

If you're operating in this quadrant:

Remember that the boss is the director, not a facilitator.

If you're the boss, you will be deferred to in public and probably in private too. Don't be shy about telling your team how best to show you respect.

Be clear about your expectations. If you want your staff to present three ideas to you before asking your opinion, or to give you input before you make a decision, tell them. Old habits die hard for all of us, so reinforce-with clarity and specificity-the behavior you are looking for.

Be careful what you say. You may find that an off-the-cuff comment is interpreted as a decision-and suddenly everyone is building that factory or reorganizing that department, when you thought you were just introducing an idea to explore.

Top-down and egalitarian: Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States

An American director for the World Bank, whom I will call Karen, described a challenge she was having with a Korean employee who had recently joined her team. "When I hired Jae-Sun to work for me in D.C., he had a shining résumé," Karen explained. Promoted time and again to run teams across Asia, he appeared to be an employee who knew how to get things done. Yet Karen noticed right away that if Jae-Sun was with her or another senior manager in a meeting, he seemed reluctant to express his views and instead deferred to them. "I had hoped to groom him for a bigger role in the department, but with this lack of self-confidence, I saw it just wasn't going to happen," Karen told me.

Succeeding in a top-down, egalitarian environment requires behaving as follows:

Before the decision has been made, speak up-no matter what your status is. You might not be asked explicitly to contribute, but demonstrate initiative and self-confidence by making your voice heard. Politely yet clearly provide your viewpoint even when it diverges from what the boss seems to be thinking.

Once the matter has been resolved, align quickly with the boss and support the decision even if it conflicts with the opinion you previously expressed. At this stage, if you show disagreement-especially in front of others-you may be viewed as difficult to work with.

After the decision is made, remain flexible. Decisions in this quadrant are rarely set in stone; most can later be adjusted or revisited if necessary.

CONCLUSION

Once you've figured out the nuances and complexities of the different approaches, you will make smarter choices in all your cross-cultural interactions as a leader and as a follower. During performance reviews with your Mexican staff, for instance, you might choose to explain your own approach and ask the team to adapt to you. The next week, while leading a meeting with those same employees, you might decide it will be more productive if you adapt to their cultural norms rather than expect them to adapt to yours.

The bottom line? Although you may have been a very successful leader in your own culture, if you hope to motivate and engage people around the globe, you will need a multifaceted approach. Today it's no longer enough to know how to lead the Dutch way or the Mexican way, the American way or the Chinese way. You must be informed enough and flexible enough to choose which style will work best in which cultural context and then deliberately decide how to adapt (or not) to get the results you need.

A version of this article appeared in the July-August 2017 issue (pp.70-77) of Harvard Business Review.

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In Brief The Problem Differences in leadership culture can create unexpected paradoxes. American bosses, for example, think of themselves as egalitarian, yet to the famously hierarchical Japanese, they can come across as dictatorial. Such contrary perceptions often undermine managers operating outside their home countries.

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