Tolerance – In Multi-Cultural Leadership 191This interconnectedness and hyper-awareness prevails in all corners
of society and all corners of the world, including the workplace, cultural
and social life, religious life, politics, and education and so on. One can
regret this interconnectedness, celebrate it, hate it even, but one cannot
escape it. Even if one lives in an apparently homogenous enclave com-
posed of people just like the self, one is still inevitably aware of the di-
versity beyond the village, over the mountain or the sea, outside the ho-
mogenous boundaries.
9.4 Successful Multi-Cultural Leadership
Thus today, many business leaders, in order to be successful espe-
cially in certain sectors, embrace diverse cultures, countries of origin,
religions, patterns of work, age, dress, ways of thinking, not just of their
customers, but also in the work force. They do so knowing that these are
the very characteristics of a work force that, far from being detrimental,
will make the business thrive, and enable it to compete widely and well.
Similarly, often successful political leadership today is leadership
that practices the virtue of tolerance, and it does so by not only accept-
ing the diversity of its constituencies in a passive way, but by also em-
bracing diversity as given and as beneficial to the vitality of society.
I would argue that tolerance is an attribute found in all morally re-
sponsible leadership today. In the diverse societies we live in, leaders
must know how to work with, build on, take for granted diversity in the
societies or sectors and organizations they lead, and neither regret nor
suppress the diversity in those they lead.
Of course, in many parts of the world and in many quite diverse so-
cieties, one finds leaders who, appealing to the fears of their publics, or
seeking to create fear that was not evident before, strongly advocate the
intolerance of various aspects of human diversity such as gender or reli-
gion or ideology, or ethnicity, and so on. These leaders seek power and