The Don Quixote guide to leadership

In our MBA course and executive education programmes on leadership , the first piece of literature participants are introduced is Miguel Cervantes’ immortal classic, Don Quixote.

“Don Quixote? What can be learnt from this silly story of a foolish self-styled knight?” ask many participants.

“But he’s no leader!” exclaim some. Yet after class discussions, most see the vital messages this book has for leadership.

Don Quixote isn’t an ordinary book. Don Quixote, and his squire, Sancho Panza aren’t ordinary characters.

The book is one of the most widely read pieces of literature ever produced, translated into virtually every major language in the world, abridged for students at all levels, discussed and debated.

Numerous movies have been made based on this novel, and painters, including Picaso, have produced paintings seeking to capture the essence of Don Quixote.

The French cabinet room in Paris is adorned with a painting of Don Quixote. Surely, the book must be more than a mere silly story of a silly man.

Many readers may be familiar with the basic story. It is about a Spanish land owner, Alonso Quixano, who reads many books on knights, their adventures and chivalrous deeds, and gets so influenced by them that he himself decides to go out as a knight.

He is accompanied by Sancho Panza, a labourer, who is told that he may be given good rewards, and indeed may be made the governor of an island (“it’s not unheard of in stories of knights”).

The key point in the story is that Quixano isn’t allured by promises of riches and rewards, but is attracted by the joy of pursuing an ideal: fighting wrongs in society and helping the weak and oppressed.

Armed with these ideals and his vision of a more just world, Quixano assumes for himself the knightly name of Don Quixote de la Mancha.

His imagination sees beauty only he can see — his old skeletal horse is Roçinante, the best horse in the world; a village girl is his lady love, and is given the name of Dulcinea de Toboso.

The most famous of his exploits is his encounter with the windmills. To him, they are evil giants to be vanquished.

Sancho Panza, a pragmatist, doesn’t see any giants, and exclaims, “But master, they are only windmills”. Don Quixote is not dissuaded — his duty as a knight is clear.

He isn’t to be deterred by the challenge; he must go straight ahead, fearless, head held high.

As luck would have it, no sooner does he thrust his lance at one of the arms of the windmill, than a gust of wind moves the arm, knocking him down. He is down, but not out.

He rises, his dignity intact. These are mere setbacks to be expected; the wounds suffered are wounds of honour.

There are many more adventures; he sees a flock of sheep and imagines them to be an army, and charges at them. He finds a group of people with a lady and imagines her to be a damsel in distress.

He sees a group of chained convicts being taken to the galley, and sees them as an example of oppression of the poor and releases them after a fight with the guards.

In all these adventures, Don Quixote interprets the world in his own terms. We may laugh at his antics but not scorn him. To the end he remains a lovable and admirable character.

Dreams vs reality; madness vs sanity

Don Quixote dreams a fabulous dream. He symbolises the ability of mankind to dream, pursue ideals and venture into the unknown.

Leadership starts with dreams that can inspire. Contrast Don Quixote’s dream and imagination to the “practicality” of Sancho Panza.

Sancho looks carefully at risks and sets out on his journey only because he expects a reward. At the end of a day, he looks forward to nothing but some good food, wine and a soft bed.

He represents the mundane and earthy in us. To Don Quixote, the reward is inconsequential; the reward is the pursuit of the ideal itself.

He is less interested in the food and wine at the end of the journey than the challenges and perils of the journey itself. He lives every moment, Sancho simply lives through every moment.

Possible dreams

Leadership is about living, not living through, not only for the leader, but also the followers.

As the noted psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp notes in the chapter on Don Quixote in his book If You Meet Buddha on the Road, Kill Him, “Life is very dull for those who are too mild, too unimaginative, too sane to bring to it a sense of personal style, of individual purpose, a colour, a verve, fun and excitement”.

Don Quixote’s message is: Do not always lead life as it is; lead it also as it should be.

This is, of course, to be tempered with realism. Don Quixote is totally divorced from reality. In this sense, he can be considered mad. But is he really mad, any more than many other leaders who define life on their own terms and change the course of history forever?

After Gandhi was thrown out from a train on that fateful night at Pieter-Maritzberg in South Africa, he decided to fight the giants of evil — racism, discrimination, oppression and exploitation, much against the advice of the “practical” Indians there.

Take one of India’s greatest industrial visionaries of the twentieth century: JN Tata. Was he sensible when he pursued his dream of a steel mill in India in the late nineteenth century?

There were so many experts who told him why India cannot produce steel. One worthy Englishmen even vowed to eat every pound of rail produced in India. But JN Tata pursued his dream, armed only with his confidence.

But some may say: “Don’t compare Tata with Don Quixote. Don Quixote is plain mad.” But what is madness? Is it not merely seeing things differently from the others? Madness, in some forms can be more exciting than reality.

Would we not, as Sheldon Kopp says, prefer the madness of Don Quixote to the sanity of Sancho Panza any day? And say: “If this be the wine of madness, come, fill my cup!”
“I Know Who I am”

At one point in the story, the local worthies — a priest, a barber and Don Quixote’s niece — tell him that he is no knight; he must know that. To this, Don Quixote gives a reply: “I know who I am.”

Don Quixote knows who exactly he is, and what exactly he wants to do. He defines the world to be congruent with himself and his identity.

Don Quixote may lack congruence with his environment, but he is fully congruent with his identity. He says: “A knight I am, and a knight I shall die”.

Without a clear concept of self, leaders cannot weave a credible vision. Joan of Arc’s vision was consistent with her own concept of self — she was totally convinced that she was the messenger of God.

Gandhi developed his unique ideas of non-violence in thought and deed, to be congruent with his personality. It was this congruence that made these leaders so different — so unique, so credible.

Passion and Discipline

James March of the Stanford University has just released a DVD on Don Quixote titled “Passion and Discipline”.

Don Quixote combines these two essential ingredients of leadership. He is passionate about his pursuits, but he is also governed always by the knightly code of honour.

Don Quixote’s message is the ideas of idealism, courage to define one’s own vision, faith in oneself, and courage to move against all odds.

That is why James March says that the story of Don Quixote is the story of eternal triumph of human spirit.

Reason in living and reason for living are two different things. The Don Quixote story ends with his regaining “sanity” and returning to his village.

He has regained reason in his life. But he has lost the reason for living — and dies soon thereafter.