With the confusion surrounding the US elections, the threatened impeachment of ROC president Chen Shui-bian, and the APEC summit, political leaders have been in the media spotlight recently. Yet, in an age that embraces diversity, leaders needn't be confined to the political stage. There are many different kinds of leader.

In August The Journalist conducted a reader survey about the top 50 "power people" in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Those who ended up at the top of the list all hailed from the realms of government or business, including PRC president Jiang Zemin, ROC president Chen Shui-bian and former ROC president Lee Teng-hui. Nanfang Shuo, the publisher of The Journalist, argues that the results show that people still cling to the notion that "the government should lead the way" while overlooking the importance of creating new values that embrace cultural diversity. The three Chinese societies of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, lamented Nanfang, overemphasize political power, under the narrow-minded belief that a person's leadership ability is simply the equivalent of his power, influence, and level of name recognition.

Embracing diversity

In the early 1990s, a similar poll was conducted in France. The top two vote-getters were a homeless social activist priest and Jacques Cousteau, a maverick oceanographer who had devoted his life to studying the ocean despite lacking a university degree. Francois Mitterrand, who was then the president of France, came in ninth. These results show that the French have inclusive ideas about leadership that transcend the narrow confines of politics. It would be worthwhile for the people of Taiwan to think about how their values differ from those of the French.

It's fortunate, then, that the instructors at the leadership education camps put on in Taiwan this past year included figures beyond the usual line-up of political leaders featured at events sponsored by political parties. Some instructors at the camps were religious leaders and others were people making their marks in such areas as social welfare, community education or environmental protection. The camps give these leaders a springboard to make their voices heard in mainstream society. By teaching youth to value diversity, they hope to create a different kind of leadership culture and to cultivate a separate group of "social activist leaders" who will help bring about a truly democratic and civil society. The different classes at these non-political camps were designed to complement each other. As a result each camp displayed a unique character.

Zen leadership

In the Judo room at National Tsing Hua University, a group of youths sit cross-legged, with their eyes closed and their backs erect. The very picture of peace and calm, they sit in this manner, carefully regulating their breathing, for about 40 minutes. Then they stand up with their knees slightly bent and their palms pressed together in a position known as "Children Pray to Kuanyin." These aren't kungfu-fighting monks training at Shaolin Temple on the mainland. Rather, they are participants at a "Zen Leadership" camp sponsored by the World Leadership Education Foundation (WLEF).

Founded just this year by a group of Tsing Hua University professors, WLEF sponsors youth leadership training in order to foster a peaceful outlook among the young.

They are actively trying to create an environment much like what is found at New Age spiritual retreats in the West. The participants, who live at the center and meditate as part of their daily routine there, are exposed to a program designed to imbue their hearts with religious ideals, their minds with visionary thinking, and their spirits with qualities of leadership. A tranquil environment much like a church or Zen monastery replaces the often raucous and heated debates that occur around seminar tables at more politically oriented leadership camps.

Holding that meditation will, along with natural science and behavioral science, emerge as one of the three most important educational disciplines, WLEF has designed a Zen leadership program that emphasizes state of mind. Students are encouraged to probe their inner selves during moments of solitude and thereby cultivate self-discipline, increase their wisdom and potential, and improve their physical endurance and ability to handle pressure. They learn both how to get involved in the world and how to morally transcend it. "Regular exposure to Zen cultivation causes a temporary cessation of the brain's frenzied inner motion, which improves both physical and mental states," declares Yu Ting, the foundation's executive director.

Leaders are servants

What's more, WLEF emphasizes that spiritual values such as benevolence and peace are important components of leadership. With a curriculum that includes topics such as "Strategic Alliances among International Rescue Organizations," "Using Science and Technology for Peace," "Promoting a World without National Boundaries," and "Implementing a Spiritual Internet for the Global Village," most of the students it attracts have peaceful characters. The foundation's educational philosophy puts the focus on inner development, in large part aiming to get leaders to return to a state of "transcendent innate goodness." In this respect, their concerns are much like those of organized religion. The training methods they have developed involve bringing out innate leadership abilities. It's an approach that differs greatly from the "confrontation management" typically stressed when teaching political and entrepreneurial leadership skills.

Students who take leadership training with a religious orientation are invariably service oriented, and they don't think about leadership strictly in terms of political power. "After you develop religious concerns, you become even more inclined to help your fellow man, so you will naturally want to become a leader!" says one smiling student. "Leaders are public servants!" adds another.

Lin Ta, a WLEF student who has just passed her exams to become a judge, took time out from her busy lawyer's schedule to pursue leadership training because she believes that her life's purpose is to help bring about world peace. Therefore, among all the various leadership classes, including many put on by political parties and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), she selected one with a religious orientation.

Facing life and death

"Start with the little battles faced by people every day!" says another WLEF student. "War is the greatest obstacle to peace for contemporary man, so we believe that a defining characteristic of a leader is that he or she lessens conflict between people and thus reduces the potential for war." Students earnestly consider how to resolve petty interpersonal conflicts, before expanding the scope of their discussion to how to contribute to the resolution of major world crises.

The New Era Youth Leadership Symposium put on by the Dream-Making Foundation in conjunction with the National Youth Commission only deals with ultimate issues, such as facing death and rediscovering the life-source. Right at the start of her class, instructor Chiang Chi-wen asks students with great feeling, "If you can't confront death, how can you become a leader?"

Chiang believes that until people face death without terror, they will lack a leader's aura. She points to the example of British volunteers at hospices who cultivate precisely such an aura. She explains that by preparing for death and living more in the moment, you naturally raise the quality of your life. Therefore, she encourages youths to broaden their understanding of life by volunteering at medical institutions and giving aid to those approaching their final hours.

Hearing- (not communication-) impaired

Smaller NGOs, which may have only one or two full-time staff members, lack the resources to carry out their own leadership training and must find and cultivate leaders from their networks in the social service field. Their chief consideration is that their leaders show innate qualities of warmth and charisma and that they can help these groups expand the scope of their services by making the most of their organizational creativity.

The Agape Social Welfare Organization, which cultivates leaders among hearing-impaired youths, strongly believes that it is best to develop leadership skills among the hearing-impaired in regular, open environments much like any other, rather than in environments that are restricted to only the hearing-impaired. This is because they believe that hearing-impaired leaders must be able to work both inside and outside the hearing-impaired community and be able to communicate with people who have normal hearing. Only then will they be able to lead these groups out of their organizational ghettoes and expand their services to include the society as a whole. "The hearing-impaired are a minority, but a minority needn't be disadvantaged," says Lin Hsiao-mei, Agape's director.

In defiance of the stereotypes that many have about those who are hard of hearing, the "Beyond the Summit Leadership Camp for the Hearing-Impaired" was developed and planned by people who are hearing-impaired themselves. Emphasizing scientific and technological training, it employs simultaneous interpretation as well as the virtual technologies of the Internet to help the hearing-impaired create a realm where there are no obstacles to communication. Lin Yi-ling, director of Beyond, is very talented at using the Internet for communication via the written word. Reflecting on the difficulties that the hearing-impaired have communicating, she stresses that leadership training for them must allow them to achieve "obstacle-free communication."

Virtual "leadership circle"

"Only an open 'leadership circle' will naturally provide for the rise of new leaders," says Yu Ting. A leadership circle is an environment that helps to crystallize ideas and desires. This can be a real-world environment, but it can also be a virtual Internet community that brings together people with common concerns. But in either case, enthusiastic service and active communication are the two permanent hallmarks of leadership.

The growing number of leadership training activities sponsored by Taiwan NGOs mix personal development with professional skills enhancement, religious training, volunteerism and political reform. These programs can help charismatic leaders who are both politically involved and morally upstanding to become greater forces for good. Amid growing cultural diversity, only a new kind of leader with broader, more holistic values will be able to create frameworks suitable to the new era.

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The Agape Social Welfare Association encourages its hearing-impaired members to participate in society at large and to ask strangers on the streets of Taipei about their views of the hearing impaired.