I N T E R V I E W

M. J. CHADWICK is Director of LEAD-Europe, part of the group of Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) programs established world-wide to encourage leadership and change towards sustainable development. As an agricultural scientist, he has worked in the Sudan, Sweden and Switzerland as well as in his native Great Britain. He is a former director of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). Insight met him at his lecture: "Confronting Current Consumption - Patterns of Use, Service Provided and the Intensity Concept" on March 12, at the Central European University, Budapest. The following is an edited version of what was discussed at that session.

Insight: How is the concept of leadership understood in different countries and regions and how do you generalise that approach, taking into account regional differences?

MC: The emphasis in LEAD's programme is definitely on leadership and so it is very difficult to deal with the different cultures and different traditions that people come from. For example, we have people coming from more traditional cultures, as well as some from different parts of Europe and North America. People who participate come from very different professional backgrounds. They come from the army, from labour organisations like trade unions, from television and journalism, and then also from CSOs, which often have their own very particular way of thinking and dealing with leadership. We also train many people who are working as leaders already, maybe not at the highest level, like project leaders, leaders of teams and groups in industry. So it is very difficult to resolve what is regarded as an acceptable form of leadership.
  But the most important thing that one has to do in teaching leadership skills is to overcome the suspicion of leadership itself. Some people perceive it as imposing the leader's will on a huge number of other people, or they might see it as being open to corruption or personal ambitions. Among many participants in the LEAD programme there is suspicion of leaders, and a belief that leadership does not act to encourage the democratic process. We ask participants to form their own vision of acceptable leadership, and of how leaders should relate to those who are led. We also explore how leaders gain legitimacy through the implicit consent of cooperation from those they lead. In essence, the whole concept of leadership in LEAD is similar to that of France, I think. You have liberté, egalité, fraternité. So, as a leader, you give people freedom first. Then you have to respect that each person's contribution is of equal worth and then you have solidarity, where people come together and do something. This is, to some extent, how it is perceived in the LEAD programme. Of course, the other thing is peoples' vision of how they can become become leaders, by going in a particular route or direction.

I: What are the criteria for selection of people that are accepted for your programme? Is there any particular target group of people you would like to attract?

MC: What counts most is a candidate's interest, which doesn't necessarily mean expertise. It is not a programme where the emphasis is on academic qualifications. So interest and professional experience, where environment and development are part of the job, would be the main criteria. Of course, we are looking for the people who, because of their ideas and the vision they want to share, seem to have a potential for leadership. We would like to have a balance of work experience, professional interest and geographic distribution of people from Europe, a cross-section of age and gender.

I: Could you explain the way national/international training sessions are organised?

MC: In national or regional sessions the emphasis is not so much on orientation and understanding of different positions people are coming from, nor on background from which the programme operates. To a large extent we try to focus on a curriculum. In international sessions you have to spend more time considering the orientation and the background from which people come and then the whole training idea of leadership is to break the whole group into small multinational groups who would study a particular problem, like for example the quality of life. I don't believe we can just go to group of people saying "tell me what you want and then I'll make my plan and policy." This is a much more sophisticated, multi-layered and fluid form of leadership - but that's how it works or that's how we are trying to make it work. Within national and regional courses we would have a lot of role playing, so we would split the group up into six to ten groups and you would have two groups who would negotiate upon something. There would be background materials on that and a chosen negotiator.

I: Can you give me an example of distance learning?

MC: Distance learning is not so formalised. This, together with the assignments and residential courses, are the main elements of LEAD programmes. What we basically do is take the issues which have been included in the residential course and ones that seem to interest people and the distance learning is centred around that.
  At the residential course held in Barcelona one of the topics was a negotiation simulation exercise. We had people from an airline company, television, nature conservation and regional planing. We collected extra information and distributed it, we built up the material that people can study on a subject. The other way is that people come back to us and point out an issue they had never dealt with. Then we would respond to that and find the solution and share it with the others.
  Another example was not long after Kyoto, in dealing with the negotiations for climate convention. We got a response to the attitude the EU was taking, from people in Europe that are outside the process. So it is rather an informal distance learning based on response and follow-ups, both generated by us and by other people and this can mean a whole range of topics related to environment. Then we would find the material and send it out to people. Now that's more through the internet but also through hard copies. Then they have an assignment.
  We also have LEADNet, which uses the internet as a main backbone to provide LEAD associates with access to news. LEADNet also supports LEAD's international sessions by assembling computer labs on the sites where the sessions are organised. It provides additional services such as CD-ROM, with all the data from LEAD web site and the Associates database, virtual conferencing, a photo library etc.

I: How do you think that Western experience and practice should be reflected in designing CEE national policies and educational curricula?

MC: I don't think we have any curricula that is strictly based on West European experience. Rather we use the differences between West and Eastern Europe. We have the standard curricula guidelines for 12 different programmes and then each programme is supposed to take into account the feature of their own situation and adapt the curriculum in the light of that. We had a course held on East-West Europe, about dialogue, collaboration, development and problems dealing with that. Other related problems that we face are immigration, from outside areas to Europe, or ageing populations. These are the issues which make us treat a standard curricula in the particular way. We deal with these issues, but we are not advocating one thing or another.

I: How do people from CEE respond to your programme?

MC: I don't think we have any problems in finding people. In fact, we also have a CIS-regional programme based in Moscow, including 12 countries. And we have other CEE countries in the CIS programme who would rather join the European one. That can create difficulties for us.We have enough East Europeans applying and we identify their needs, but the problem is that there are certain parts of Eastern Europe that we really can't take, like Ukraine, for example, which should be part of the CIS programme. We have representatives from Hungary, from Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic in our European sessions.

I: At the lecture we heard the three key words: "dematerialisation," "substitution," "recycling" as a potential means in slowing down consumerism. How do you think the LEAD programme could contribute in promoting this idea?

MC: I wasn't actually advocating that these actions were the only way to do something about consumption. I am saying that in practice, in the real world we experience that these three things are going on. These would only take us in the right direction to solve the problem and we must add other things too. I would like to make LEAD people recognise that themselves. So, when LEAD associates get back to their jobs I want them to be well prepared, with as much information and with a greater insight into the whole issue that we are dealing with, either at their jobs or outside them.