ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some elements of inspirational leadership, power, and vulnerability through the life, of an extraordinary man on the world stage, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. It discusses the ways in which “inspirational leadership” functions to create outcomes, how it affects the very mind-set of civic dialogue, and focuses national ambition and the culture of a people—for good or for ill. The chapter focuses on Gandhi whose emphasis on personal development for his leadership will be contrasted to Adolf Hitler’s. It describes the personal and political impact of Gandhi’s painfully achieved ongoing spiritual and psychologically integrative work on his own persona, and its link to the content of his inspirational values and his transformative philosophy of inclusiveness. The chapter outlines how the contrasts may be understood, both through Adam Kahane’s organisational mind-set and within a psychoanalytic developmental framework. An assumption that vulnerability acts as a deterrent to the corrosive corruptions of power may be a bit equivocal.
