Can even leaders on the wrong side of history be credited for good outcomes? Can awful leaders be awe-inspiring?

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Some people argue that good can come out of bad. The extreme of this notion means that without Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, European countries would probably not have created the European Union and enjoyed the almost 80 years of relative peace and prosperity that lasted until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. I put the question to a number of consultants I know. 

“This example is too extreme,” says Dr. Nadine Binder, an intercultural consultant near Bremen, Germany. 

A business strategist from the U.S. state of Colorado said it is a question of weighing the gains against the costs. “Well, if you consider the loss of millions to be a fair tradeoff, I guess you could make that point, but I don’t think it’s even close to being equivalent,” she said. “There are huge losses for a comparatively small gain.”

Most experts will agree that the extremely brutal regimes of former leaders like Hitler and more recently Idi Amin of Uganda and Pol Pot of Cambodia mean that their lethal legacies will always be tarnished and denounced as egregious examples of the most irresponsible and deadly abuse of leadership power.

That’s the take of one security consultant from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “Yes, the same is true in Congo,” they said. “All of our leaders have been plain bad. Just looking out for themselves and not the people.” (He and some other experts interviewed for this article asked to not be identified by name due to the sensitive nature of their comments and out of concern that their comments might result in a social media or even political backlash).

Lucy Linhares, a social activist in Rio de Janeiro, says the same thing about the military dictatorships that she and others lived through in Brazil from 1964 to 1985. She also warns about the distorted lens that people in social media and beyond now use to skew our view of the past.

“I don’t believe in a history that twists the truth in the name of an intellectual exercise that cancels the horrors of a time,” Linhares said.

Horrible for some, not so bad for others

But what about the more nuanced legacy of leaders, who may have not been seen to be all that effective in handling people in their charge or misused their powers in some way and yet still created something that was seen to be of value for their organisations and countries and the rest of the world?

In the past, experts might point to Libya’s “Brotherly Leader” Muammar Gaddafi, who was much criticized in the Global North, but on the African continent he is still widely praised as an Islamic modernist and pan-Arab unionist. Likewise for Josip Broz Tito, the former authoritarian leader of Yugoslavia, who united the Balkans and actively resisted both Nazism and Stalinism. 

In terms of modern-day leadership, two examples stand out.

The first is President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, who was recently re-elected for another five-year term in office after 30 years in power. Outside critics see him as an unrelenting despot who suppresses and oppresses those in political opposition and those advocating for a more free and open media. 

By contrast, the vast majority of Rwandans still laud him as the general who liberated Rwanda from the terrible genocide against the Tutsis in 1994 and who has successfully led the country through reconciliation, reunification and recovery ever since then. 

Key aspects of global leadership

The second example is the highly controversial South African entrepreneur Elon Musk, whom one interviewee for this article decried as: “a really horrible person, who seems to treat everyone badly, even one of his children.” 

His transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson recently said that her father berated her for being queer and “not a girl” as a child.

But one interviewee for this article noted that while he might seem like a bad person, not everything he created is bad. He has been involved in numerous innovative ventures, including the electric carmaker Tesla, the spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX and Starlink, whose satellites provide low-cost and much needed internet connections to many underserved communities around the world.

Fellow South African and leadership consultant Dr. Alan Richter agrees that “bad leaders can be good at some things” and he illustrates this in a unique model that he has co-created and centred around four key aspects or styles of global leadership: Ideas, Action, People and Values.

“A leader can be good on ‘Action,’ for example, executing plans, but fail in not being principled or inclusive,” Richter said. “There are dark or shadow sides to each aspect of leadership.” 

Musk versus Mandela

A Values-based leader could be “smug”, an Ideas leader “impractical”, an Action leader “rash” and a People leader “smothering,” he said. Finding the ideal balance can be almost impossible although most people welcome the greater scrutiny that leaders in all walks of life receive nowadays.

A senior leader at a large multinational company in Istanbul, who focuses on human rights as well as employee relations and inclusion, said leaders can no longer do anything they want, such as yelling or worse. “Business has evolved and changed over the last 25 years,” she said. “We can now choose which leaders we want to walk with.”

Richter said that in the political realm, former South African president Nelson Mandela probably remains the most admired and admirable leader. “He was exceptionally good in all four areas (Ideas, Action, People and Values) even though he, like everyone else, made mistakes,” Richter said.

And unlike many other leaders, he also knew when it was time to go. After only five years as president, he clearly identified and passed the torch to his able successor, Thabo Mbeki. But he had 27 years in prison to plan this smooth handover. 

The question now is whether President Kagame and other long-serving leaders will do likewise without the kind of disintegration, conflict and bloodshed that happened in the Balkans after Tito’s death in 1980.

We shall see.

Questions to consider:

1. Do you believe that all leaders should have term limits of five to 10 years to reduce the potential for complacency, overreach or abuse?
2. Whom do you personally admire as a truly global leader, and why?
3. As you develop as a global leader yourself, which of the four areas — Ideas, Action, People and Values — will be the easiest and which will be the toughest for you to learn and grow in, and why?

Jeremy Solomons is a global leadership coach and facilitator, based in Kigali, Rwanda, where he writes regular “Leading Rwanda” and "Letter from Kigali" columns for the New Times newspaper. In the past, he was a Reuters financial reporter in Hong Kong and New York City and then a foreign correspondent in Frankfurt. He was also a farmer in Israel, factory worker and teacher in France, banker in England and Switzerland and entrepreneur in Italy.