I really respect the character writing in LOTGH because the two protagonists have my respect and there’s so much I am learning from them in their leadership. Something that I especially respect Reinhard for is his sensibility in using human resources, so I am going to devote this entire part to examining some of his core principles.
Someone once said that everyone is a slave to something, so as long as you grasp that you can bring out the value of anyone. Reinhard best embodies this as he deploys people without discriminating them for their background. For example, he appoints generals from the non-aristocratic class (Mittermeyer and Reuntal), gives chances to those who have lost battles and made mistakes, and even rewards outstanding generals from former enemies. One event that stuck with me was when his right hand man, Reuntal, had a personal scandal with a woman and there were nasty rumours spread about him harbouring anarchic ideas, Reinhard did listen to the pleas of those around him and made a level-headed decision – to believe his subordinate and as a sign of trust promote him to a position second only to himself – despite being impossibly angry. If he recognises one’s ability, he will reward them accordingly instead of wasting these talents.
My question is, why does he forgive those who failed and where is the confidence that they will not repeat these mistakes coming from? How does he forgive those who were once his enemy? How can he trust them? I can see why he would not want to waste talents, but surely talent cannot be the only thing determining their promotion. Reinhard didn’t need to know a lot about a person, all he needed was to understand the person’s core principles in order to see some values that make that talent worthwhile. This runs the risk of being too much of a personal decision (which his advisor Oberstein had raised multiple times) but the alternative, however, seems to have even worse prospects: rooting assessments based on simplistic and unquestioned virtues can be misguided, such as promoting loyalty could also mean surrounding oneself with only those who reinforce your decisions instead of focusing on the right one.
I would largely agree with Reinhard’s decision to maximise the use of human resources because I do believe that everyone has a value, regardless of whether or not we like them as a person, and a good leader is someone who brings out the best in people. The issue I have with Reinhard’s methods is that it is so dependent on a charismatic and wise leader, which is always hard to come by, because a lack in charisma renders one unable to convince allies to accept a manpower decision while a lack in wisdom runs the risk of wrongly trusting recalcitrant enemies or incompetent allies. Yang Wenli once commented how part of the reason Reinhard was so successful was because he had made all the right decisions and taken the right risks with choosing his generals, and that’s great and all, but how sustainable is that if this model would have failed under the leadership of any others? Reinhard had that force of personality to sway both allies and enemies. Most importantly he treats everyone as an equal human deserving of a relationship founded on respect. But this lucky amalgamation of genius is hard to come by. While I did learn from Reinhard’s ability to discern the important values in people, I think that the more important thing is to be able to translate certain benchmarks into a systematic assessment. This of course cycles back to the initial fear of using too simplistic a set of values to assess a person. Nonetheless, I do think that a good combination of system and a talented individual with an eye of people is the best way forward. No solution is completely watertight – even Reinhard had moments of misjudgement when he assigned the governor of Heinessen to the wrong person – but that doesn’t mean that it is not an accurate way of assessing human talent.
Another interesting philosophy of Reinhard’s is his idea of maintaining power. Unlike the old dynasty, Reinhard is not as concerned with keeping the power in his own hands as simply maintaining a stable government for effective policy-making. He said that his succession should not be one of inheritance because he will never entrust the empire to an imbecile, even if that was his son. What was more surprising, Reinhard seemed to entertain the idea that his successor should be someone who has the guts to stab him in the back and to succeed as that would be the ultimate proof of the successor’s skill and suitability to become a better leader than himself. This idea was refreshing when compared to the old Goldenbaum dynasty which has only become less and less competent per generation and thus set a relatively low bar for Reinhard to overthrow them. It is also refreshing just in the grand scheme of human nature. Power makes people fear because then they have something to lose, but Reinhard uses that fear as a challenge. He became such a difficult figure to overthrow and set the benchmark so high that anyone who succeeds in scheming against him would most definitely prove their competency. I would like to view it as Reinhard being truly thinking for his people and acting in his capacity as a good leader, but one could of course also say that it does align with his personality to seek out challengers so that he isn’t bored.
This idea of a challenger is beneficial in some doses: competition among allies help elevate each other to greater heights and I read somewhere that this was the main dynamic characteristic of the CIA – FBI relationship. I believe that being too nice with each other is not beneficial to the overall quality of work, so yes competition is necessary. In fact, I respect Reinhard for being able to apply this philosophy to himself instead of being a preaching hypocrite, because if I were to imagine myself in a position of power, I can imagine the struggle with the intoxication of power. Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
However, the flipside to competition is instability because then leadership succession is rooted in overthrowing the previous system. This destructive nature of succession prevents us from building upon the strengths of previous systems and can breed the wrong mentality that your model is a better model when the truth is that any idea, at its inception, is as flawed as the next. I do feel that leadership succession needs to be given more thought than simply “come overthrow me if you can and my head is the prize”, not to mention how uncivilised a coup is in the modern political landscape.
On the topic of leadership succession, Yang made a good point, which I will side-track a little to mull over: people follow people, not an ideology or systems. A leader is persuasive because he can sell these ideas, not because the ideas themselves make them great leaders. This is the exact reason why the great leaders we see in our world don’t just come from one particular type of ideological or cultural background – Gandhi, John F. Kenndy, (US presidents tend to be controversial), Hitler (let’s not argue whether he was a morally good leader), Lee Kuan Yew (and even then he had some enemies). In the anime, #spoilerwarning# the importance of a stable leadership transfer is demonstrated in Yang’s death and the disintegration of the Alliance after that. Yang was an exceptional leader because he inspired confidence and was a genuinely great person, which was why many people followed him to the ends of the wars even when they were given an opportunity to turn sides. The loss of this leader impacted troop morales (and even his enemy Reinhard) as the sparkle of whatever is left of Democracy is gone. On one hand this drives home the point that a personal connection is worth much more than a big lofty ideology (thought the latter can help), and on the other, it really made me realise how important leadership succession is. What kind of leader does Singapore need with each generation? And to what extent can we rely upon the feeder system that rolls in manpower talents for selection, when arguably it runs the risk of neglecting the visionaries who chose to live on the peripheries of such a system? Important questions that once again I balk at because I have no way of answering it. All I can say now is that it’s important, and I want to find these answers soon because I don’t want to be one of those people who repeat these same ideas when I am 50 or something.
There is more to reflect upon for human resources and that general jazz but this is starting to become way too long, so I shall save my reflections on utilitarianism and alliances for a part two.
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