Profiles in Leadership: Volodymyr Zelensky

Profiles in Leadership: Volodymyr Zelensky

In his play Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare wrote, “Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” He could have been describing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — whose unlikely story includes his rise from television comedian to Time Magazine‘s “Person of the Year.” Time‘s Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal wrote, “The process of choosing the Person of the Year — who or what most influenced the events of the past 12 months, for good or for ill — can be agonizing. How could one person represent an entire year? Do we lean into the light, reach into the darkness, or land somewhere in between? This year’s choice was the most clear-cut in memory. Whether the battle for Ukraine fills one with hope or with fear, Volodymyr Zelensky galvanized the world in a way we haven’t seen in decades. In the weeks after Russian bombs began falling on Feb. 24, his decision not to flee Kyiv but to stay and rally support was fateful.”[1] Felsenthal continued:

In a world that had come to be defined by its divisiveness, there was a coming together around this cause, around this country that some outside it might not be able to find on a map. At the U.N., 141 countries condemned the invasion; only North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, and Belarus — dictatorships all — voted with Moscow. Major companies pulled out of Russia en masse, erasing billions in revenues. Financial, material, humanitarian, and military support came pouring in. Strangers took in refugees; restaurateurs fed the hungry; doctors flew in to help the wounded. … For proving that courage can be as contagious as fear, for stirring people and nations to come together in defense of freedom, for reminding the world of the fragility of democracy — and of peace — Volodymyr Zelensky and the spirit of Ukraine are TIME’s 2022 Person of the Year.”

Zelensky’s Unlikely Path to Leadership

President Zelensky’s path to wartime leader reads more like a Hollywood script than a biography. Wikipedia notes, “Born to a Ukrainian Jewish family, Zelensky grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine. Prior to his acting career, he obtained a degree in law from the Kyiv National Economic University. He then pursued a career in comedy and created the production company Kvartal 95, which produced films, cartoons, and TV shows including the TV series ‘Servant of the People,’ in which Zelensky played the role of the Ukrainian president. The series aired from 2015 to 2019 and was immensely popular. A political party bearing the same name as the television show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95.” To the surprise of many people, he was elected President of Ukraine the next year and was sworn into office on 20 May 2019 as the 6th President of Ukraine. Little did he know that less than three years later, on 24 February 2022, his country would be invaded by Russia.

His very brief official biography states, “From the outset of the hostilities in Donbas, Volodymyr Zelensky and ‘KVARTAL 95’ rendered support to the Armed Forces with funds, equipment and arranged shows on the front line and in different military units. [He is] married to Mrs. Olena Zelenska, with 2 children — daughter Oleksandra and son Kyrylo.” Zelensky is often seen on television news shows imploring Western democratic governments for more aid. Journalist Simon Shuster reports, “Zelensky has dialed into the World Economic Forum in Davos and the NATO summit in Madrid. He has granted interviews to talk-show hosts and journalists and held live chats with students at Stanford, Harvard, and Yale. He has leveraged the fame of entertainment superstars to amplify his calls for international support.”[2]

Recently, his surprise visit to Washington, DC, to address Congress, was compared to a similar visit by Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, during the Second World War. In that address, Churchill made a similar plea to Congress for assistance by appealing to a skeptical American public for support in his nation’s fight against the totalitarian dictator and regime of his day, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. One of Churchill’s themes was that stopping Hitler in Europe was in the strategic best interest of the United States, because, if Hitler was not stopped in Europe, he would eventually turn his ambitions against the United States once he defeated Europe.

The decisions that President Zelensky has made since February, with the backing and tenacious fighting of the Ukrainian people, has resulted in massive American, European, and other global assistance. Together, these actions have saved his country and served as the backdrop for his visit to Capitol Hill to address a joint-session of Congress. Henry Kissinger, when discussing strategy-driven leadership decisions in his 2022 book entitled Leadership, quoted Winston Churchill from his book, The Gathering Storm (1948), in which Churchill stated, “Statesmen are not called upon only to settle easy questions. These often settle themselves. It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.”[3]

Courage Under Fire

In his speech to Congress, Zelensky stated, “This battle is not only for the territory, for this or another part of Europe. The battle is not only for life, freedom and security of Ukrainians or any other nation which Russia attempts to conquer. This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren. It will define whether it will be a democracy of Ukrainians and for Americans — for all. This battle cannot be frozen or postponed. It cannot be ignored, hoping that the ocean or something else will provide a protection. From the United States to China, from Europe to Latin America, and from Africa to Australia, the world is too interconnected and interdependent to allow someone to stay aside and at the same time to feel safe when such a battle continues.”

Praise for President Zelensky is not unanimous. Many members of the anti-democratic crowd who supported the 6 January 2021 insurrection to overthrow the U.S. Government continue to criticize Zelensky for defending his country against Putin’s unprovoked invasion. History will not judge them kindly. On the other hand, Zelensky’s legacy will likely be positive and lasting. Shuster notes, “There wasn’t much in Zelensky’s biography to predict his willingness to stand and fight. He had never served in the military or shown much interest in its affairs. He had only been President since April 2019. His professional instincts derived from a lifetime as an actor on the stage, a specialist in improv comedy, and a producer in the movie business. That experience turned out to have its advantages. Zelensky was adaptable, trained not to lose his nerve under pressure. He knew how to read a crowd and react to its moods and expectations. Now his audience was the world.”

The conflict in which Ukraine is engaged is part of the Long War the world must wage that pits liberal democracies against totalitarian dictatorships. Again, Zelensky’s requests to Congress against Putin’s Russia are the modern-day equivalent of Churchill’s request for support to defeat Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Supporters of democracy will have their commitment and their patience tested as the Long War continues. Even if the conflict ended tomorrow, the task of reconstructing the country is going to be immense. Enterra Solutions® is determined to help in that effort. During the Agro&Food Security Forum in Warsaw, Poland, which I attended this past fall, the concern amongst participants about the global food value chain was apparent in every conversation. The event gathered government representatives of Ukraine and Poland, leading Ukrainian experts and market operators, as well as the international agricultural community.

Notwithstanding the de-globalization trends around the world today, the interconnectedness of the global agricultural and food supply chain is apparent. Those links, however, are subject to massive perturbations, stemming from even the slightest system shock. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was one such system shock. It will have long-standing ramifications and will prompt increased investments and innovations to make the system more resilient. More generally, Enterra® is currently delivering systems to leading global consumer packaged goods corporations that can be used to help individual companies make their value chains more systemically resilient and competitive. Our Enterra Global Insights and Decision Superiority System™ is a “see-beyond-the-horizon” system capable of anticipating the cascading effects of system shocks, such as pandemics/animal diseases, inflation, supply chain disruptions, geo-political events, climate change, and other macro risk factors, to help companies determine the optimal scenario to execute to navigate uncertainty and maximize corporate goals.

Concluding Thoughts

The late Eleanor Roosevelt once stated, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” Her sentiment has certainly proved accurate since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict. Small-minded people will continue to criticize President Zelensky while the great minds of this world worry about how to save democracy and resist authoritarianism and aggression. I’m hoping the world steps up in the aftermath of the Ukraine conflict in the same way America stepped up with the Marshall Plan following the Second World War. The Plan was named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who, in 1947, proposed that America provide economic assistance to restore the war-torn economic infrastructure of Europe. Ukraine will require that assistance regardless of whether President Zelensky is given the opportunity to continue leading his country in the years ahead. For the moment, however, he is a leader upon whom greatness was thrust.

Footnotes

[1] Edward Felsenthal, “How We Chose Volodymyr Zelensky and the Spirit of Ukraine,” Time Magazine, 7 December 2022.

[2] Simon Shuster, “2022 Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelensky,” Time Magazine, 7 December 2022.

[3] Henry Kissinger, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, Penguin Random House, 5 July 2022.

Very insightful.

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Leadership has many forms and many origins. Fortune favored Ukraine!

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Matthias Frisch

Board Chair and Director, Advisor bei Private & Own Company

1y

thank you for sharing !

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Kelly Baughman

VP Business Development Institutional Investor - Fixed Income Forum and TTI/Vanguard Tech

1y

Amazing!

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Exceptional leadership is rare to find both in government and in corporate world. Thanks for highlighting Zelensky's attributes and Enterra's superb foresight.

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