After Nelson Mandela’s death, I asked my students how Mandela’s life might inform our views of management and leadership. They were not very forthcoming with responses, and I asked them why this would be. As you can imagine, many of them are much younger than I. They responded that they had heard of him but did not know much about him. Finding that not very satisfactory, I told them my story of his life.

Mandela found himself and most of the people in South Africa being treated extremely unfairly. He decided to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s model and try to overturn the unfairness with nonviolent demonstrations. However, that nonviolence begat violence from the country’s rulers. He then decided that he and his collaborators needed to revise this nonviolent approach, whereupon he was promptly arrested. As he was being sentenced to a life prison term, he vowed to continue his pursuit of fairness for the people of his country even if he had to give up his life doing so. Despite extremely harsh circumstances, he continued to educate himself and other prisoners to plan new strategies and tactics for changing the country’s situation, and to learn as much about his foes as possible.

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