Listen To The Forest - Leadership Lessons from Ibsen's 'A Doll's House'

In the third century A.D., King Ts’ao was determined his son would learn to become a great leader. He sent him to study under the great master Pan Ku, whose first order was that the boy spend a year in the forest, returning only when he could accurately describe the sound of the forest.

The prince returned, described everything he had heard, and was promptly dismissed – back to the forest to try again. Time passed, the boy deepened his commitment, and duly returned to report the sounds of flowers opening, grass drinking the morning dew and the sun warming the earth.  The master was pleased. “Only when a ruler has learned to listen closely to the people’s hearts, hearing their feelings uncommunicated, pains unexpressed … can he hope to meet the true needs of his citizens”. 

In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Torvald describes Nora as his possession, calling her his “hunted dove”. It serves his self-image to make helpless and weak those around him, as evidenced by his assertion that “I should not be a man if this womanly helplessness did not just give you a double attractiveness in my eyes”.

He had many opportunities to see the effect his charismatic manipulation was having. He saw her compulsive need for treats, her infatuation with money and her desperate need for his approval and attention, yet chose to chide her as he would a child. There were warning signs in every interaction that spoke to her discontent, her suffering and her fears. So turbulent was his wake, he couldn’t see her drowning in it. 

Research shows us that a powerful demeanour, which leaders are encouraged to use to benefit their image and effectiveness, has the result of stifling, discouraging and demeaning those around them.

The more powerful the leader, the less resistance they face, the greater their momentum. It’s an unhealthy cycle perpetuated by both the leaders themselves who refuse to openly and truly listen, and by those followers who lack the courage to speak their truth.

​As we evolve our philosophy of leadership, perhaps we will begin to see leadership as being not a powerful and charismatic individual, but as a transitory role many individuals may assume given the right time, place or circumstance.