The Social Compact

I love my son, Chris. It is true that he is taking the "scenic route" through college, but just when I start to stew about it, he hands me a book he is studying in one of his classes and says, "Dad, I think you will enjoy this." He is nearly always right. There is as usual a leadership lesson hiding in the narrative I hope you now feel enticed into reading.

The book Chris handed me last Sunday was one expounding ideas most educated people have learned something about but which has regrettably fallen from the national conversation. The book my son gave me was Basic Political Writings by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Educators generally encounter Rousseau in undergraduate school where professors connect him with the progressive or child-centered movement in schools today. Others, like my Chris, learn Rousseau in philosophy class.

What is important here and now was re-inserted recently into the language by President Obama, although I doubt one in a thousand people could identify in his remarks the writer from 18th century Geneva. The phrase is "social compact."

The "social compact," according to Rousseau, has its basis in nature where liberty is the natural state. As Rousseau observes, "men have reached the point at which the obstacles in the way of their preservation in the state of nature show their power of resistance to be greater than the resources at the disposal of each individual for his maintenance in that state." In other words, life is too complicated to go it alone.

But in agreeing to associate, Rousseau says we can preserve the state of nature because "each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields other over himself, he gains an equivalence for everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has."

So, "each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole." Were all that true. I have never seen our nation more divided and that saddens me. But I guess that is why Chris' class is called "Political Theory."

When I think, however, about the more than 1200 hours of face-to-face training that TLA offers, and the work of our consultants and principal network facilitators, I am rewarded by the extent to which we have built corporate capacity and received everyone as part of the whole. In my opinion, everyone is or can be a leader, regardless of job title, rank, and rate of pay. So how does our social compact show up?

TLA staff and consultants honor the general will in every group with whom we work though planning, delivering, and following up; we teach our customers how to facilitate agreement, maximize appropriate involvement, make conversation safe, hold people accountable, and search for sources of influence to increase the effective and quality of worklife for all within their circle of influence.

Most of all, we advance our social compact by living our mission statement: Changing leadership from the power and position of the few to the skillful collaborative practice of the many. I guess this sounds like bragging, but as the old fellow said, "It ain't braggin' if it's fact." I appreciate our association and wish you well in your others. What we have made, we made together. I think Rousseau would approve.