Following the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, Rwanda was a physical, moral, and spiritual wasteland doomed, in the eyes of many, to be a failed state. After 100 days of a killing frenzy that took the lives of more than one million people, destroyed the social fabric of a society, and stripped the country of resources, the nation looked destitute and in ultimate crisis mode. 

Twenty one years later, Rwanda has risen from the ashes to be a reference in successful and exemplary post-conflict recovery in various domains, including economic development, reconciliation, good governance, women’s empowerment and gender equality, good business environment, and more. 

Even though President Kagame would probably point to a system rather than to the effort of one individual, many people have argued and indeed documented the fact Rwanda’s rebirth was spearheaded by the strong leadership, resolute political will, and an unwavering sense of purpose, urgency, and resilience of one person: Paul Kagame. 

A google search of the accolades he has received because of his leadership generates dozens of acknowledgements for his commitment to address crises, reconcile his people, empower women, promote the use of ICT, and produce positive changes in the lives of Rwandans. 

A recent publication, François Soudan’s Paul Kagame: Conversations with the President of Rwanda (Enigma, 2015), spells out the leadership attributes behind Rwanda’s transformation. In his own words, prompted by the journalist’s questions, Paul Kagame spells out his identity as a leader marked by exceptional experiences that modeled his authentic, transformational, and Level 5 leadership.

What is leadership?

It is about defining a vision and persuading other people to embrace and follow it; in other words, it is about influence. Leaders should be neither liked nor feared but credible, a combination of skill (knowledge) and character (values).  A good leader will know what his or her non-negotiables are (for example, integrity, honesty, character, and respect for others) and make sure that his or her organisation has clearly defined its vision or value proposition. 

He or she will diagnose situations, flex, and partner with others for desired performance. This is because there are several leadership styles, and people rarely use only one. One’s leadership style will shift depending on the situation. Good leaders know that they need to manage ever-changing situations; leaders are managers of change, and they know how to motivate followers, turn them into leaders in their own right, and get results. 

In "What Makes a Leader” (Harvard Business Review, 2007), Daniel Goleman argues that a leader displays emotional intelligence attributes: self-awareness (self-assessment and awareness of one’s strengths and weaknesses as well as self-confidence), self-management or regulation (self-control, adaptability, transformation, trustworthiness, achievement, and initiative), internal motivation (motivation not from external rewards such as riches and status but from internal forces such a deep-held vision, optimism even in the face of adversity, and persistence to achieve results), social awareness (empathy, organizational awareness, service orientation, and attention to the needs of clients), and social skills (inspirational leadership, communication, conflict management, teamwork and collaboration, as well as relationships and coalitions).  

Leaders surround themselves with the right people in the right jobs and create a stable and supportive environment that in turn fosters motivation and engagement. These kinds of leaders create winning teams and winning situations.

Some of the highlights of emotional intelligence in Kagame: Conversations with the Rwandan President include Paul Kagame’s insistence on appealing to values and principles that he developed over the years, for example, building on systems rather than individuals, shaping his fight for the return of refugees and asserting that Rwanda is not too small for its people (contrary to what previous regimes had claimed), as he repeated during an address to delegates at Rwanda Day 2015 in Amsterdam (in the Netherlands) in early October, and the importance of including women in his vision for the reconstruction of Rwanda—as he recently recalled during an address to students and faculty of the Wharton Business School in Pennsylvania (USA) on September 30th.

Throughout the interviews with François Soudan, he projects self-confidence, internal motivation, strength in the face of adversity, and persistence to achieve results, among other qualities.

In "Discovering Your Authentic Leadership” (Harvard Business Review, 2007),  Bill George,  Peter Seems, Andrew  N. McLean, and Diana Meyer maintain that authentic leadership refers to understanding the story of one’s life, particularly those difficult yet transformative experiences through which one can find the motivation to make an impact in the world.

These experiences have the potential to challenge a person to develop strong convictions and the inner strength and urge to lead others to action. Authentic leadership entails practicing one’s values and principles and balancing one’s extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Authentic leaders have faced extreme situations that they used to shape their vision and produce outstanding results without losing track of who they are or where they come from.

In Kagame: Conversations with the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame states that he has "learned from and been shaped by my life experience” (p.4) and subsequently mentions several such instances that shaped his vision of leadership. For example, he discusses the turbulent 1950s and early 1960s that saw his family’s life take a turn for the worse. When he was only four years old his family was torn away. He saw burning houses, and Hutu mobs were killing Tutsi and their cattle. His family narrowly escaped a mob that was approaching their home. They eventually ended up in a refugee camp in Uganda.

The hardship of refugee life shaped Kagame’s methodical long-term goal of going back to his homeland. He could not just understand why anybody should be denied the right to his/her country. This injustice shaped his love for his motherland and the imperative to end the decades-long refugee status of many Rwandans scattered in foreign lands since the late 1950s.

The hardship of refugee life informed Kagame’s vision for inclusive citizenship: since 1994, the government led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front has made welcoming Rwandans in the diaspora a central piece of its policy.

During the first two republics under Grégoire Kayibanda and Juvénal Habyarimana, Rwandans living outside Rwanda found it impossible to return home or to visit their homeland supposedly because the country was too small to accommodate its citizens languishing in refugee life.

What is transformational leadership? In his book Leadership (Harper & Row, 1978), James M. Burns defined it as "a process by which leaders and followers help each other to advance to a higher level of morale and motivation” (p. 20). 

It is a notch higher than transactional leadership. While transactional leadership exerts power in a positional manner (resulting in zero sum situations through legitimate, coercive, or reward power), transformational leadership operates through expert and referent power that is through idealized influence, support, encouragement, and persuasion.

A transformational leader will influence through a clear vision, effective communication, motivation, optimism, and role-modeling.  Grounded in his or her values, principles, passion, consistency, and discipline, he or she is fearless and unstoppable. Transformational leadership is the present and future of leadership; it entails leading people, strategic planning, resourcefulness, good change management, and participative management.

Transformational leadership creates a safe and stable environment in which people can succeed, develop, and lead at all levels and all the time. Once a clear and compelling vision has been defined, the transformational leader guides, motivates, and supports followers to look beyond their own self-interests, challenge the status quo, and look for new ways of doing things.

Whether he is talking about unity or about fighting past, failed policies of exclusion or corruption, Kagame focuses on system, or shared vision. Transcending ethnic affiliation, for example, helps to envision higher order national aspirations.  He provides the model of an incorruptible, disciplined, and authentic leader, who projects optimism and the confidence that great things can happen.

This is one of the main reasons that explain the rebranding of a country that was dead in 1994 but is now vibrant.

Using various new strategies such as decentralization, surrounding himself with knowledgeable people, innovation, traditional cultural practices (such as umuganda, imihigo, Girinka, and ubudehe) leveraged as solutions to current challenges, he has presided over the transformation of a nation that leads as an exemplar in various domains.

As a result, Rwanda has a totally new brand of a safe and clean country, where reconciliation has taken solid roots, when women and girls have their fair, equal share in education and government, where it is easy to do business, and which sends thousands of troops to peacekeeping missions around the globe. If it continues to be well managed, Rwanda’s hard-earned new brand equity will only continue to grow.

In "Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve”(Harvard Business Review, 2001), Jim Collins argues that Level 5 leadership combines personal humility and professional will and creates lasting greatness. Personal humility entails a compelling modesty, calm determination, principled vision and values, and the shunning of public adulation. Professional will is characterized by an unwavering resolve to go from good to great and the achievement of lasting long-term, superb results even in a difficult environment. 

Moments of extreme crisis provide venues where level 5 leadership is demonstrated, as this potently shows in the Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance, in which a mission of exploration turned into one of survival and demonstrated a superior sense of leadership in crisis.

Shackleton, a British polar explorer, successfully infused resilience in his crew, stranded in a sea of ice away from human civilization, through inspiration, discipline, and endurance.  Against all odds, after months of extreme adversity, he took all his crew to safety. Shackleton demonstrated good management of adaptive change, transformational leadership, and level 5 leadership.

In Kagame: Conversations with the President of Rwanda, two moments of extreme crisis stand out. The first one occurs in the early days of the 1990-1994 Civil War. The Rwandan Patriotic Front’s early success was suddenly halted by a combination of elements, including the death of the commanding officer Fred Rwigema, the intervention of the French military on the side of Juvenal Habyarimana’s forces, and mostly, according to Kagame, the "lack of organization and thorough thinking” (p. 48). 

He left the military course he was taking at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas (USA) and joined a demoralized, defeated RPF front in need of  "more planning and organization” (p. 48). He reorganized the depleted troops originally in the inhospitable cold mountains of the North.

Without adequate food or medication, outnumbered several times over by the other side that had better military equipment and continued to benefit from strong French support, the RPF nevertheless eventually captured Kigali, then much of Rwanda by early July 1994, and put an end to the one-hundred days of genocide against the Tutsi. 

This is where the second instance of Level 5 Leadership comes in:  the country was absolutely devastated: about one million dead and all the elements of nationhood completely destroyed—the human, social, cultural, political, and economic foundations had been shattered, planned and sustained ethnic divisions, and the ultimate evil that engulfed the country in April-July 1994: genocide. The reality presented a gargantuan challenge.

In Kagame’s own words, "The country was more or less dead. We have come back to life. You have no other comparable phenomenon in the world today” (p.89).  Instead of giving up, Paul Kagame and the RPF-led government engineered, through strong leadership and resolute political will, the rebuilding of the nation with an unwavering sense of purpose through a system that demands accountability and delivers results. 

Twenty-one years later, against all odds, the country has gone from death to survival to revival. In rebuilding Rwanda from the ashes of 1994, President Kagame has displayed the qualities of Level 5 leadership. Readers interested in Rwanda’s transformation and Paul Kagame’s leadership will also want to read  Stephen Kinzer’s A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed it (Wiley, 2008) and Patricia Crisafulli & Andrea Redmond’s Rwanda, Inc.: How a Devastated Nation Became an Economic Model for the Developing World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

The writer is a Professor at the State University of New York College at Buffalo.