KASHAN ISHAQ AND WILLIAM ALLAN KRITSONIS

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DOCTORAL FORUM
NATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PUBLISHING AND MENTORING DOCTORAL
STUDENT RESEARCH

How Effective Leaders can be Selfish to Serve Others in realms to Ayn Rand’s
philosophy

Kashan Ishaq William Allan Kritsonis, PhD

PhD Student in Educational Leadership
College of Education
Prairie View A & M University
Professor
PhD Program in Educational Leadership
Member of the Texas A & M University System
Visiting lecturer (2005)
Oxford Round Table
University of Oxford, Oxford, England
Distinguished Alumnus (2004)
Central Washing University
College of Education and Professional Studies

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ABSTRACT

Being selfish considers a negative act in the society. People hate to associate with pessimistic
people who are self-centered. However to be an effective leader, one has to become selfish to
help others. A leader has to take care of his needs first to be able to help others. Ayn Rand
discusses in her book, Virtues of Selfishness, actor must always be the beneficiary of his
action, and a man must act for his own self interest.
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Introduction

Ayn Rand changed the mindset of the world with her philosophy of life. She showed how
code of ethics shapes up ones character and the choices one makes that can lead to one’s own
destruction or success. Ayn Rand Virtues of Selfishness (1961) opens up to the people to think
broadly in one’s best interest. Her charismatic quality and her influence of higher ethical
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standards have inspired many leaders in the educational arena. She has proved her reasoning to
be true to the leaders to become effective in serving others. A man can’t be considered selfish if
he worked hard to his potential to achieve success.

Purpose of the Article

The purpose of the article is to embrace Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness. One
cannot be a selfish if he is willing to serve others. Leaders must be selfish to be able to be the
effective leaders, however, being selfish in this context doesn’t mean not giving up on ones
worthy efforts to meet the needs of the people, but in order to help and support people as a
leader, a leader must first think about taking care of his basic needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of
needs (physiological, safety & security, belonging, self-esteem) must be met in order to go
beyond taking care of oneself.
Virtues of Selfishness

Ayn Rand’s intention to let people know that selfish does not mean when one eats because he is
hungry. A selfish is considered bad and evil; it is when the world rotates around you. A man must
also believe in his values, and to be good at something, he should first believe in himself, and
with no fear one should be able to make decisions. In Ayn Rand’s virtues of selfishness, she
stated, “the man who does not value himself cannot value anything or anyone” (Rand, 1961, p.
35). As man value himself, he believes in himself, he can better understand others.
Selfishness leads to many unfixed problems. People are less worried about others and often they
end up hurting others. For example, selling a car that needs few repairs, and hiding from the
buyers about the actual problems of the car is not ethically correct but also an act of selfish. The
owner is only interested in selling the car in this example, but not worried about the buyer who
will have to fix the car problems. This example teaches us that men can be very self-centered but
he has to learn to take care of himself first but not at the expense of the others. He must be able
treat everyone fairly and equally.

Effective leaders know how to stay rational in an irrational society

One must never pass judgments against other. We often don’t realize that we make
perceptions about our superiors and subordinates at work on a daily basis. During the hiring
process, the administrator sees a person who is coming into an interview without wearing a tie;
he automatically judges that the person that he is not qualified for the job, even though he may
be the most qualified candidate for a position. The society who ultimately presumes and
prejudges one another is an irrational society with no moral standards. According to Ayn Rand,
“A man who struggles not to acknowledge that evil is evil; find it increasingly dangerous to
acknowledge that the good is the good”. With such attitude leaders won’t be able to hire the right
staff for the organization. Those that say all men are the same or nobody is perfect in the world,
therefore, everybody is a mixture of good and evil, and thus is morally “gray” white is mentioned
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as good, and black is considered evil, and the mixture is considered gray. People that are good
and bad are considered gray and thus they are not perfect.
According to Ayn Rand, (1961), she described the term, “epistemological”, which is a
package deal, for example, saying that all men are not perfect therefore; never recognize to
practice whiteness or perfectness. Logic is imperative to make rational decisions. Logic is as
good to the point where sometimes one must has to also think about the feelings. For example, a
marriage should not be based on logic but love. People who base everything that they do around
logic are often unsuccessful. They tend to take calculated risks and measure their decisions each
time during decision-making. However, often in situations such as raising kids, one must have to
think logically and at the same time having emotions of oneself to better develop the children’s
personality.

Purpose of Life

The purpose of life is to enjoy it to the fullest and providing love and support to the
others. The purpose of life is to maintain quality of life through enjoyment. In addition, the
purpose of life is to be happy. When a leader creates the atmosphere at work that is positive,
employees tend to work diligently and feel great about working. Schools must have effective
leaders to serve the stakeholders of the school. When teachers feel productive at work, they also
feel good about themselves working. Leaders must have moral values. According to Ayn Rand
(1961), in the field of morality, this means that one must first identify what is good and what is
evil. One must choose either white or black. White is considered good, and black is considered
evil. In a complex moral issue, a man struggle to determine what is right and fails or makes an
honest error, he cannot be called as “gray”; morally, he is “white”. Ayn Rand stated, “Errors of
knowledge are not breaches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility”
Furthermore, Ayn Rand stated that this is a form on confusion, epistemological sloppiness which
contradicts and cover the real meaning of moral grayness.
The purpose of life is to serve others. The five virtues to be empathetic while serving to others
are respectfulness, magnanimity, truthfulness, commitment to goals and generosity. In addition,
the ten key characteristics that describe the Servant Leader’s traits are listening, empathy,
healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to growth
of the people, and building community.

Leaders Role

School leaders must be responsible to lead the school and the community together towards the
vision of school.
Reasonability: It is a form of intellectual responsibility that most people evade that evasion is the
major cause of their frustrations and defeats. School leaders must have high ethical standards. I
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believe in having teachers and administrators prior to entering in the educational field to take the
class on ethics.
Morality is the code of value that guides the men’s choice and actions. The ones choice and
actions determine the purpose and course of his life. A leader can’t shape the school’s culture of
his values and beliefs if his values are evil minded. Effective school leaders have strong values
which can’t be solely based on a metaphysical fact. However, the nature and surroundings that
exist around schools and around the school leader can shape a person’s thinking. Although it may
impact the school leader’s thinking but if his values and beliefs are strong, no distractions can
cause him to change his beliefs and values.
Leaders who have strong desire to search for the right values will lead to his success and
not his own destruction. Leaders who are cowards and whims are never able to achieve success.
For example, authoritarian leaders are whims because their values reflect their immoral beliefs.
They never go beyond in finding out the reasons why they should listen to the people’s needs.
The fear of losing power and control over people is their path towards destruction. The evil
mentality of control often leads such leaders towards the failure. Such values are evil and can
attract others with similar values. A leader has to discover the law of logic to discover his
thinking and those who are careless to discover reasons are not leaders but whims. If the leader
has the potential he can lead any school or organization to the exemplary level. Reason, Purpose
and self-esteem are what derive the individual to one’s ultimate value of life. Ethical goals are
defined by man’s proper code of values. The four considerations of a rational man’s view of
interest are stated in Ayn Rand’s book virtues of selfishness, which are as follows:

Context: A rational man sees his interests in terms of a life time and selects his goals accordingly.
He has certain goals in life and to achieve those goals he must be goal-oriented and focused.
Reality: In reality a man’s goals are based on his desires. His desires may be to become the
leader with ideas of helping others to be a leader to control people.
Effort: A man can work hard to earn the job he deserves. Remember that rights are moral
principles which define and protect man’s freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other
men.
Responsibility: Neither man has the moral right to declare that he doesn’t want to consider all
those things, he just wants a job. He must have the ability to understand his role as a leader,
which holds a major responsibility on his shoulder in terms of providing a quality education for
the children.
School leaders evaluating teachers must give teachers their right to have a voice to tell
their opinions and feedback during the evaluation process. Students must be given the due
process to tell their side of the story before given consequences. Often leaders make abrupt
decisions without thinking reasonably. Leaders must respect ones self first then respect others.
Then he knows what is like to respect others. In addition, he also builds upon his expectations
and knows how to treat others and to be treated as well. Organizational learning is one way to
promote knowledge sharing and knowledge enhancement in the workplace. This type of working
practice motivates employees. Thus, employees are more willing to learn from one another.
Garvin (1993) states that a “learning organization is an organization skilled at creating,
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acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge
and insights (p.80).”
A leader expects others to do something but he should first ask himself the following
questions:
What would it be like to do the task by myself? How am I going to do the task? Am I
going to take any short cuts? Am I going to complete the task correctly? What support would I
need? Is it going to worth the time and effort that I will invest in completing the task? What
support would I need? Once you answer these questions, you would know realistically what is it
like to do task you are expecting others to complete.
As an administrator of the school, you should know what teacher goes through on a daily basis
and what are the needs of the teacher, thus you can better support them and develop their skills.
According to the Atlas society journal, Ayn Rand states that “Rand believes that every human
being has objective biological and psychological needs, actual interests are identified by
reference to those needs (2005, P.1, Virtues of Selfishness).

Ethics of leaders

Believing in ethics not necessarily helps the person to be virtuous but it depends on one’s
values. A person’s believe in values differ from one person to another. Depends on which
environment a person was raised, his thinking and mindset may differ from one person to
another. One’s believe in values determine the ethical standards. Thus, a person leads his life in a
way that satisfies his values and beliefs. A principal of the school must hold high ethical
standards. He is the leader of the students, parents, teachers and the community; he must have
the ability to transform people in to one vision and by holding high ethical standards, thus, would
help him attain trust from all stakeholders of the school. He should know how to treat people and
build relationship with the members of his organization. Villaraigosa bet his political future by
promising to do something about the schools and education. Villaraigosa believed that with
money and power he could have turned around the education system of Unified school district.
In addition, he wanted to gain trust and build relationship with the influential politicians of the
city. Villaraigosa wanted middle class citizens to be satisfied with the current school year but the
citizens weren’t happy with the schools; mainly because of the student’s low achievement. Thus,
Villaraigosa networked with the community figures to gain support. In addition, he planned a
massive marketing campaign by involving influential people of the community.
Educational leader must be able to help others

Educational leader must be supportive and helpful to everyone. As the educational leaders
empower others, the results are positives. Educational leaders set the goals which can be
achieved. Voluntarily help makes it easier to achieve goals. Everyone must be involved and
participate to achieve the goals. Goals must be set prior to the academic year and during the
academic year. Students should be provided opportunities to set their own goals. This helps
create student centered instruction based on their goals. Thus, students take ownership of their
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work. They must be able to come up with the action steps to work with in order to reach their
goals.

Leaders Achievement

Leader fulfills his achievement when he sees the good number of people is his followers. Leader
with the vision of having people follow through his dream can be achieved as long as the leader
is committed. He has to live through his dreams by constantly reminding himself that he can earn
the dream without having any fear. One must have to live with his desire of achieving and know
the basic necessities in order to live. Ayn Rand states, “A desire to live does not give you
knowledge required for living” (Rand, 1957, P 1013). One must know the process for living; a
man is not born with such basic instincts of survival like animals do. Man can’t survive like
animals do. Man has to discover the process. He needs to learn what is right and wrong. He has
to grow food for him to survive, he doesn’t know it automatically what to do. He has to be
trained to learn the process of life to survive. He also has to learn the law of logic and to think
accordingly if one has capability to think. Ayn Rand (1961), states that, “Men who attempt to
survive, not by means of reason but by means of force are attempting to survive by method of
animals (Rand, 1961, P25). Man must be able to learn the process of survival and once he learns
it, it is his achievement.

Concluding Remarks

In conclusion, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness support the idea of demonstrating

true leadership by oneself being the role model of everyone. Being selfish helps a man to take
full charge of his life and be successful. Ayn Rand teaches us that one has to take care of himself
before helping others, thus, taking care of one’s basic need can only allow him to be helpful to
others. In addition having values determine how one is going to help other. One’s values may
lead him to not only his destruction but those who have similar values will be part of the shared
destruction.

References

Garvin, D. (1993) Building learning organizations, Harvard Business Review, 71(4), pp. 78–91.

Rand, A. (1957). Atlas Shrugged. New York: Penguin Putnam, Incorporated.

Rand, A. (1961). The virtue of selfishness. New York: Penguin Putnam, Incorporated.

Roderick, K. (2006). Power politics 101. Emmis Communication Corporation, pp. 58–68.