The Doctor

Abstract

This chapter examines the doctor model of leadership. In ancient Greek medicine, doctors saw their role as finding a balance between the different bodily ‘humours’. Analogously, leadership on this model involves balancing either the different objectives of an organization, or the groups and factions within it. This often involves restraining stakeholders prone to give excessive weight to seemingly attractive, but short-term objectives. The first part analyses passages in Plato’s Gorgias and Republic that develop this medical analogy. The second part illustrates the model with two modern-day examples: Roy Vagelos, CEO of Merck in the 1980s, who persuaded the company not to focus excessively on shareholder return, but to balance it against wider stakeholder concerns; and Jean Monnet, one of the founders of the EEC, who helped rebalance European nations away from the pursuit of nationalist goals, and hence put them on a long-term sustainable path to peace.