Mr. Garry Jacobs, Chief Executive Officer of the World Academy of Art & Science (WAAS), joined a conversation with Honorary POP Ocean Mentor, Ana Hanhausen and other POP youth leaders focusing on transformational leadership, as part of “POP Climate Leadership Conversations: A Tribute to Our Chief Mentor” on Oct 5, 2021.

Excerpts from some questions:

• What does leadership mean to you?

There are many types of leadership. Some take us forward, some take us back; and some are organized to keep us just where we are, stuck in the mud. So I would reserve this very important term for those who are really taking us forward; taking us into the future, into a better world than we live now. The essence of transformational leadership is the capacity to think differently, to think beyond the present construct and the capacity to express an aspiration to a better future. We need to have a vision of where the world is going and how to get there; we need to have the energy, the will, and the aspiration  to be part of taking that forward.

Our motto at the World Academy of Art and Science is, “leadership and thought that leads to action”. We are trying to think beyond the current horizons, not just in an utopian and idealistic way, but in a way that’ll help us get there. So the criteria is not only that we’ve got a vision, but that we understand the steps and catalysts that will take us to where we want to go.

• How does WAAS (World Academy of Art and Science) work to promote leadership, especially among the youth? (by Ivan Ransom, POP Sustainability Ambassador and Mentor)

It may sound ironic, but our first challenge is to lead ourselves before we qualify to lead anybody else. When I first became the Chief Executive Officer, we had people on the board saying, “We need to give policy advice, we need to be telling the government what to do” and I said, “Have we decided what should be done? Let’s not be in a hurry to go selling ideas to other people to justify our existence. Let’s take the time to think through what the problems are, why they are there, what’s missing and what we can contribute.” We’ve taken a lot of time to do that and it’s been a very rich process. I discovered it’s a process of leading people through a process of thinking together. We kept examining the same issues honouring different perspectives, until some kernel of real value emerged out of it.

It’s more important to be able to listen to other people and understand their perspective and relate to them from that, than it is to tell people, “the truth”. Leadership is very much about being able to ask difficult questions and being open to  new solutions.

• How can Art and Science work together for a more sustainable future? What is the role of each? (by Priyanka Prakash, Honorary POP Youth Mentor and Ambassador Against Plastics)

The Academy’s founders in 1960, when they were using the word “art” (in “World Academy of Art and Science”), what they meant was that the human consciousness has two main dimensions: it has a capacity for logical reasoning about the external world and it has an emotive, intuitive and aesthetic capacity to grasp realities that are not objective, quantifiable, mechanistic or materialistic. Professionally, I’m a business consultant and I have learned over the years that the subjective dimension of life is much more important and determinative of results than the objective.

 Every leader knows intuitively that the capacity to release the energy of people, to raise that energy level, to channel that energy effectively, not in waste and dissipation, but for focal or a point, is really the critical task and of leadership. Our system has taught us that knowledge is objective, quantifiable, sensory, perceptible; whereas the real driving force that makes us different is that we’ve got something inside. And the capacity for somebody to awaken that in himself and awaken that in other people, to me, that’s the key for transformational leadership. The real thing that makes you great is not the great strategist, it’s the great inspirer.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Mr. Garry Jacobs is currently Chief Executive Officer of the World Academy of Art & Science (WAAS), USA.

Besides this position, he is the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the World University Consortium (WUC), USA; Vice President and Director of Social Science Research at The Mother’s Service Society, India; Distinguished Professor of Transdisciplinary Social Science at the Institute for Person-Centered Approach, Italy; Editor of Cadmus Journal focusing on economy, security and governance; founder of Mira International, a management consultant to businesses in Europe, North America and Asia on strategic growth and profitability, Member of Club of Rome International (Switzerland); and Chairman of the advisory council of Global Institute for Integral Management Studies, India.

He is an American Social Scientist and management consultant focusing on new paradigm concepts and strategies in the fields of business, economy, education, governance and international security. The integrating theme in Jacobs’ research is the social and psychological process of growth and development as it expresses at the level of the individual, organization, nation and the global community.

In the 1970s, he started researching on the theory and practice of individual, organizational and social development. Long before criticism of the GDP became prevalent, he co-developed the Human Economic Welfare Index (HEWI) as an alternative, which incorporates socioeconomic indices. He was the co-founder of the International Commission on Peace & Food and co-authored a report to the UN on “Uncommon Opportunities: Agenda for Peace & Equitable Development”. As a management consultant, he has worked with major corporations in the US, Europe and India.

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