When great leadership is wrapped in a negative organizational mission, can we still applaud the

efforts of that leader? I struggled with this question in relation to Oskar Schindler’s role in
Speilberg’s Schindler’s List. By the end of the movie, I had a hard time saying Schindler wasn’t
an effective leader, that he wasn’t successful but, I still struggled with the idea of crowing him a
leader despite the fact he had exhibited all the characteristics I associate with leadership. The
context of him being a willing participant and member of the Nazi party made this difficult for
me to get past and objectively look at his actions. I think the film does a great job contrasting
the heroic efforts of a man who belonged to a party that, in its mission, was diabolical.
From a productivity and profitability standpoint, Schindler was wildly successful with an
assignment that was going to be hard to fail at. He essentially was being given stolen resources
and being given free labor by the Nazi party. It was a manager’s dream if you only had to look
at data and weren’t asked to also consider morals and ethics. Leadership does however,
incorporate moral and ethical behavior and in the face of abhorrent behavior by his
organization, he not only sacrificed more profit, Schindler purposefully operations at an
economic loss. If Bernie Madoff had given back much of what he had stolen and been visibly
contrite for stealing it in the first place would we trumpet his behavior as leadership? Is there a
correlation to be drawn? I don’t think so.

Though it is unclear if Schindler freely enrolled himself in the Nazi Party, what can be deduced
clearly is that he reacted with leadership to the circumstances once they became clear to him. I
think it is important to recognize that leadership is not always prescribed and that the chance
to lead is usually a choice in how you react to a given scenario. I believe that Schindler was
swept up by the potential profitability of war and let it distract him from the obvious moral and
ethical dilemmas associated with genocide. As much as we’d like our leaders to never be
susceptible to outside influences, they are. I think we can still acknowledge leadership even
when it isn’t consistent over time. Especially when we can specifically site different aspects of
his behavior as components that were laid out in the text.

Hopefully, regardless of what led to the circumstances of his membership in the Nazi party, we
can agree that once Schindler came to terms with what was going on and his role in it, he acted.
He let his values guide him as was painfully obvious towards the end of the movie when he
acknowledged to Ben Kingsley’s character Itzhak Stern, that he was trying to produce artillery
shells that purposefully wouldn’t pass inspection. He was willing to sacrifice so much of his
personal wealth because he had made the decision he would behave virtuously in the eye of
evil. He was practicing civil disobedience to sabotage the efforts of his own party because he
saw it as the right thing to do. He never gloated about what he had done and as he fled and
even broke down rambling on about how he had wished he had done more to save more lives.
He had become obsessed with doing the right thing. In the face of the kind of atrocities he was
associated with, I suppose it was

In each one on one interaction, Schindler did something to let the other person know he cared
and was compassionate. He took a different approach than the one that the Nazi party relied
on so heavily, through fear.
Although he had little authority over the soldiers, Schindler also tried to forge unity without
forcing it. I think this was best exhibited in how he addressed the commandant Amon Goeth,
played by Ralph Fiennes. Schindler befriended Goeth out of necessity and addressed his
behavior when Goeth opened the door to do so by talking about how he derives his power
through compassionate acts not, as Goeth believed necessary, through fear. As leaders, we
have to work with people we aren’t necessarily fond of, or fundamentally disagree with, for
whatever reason. It is supremely important to develop approaches that allow you to be
effective with every stakeholder, not just the ones you’d chose to hang out with or find
interesting. Also, this shows how important it is to show your followers why something is the
right thing to do rather than to just tell them to do it. Doing so reinforces aligned behaviors and
goals.

While Schindler’s willingness to forgo part of his fortune to spare the lives of approximately
1100 Jews who otherwise were going to die is admirable and was a stark contrast to prescribed
methods and tactics of the Nazi party, I still struggle to get past the fact that Schindler was a
member of the party seemingly voluntarily and thus, complicit in all the evil behaviors they
employed. He found his voice and let his values lead him. His leadership was effective for all
the people he saved and for himself. Often, when I think of leaders, I think of people who have
been placed in roles that demand leadership. However, life provides us with countless more
examples of people who, like Oskar Schindler, found themselves in scenarios that needed to be
addressed and chose to lead rather than wait to be led. The courage to do so is remarkable but
the opportunity to act is readily available. Stunning is how strong a motivator a real conviction
to a cause is and what it enables individuals to do. Oskar Schindler’s leadership is still more
impressive when you think about the power of group think of an entire nation.