Is prudence the virtue of a good manager?

September 3, 2009

Currently and more than ever, the notions of authority and power are confused. However, authority is only what legitimizes power. Power without authority is a harassing power while authority proposes respect for power without constraint. I have, moreover, in my book published in 2009 on authority, detailed these notions by trying to approach them as best as possible, but also to understand their variations in our daily and professional lives.

Today, I would like to offer you a focus on prudence, often connoted negatively and assimilated to a lack of audacity. This is to forget that prudence is the very virtue of good command! It is a faculty of ethical deliberation, the search for virtuous conduct.

A good leader must be able to measure the ethical risks inherent in his decision-making. Thus, what characterizes a good leader, according to Aristotle, is prudence, this practical wisdom at the service of action, demonstrating a capacity for enlightened deliberation and decision.

But how can we acquire prudence?

It is often the virtue of people with experience. Here again, what modern confusions about experience! Experience is not the same as age. It is rather the fruit of the intensity of the situations experienced, their number (in this sense, age can increase the number of situations experienced) and the intelligence capable of drawing lessons from them. It would be a shame to forget that Aristotle was also the tutor of Alexander the Great… Let us listen to him inform us about the cardinal virtue of the good leader…:

"It is generally agreed that the characteristic of a prudent man is that he is able to deliberate correctly about what is good and advantageous for himself [...], but in a general way, what sorts of things for example lead to a happy life. [...] it follows that, in a general sense also, a prudent man will be one who is capable of deliberation. [...] It remains then that prudence is a disposition accompanied by true rule, capable of acting in the sphere of what is good or bad for a human being. [...] This is why we consider that PERICLES and people like him are prudent men in that they possess the faculty of perceiving what is good for themselves and what is good for man in general, and such are also, we think, people who understand the administration of a house or a city. [...] Indeed, the principles of our actions consist in the end to which our acts tend; but to a man corrupted by the attraction of pleasure or the fear of pain, the principle does not immediately appear, and he is unable to see with a view to what end and for what motive he ought to choose and accomplish all that he does, for vice is destructive of the principle. Therefore, prudence is necessarily a disposition, accompanied by an exact rule, capable of acting, in the sphere of human goods.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.