Mohamed El Baradei won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. After his retirement, he returned to Egypt and went into politics, with an aim to become a successor of the dictator Hosni Mubarak. He enjoyed some support from his family, a group of youth joining the national association for change, and some western media. He was criticized as being a globe-trotting dilettante who spends much of his time abroad instead of on the barricades.
He failed to form a completely organized opposition party to the fleeting Egyptian regime. The dominant political institutions in Egypt which are the military and Mukhabarat are not likely to grant him the opportunity to lead the country therefore, he needs to be supported by a well organized force possessing power to promote for his visibility. Accordingly, he was utilized to serve as a consensus figure for the potential opposing transition.
According to the practice of adaptive leadership, four tips are considered essential prior to the practice. First: do not go it alone. In this regard, El Baradei appears to mobilize the support of his family, Egyptian enthusiastic youth grouped under the national association for change, and some US media. This alliance was preliminary to his appearance in the political arena after his return back to Egypt. Later on during the revolution, he tried to ally with opposition parties like Muslim brotherhood, democratic bloc, and others in order to extract his leadership flame. Second: live life as a leadership laboratory. Leadership is an experimental art therefore; El Baradei saw real opportunities in entering into the political sphere and taking a leading position during the revolutionary movement. Third: resist the leap to action. El Baradei was conscious enough not to jump to actions before monitoring the situation assessing potential risks and rewards. This was apparent by his relative late movement to the liberation square which was visible by the 31st of January. Forth: discover the joy of making hard choices. El Baradei found the joy in making purposeful movement leading to adaptive change.
Four diagnostic tasks are important in safeguarding against the more common traps of practicing adaptive leadership. First: distinguishing technical from adaptive challenges. Here, some factors are critical in gaining legitimacy and support. Style, track record, ripeness, status, and prejudice are the most important. El Baradei is criticized of lacking the style and charisma preferred by the majority of Egyptian people and that’s why he gained support from the upper middle class youth. Also, he lacks a record of political testimony that can drag people’s confidence in his ability to rule a big country like Egypt. But, he capitalized on the growing rage that Egypt was experiencing to put the issue of change on the table. His status as a former Nobel Prize winner who left his entire life in the US and his prior situations regarding US investigations in Iraqi possession of nuclear weapons might raise some mistrusting prejudice of Egyptians’ deeply held values and norms. Second: find out where people are at. El Baradei utilized the uprising political scheme during the revolution to take advantage by intervening and playing on peoples’ demands for real democratic changes. Otherwise, his movement could be attributed as irrelevant, insensitive, or presumptuous. Third: listen to the song beneath the words. El Baradei successfully interpreted the events going on in Egypt to exploit the chance for leading the change. Forth: read the authority figure for clues. El Baradei kept a close attention to the signals sent about from public figures in Egypt and broad to justify his actions, it is assumed that he has assessed the situation on the ruckus he has initially created. It is probably evident that he exercised some improvisationalist art by moving back and forth from the political balcony to the dance floor maintaining a diagnostic mindset of the changing reality in Egypt to ensure his survival.
Successful leadership requires political thinking. The six essential aspects of thinking politically in the exercise of leadership are; first: finding partners. El Baradei found partners to provide his change initiate with enough protection, strength, validity, etc… those partners were from allies, other outside factions and opposition groups who turned to be true believers in El Baradei’s call. Second: keeping the opposition close. El Baradei tried to work closely with his opponents or instead competitors but he failed to reach those falling in the middle that might resist the idea of launching change merely because it will disrupt their lives and make their future uncertain and that was the case of many Egyptians in the lower and middle social class. Third: accepting responsibility for your piece of the mess. The challenge facing el Baradei is to keep committed to his initiate despite the risks he had or might face especially in a highly turbulent police controlled country like Egypt. Forth: acknowledging the losses. El Baradei is presumed to acknowledge the loss of deriving peoples’ pleasure toward change by getting them out of their roots of fear, political mistrust, and loss of hope. Fifth: modeling the behavior. El Baradei took an active playing role with the masses of protestors in streets despite the warnings from the Egyptian police to stay in his home, effectively placing him under house arrest. This modeling is more symbolic thus encouraging supporters who were taking risks of protesting to move forward. Finally, accepting causalities. El Baradei in most of his talk shows presented a clear message that he is committed to his initiative and willing to accept the harsh reality of losses.
After all, in my view point, the white revolution that took place in Egypt was carried out by impoverished young Egyptians uprising being inspired by the Tunisian revolt and there is no single person or organization can be attributed as a sole leader to this grass roots movement. The previous discussion was basically a kind of analysis to the role of Dr. El Baradei as one of the recent famous opposition players in terms of the real practice of adaptive leadership in the political sphere. In fact, some political analysts mentioned that if Egyptian revolt was mainly derived to replace Mubarak with El Baradei this would bring nothing about real democracy but keeping Egypt as “as a subservient client state of the US military-industrial complex.”
