On Saturday night, President Shimon Peres gave Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu a two-week extension to put together a coalition. Israel’s most
important game has entered overtime.
For us in Israel, politics are
tantamount to sport; politicians are the equivalent of star athletes, and
cultish attention is paid to elections and appointments, not unlike the hoopla
surrounding Hollywood’s Oscar-winner selection.
According to reports, the
impotence of Netanyahu’s coalition-building hovers between the paralysis of the
behemoth Knesset and the inability of our political parties to get along. The
upshot is, understandably, a sense of inertia. But could there be a healthier
approach to our parliamentary process of coalition building? I’ve been blogging
about the book Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. Perching atop The Wall Street
Journal’s bestseller list for more than a year, the book makes a case for
potentiating talents and abilities by accounting for strengths and
weaknesses.
Although known as a leader in the Positive Psychology
movement, Rath acknowledges that all of us do have weaknesses. He doesn’t,
however, suggest that we invest a lot of time in remedying those weaknesses. He
emphasizes, instead, the idea that, when all human beings have fortes and
foibles, solutions may lie in what might be referred to as “complementarity.”
That is to say that, in relationships – such as marriage or workplace
affiliations – people are most likely to thrive when they seek out partners who
compensate for their weaknesses.
Each of us appear to be wired with an
innate ability to complement and thereby enhance the capabilities of others. In
the scientific literature of oncology, my profession, we refer to the process as
“dyadic coping.” The most successful dyads, or units of two – typically, for us,
one cancer patient plus one significant other – consist of individuals who help
overcome the Achilles’ heels of their partners. When, so often, like cancer
patients, governments find themselves mired in crises, perhaps dyadic coping, or
complementarity, holds answers.
IN SPIELBERG’S Lincoln – a movie that
perhaps should have won the Oscar for Best Picture – a case is made that part of
the 16th US president’s success stemmed from his ability to fashion an effective
cabinet. Lincoln apparently handpicked his cabinet secretaries to complement
each other. History, as a result, compliments president Lincoln for many
accomplishments.
I’m a medical scientist, not a political scientist, but
having worked for decades with cancer patients in crisis, I wonder whether a new
and different force majeure might serve better for creating a coalition to lead
the 19th Knesset. Like president Lincoln, might Netanyahu focus on
complementarity and convince others to do the same? Might he draw a talented
team of players from politicians not only eager to employ their strengths to
mitigate their cohorts’ weaknesses but also open to accepting input where they,
themselves, may lack? And, as citizens, what is our attitude toward the
weaknesses of our politicians? Within our wide range of political parties, we
have no shortage of bright public servants working to make constructive
differences. They all, undoubtedly, have both strengths and weaknesses. Rather
than our being put off by any weaknesses, might we embrace them as opportunities
for growth? Might this result in what physicians describe as a synergistic or
even “super-additive” effect? I don’t know of anyone who wants more than 120
Knesset members, but no one would mind, I think, if performance among the
lawmakers we have were to qualitatively improve. Building a coalition based on
complementarity rather than, for example, ego or ideology, may be precisely what
the doctor – and the public – prescribed.
The author is professor of
oncology at Tel Aviv University and chairman of the Institute of Radiotherapy at
Tel Aviv Medical Center. His blog (“52”) is featured on the website of The
Jerusalem Post.
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