“I am the Scourge of God!  If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me among you.”

Bellowed Genghis Khan from horseback outside the sacred Mosque of Bukhara, moments before he ordered the wealthy town elders to surrender gold and jewels, razed their homes and slaughtered them, leaving peasants “scattered to the winds to tell the tale of the horror they witnessed here.”

Not a very nice guy.

My first wife described my political transformation, after going to the London Business school when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister:

“Alan went from Ché Guevara to somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.”

Most people don’t think of Genghis Khan as a positive model of leadership.  Perhaps he isn’t. He was a conqueror, driven only by territorial acquisition and theft. He was often merciless to his enemies. Genghis Khan has been held up as the archetypal barbarian throughout much of history.

Voltaire described him as “this destructive tyrant . . . bred to arms and practiced in the trade of blood . . . who lays the fertile fields of Asia to waste.”

Karl Marx blamed the Tsars cruelty on him “The bloody mire of Mongolian slavery forms the cradle of Muscovy” (principality around Moscow).

The writer in a 1990 article in The Economist railed:  “Unlike other conquerors, he brought no ideology, no Napoleonic Code, no Roman Law.  His simple fanatical aim was to amass huge areas of territory…Genghis’ empire, if that’s what it was, fell to pieces after his death….”

In 1990, I was working for a propeller aircraft manufacturer in Northern Ireland. I interviewed many people in preparation for the offsite where the CEO intended to win everyone over to an integration plan with the Canadian jet manufacturer acquiring them..

Virtually everyone described my client as “ a really warm supportive guy, who can also be Genghis Khan.” Evidently he had an explosive temper and angry verbal sharpness that people described as “Mongol beheadings.” I was very nervous about the feedback session.

He laughed. ”Yeah, I know. I’m working on that. Hey, let’s have some fun with this. I bet old Genghis was nicer to his people than he was to his enemies.”

I did some research and wrote a whitepaper,  and an exercise for the group to decide what they could learn from Genghis.

I was surprised to learn that Temujen, Genghis Khan, was an extraordinary leader.

A hunted outcast on the steppe from the age of ten until the age of seventeen, he rose in four short years to be elected Genghis Khan (rightful ruler) of the Mongols.  After defeat and desolation two years later, he rose to be Khan again and later to be Emperor of the Steppes and the World Conqueror. In twenty-five years he amassed territory that stretched from the China Sea to the gates of Vienna, from Moscow to South India. His descendants ran the Golden horde in Moscow, the Mughal empire in India, the Ilkhanate in Persia and Iraq, and the Yuan dynasty (Kublai Khan) in China that opened trade with Europe (Marco Polo).

The Mongols before Temujen’s rise were a collection of nomadic tribes: Tatars, Merkit, Kerait, Naiman, and hundreds more.  He took these scavenging, raiding clans, struggling for survival in a forbidding land of extreme hot and cold, and turned them into one of the greatest armies the world has ever known.  The gigantic scale and speed of these Mongol operations were incredible in an age before firearms, mechanized transport and modern communication.

He inspired extraordinary loyalty, even among former enemies, through two-way trust. He divided booty equally. If a soldier was injured Genghis might personally carry his share to his tent. If a soldier was killed, the booty share was transported to his first wife.

Genghis Khan was illiterate. I was shocked to learn that he travelled with Uighur scribes. They wrote propaganda that exaggerated his massacres to soften up the next enemy. Many towns surrendered without a fight. The scribes also recorded the Secret History of the Mongols, only recently translated, and “Bilik and Yasa, the leadership maxims and laws of Genghis Khan,” which was the title of the whitepaper.

The Great Yasa (laws), a few examples:

• Love one another;
• Respect wise men of all peoples;
• Do not steal;
• Share all food to be eaten; never eat in front of another lest you offer to divide your meal.
• Never eat offered food before he who offers it first partakes;
• Consider all sects as one and do not distinguish one from the other. Nor interfere with a man who speaks with his God if he keeps the Khan’s law;
• Whoever becomes bankrupt thrice is put to death after the third time;

Genghis Khan’s Leadership Maxims (Bilik), examples:

• Mongols shall not give their nobles laudatory names like other nations. He who sits on the throne shall be called Khan, and swear his allegiance to the Great Khan. (Khan was an elected position.)
• Ambassadors, emissaries, and messengers, whether of the Khan or his enemies, are protected under the Khan’s law.
• At the council speak your mind without fear of reproach, but when the wine is poured the council has ended. Debate no more.
• Any word on which three well-informed men are agreed may be spoken anywhere; otherwise by no means speak them;
• In council or when accepting a man into your service speak last.
• When meeting a stranger or a friend, no matter what your troubles, inquire first after the other’s circumstances.  Interest creates friendships.

Learning from Genghis

Genghis killed about forty million people. I don’t glorify his brutal war-lord behavior. However, Genghis Khan did create an organization with several admirable characteristics:

• A sense of identity. They became Mongols, not a collection of clans.  The word “Horde,” which originally meant “camp with corral for horses,” became synonymous with thundering blitzkrieg cavalry.
• Discipline. They trained in maneuvers relentlessly until they “moved as one man.”
• Absolute reward. These Mongols were guaranteed an equal share of plunder, which the Khan might personally deliver to them if they were wounded.
• Absolute accountability. Clear expectations and punishment were the norm.  Merit promotion was given for loyalty, honesty, and excellent performance.  Death was ordered for deceit, lack of discipline, disobedience, and gluttony.

Since I wrote “Bilik and Yasa” much additional research on Genghis Khan has emerged. Anthropologist Jack Weatherford published several books starting with, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2005). In this book Dr. Weatherford describes Temujen’s mastery of logistics and infrastructure. The Khan invented siege engines, rapidly built bridges and canals to transport troops and supplies. Weatherford lays out the internationalism of Genghis Khan, including his respect for alliances, diplomacy, and trade and his esteem for philosophy and his protection of religious freedom.

In The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (2010), Dr. Weatherford shows the crucial role that women played in the Mongol Empire, and, while I doubt the Khan was a feminist, he evidently valued the expertise of his wives.

So maybe, even in a negative example like Genghis, there are lessons for leaders to learn.