Seeing through the “Leaders”
This posting is about corporate life, but applies to any situation where we have someone else, such as politicians, managers or religious leaders (aka “The Man”) pretending to know what is best.
I finished up being a corporate drone a while ago now, and am better off in every way after jumping off the career ladder. The Man needs me, but I don’t really need him. I like the changed balance of power. Now as an independent contractor, I am in the corporate world but not of it.
The other week there was free food on offer, so I fronted up to have some. It was in fact a clever trap. I had to endure over an hour of a new senior executive’s delusional IT strategies. His incoherent ramblings didn’t really relate that closely to the day to day work of maintaining corporate business intelligence systems. I like to think of myself as an educated man, but I couldn’t see where he was going with any of it. His insights were the sort of thing I would expect to hear from someone who had been on the pipe.
No-one challenged the Emperor’s new clothes. You can’t directly fight The Man, you’ve got to get away from them.
Today I read another report of the same person and how he was into trying to make it difficult to get into the company, and even harder to stay in it. There was the typical “get tough” with workers talk. Nevermind that there is a serious shortage of skilled workers already. Of course, there was the usual rhetoric about rewarding the “performers”. Unfortunately the “performers” in the eyes of The Man are usually not those who actually are the ones you rely on to get the work done – but are usually the random work generators.
I remember a CEO who ran the company into the ground, but took a couple of million dollars out in options, and various other senior people who you probably wouldn’t want to spend time with. When I worked in criminal justice, it was refreshing to work with thieves, armed robbers and thugs – they were less sociopathic than the people I was used to in corporate life. I felt safer with them.
I was thinking about how those people get to senior positions. It is not from their brilliant minds – they continually come up with patently stupid ideas and lack insight. It is not from their operational excellence – they are so far in the clouds that they have no understanding of it. It is not from their personalities – many are simultaneously wimpy and overbearing. Part of it is being able to ingratiate themselves with others, but why would someone do this or even care?
Well when I studied management, I found that “leaders” typically get there because they want to be there, and will practice behaviours that allow them to acquire power over others. So we don’t get the best people, we get the most power hungry and psychopathic at the top.
Someone today asked me why people don’t see through them. Well most people do, but most people are not in the position of doing something about it. The senior people who can do something don’t see it because they have serious cognitive errors.
Bad leadership is self selecting. Those with limited thinking skills are often promoted, and they choose the next set of “leaders” who are just as unsuited, but just as power hungry and dangerous. There’s an expression “A fish rots from the head”. This is true in any organisation.
By “cognitive errors”, I’m talking about an inability to accept and understand reality, and discern the difference between something is good and something that is bad. Until organisations start to understand this, they will be plauged by inept “leaders” – who are anything but leadership material. Employees will continue to pay the price for them.
As for me, I’ve made my decision. I make my money more easily off the career ladder and I see no reason to subject my life to someone who got to his position because he likes being in charge of others.
Tags: leaders, leadership, management, managers
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