Leadership is bah-humbug!
Leadership is bah-humbug!
Who needs leaders? Would we be better off without them? After all, if the job of the leader is to be a role model, doesn’t business become a game of ‘Simon Says’? Don’t be unique and different, don’t rock the boat, don’t have new ideas, just follow your leader.
It’s the end of 2011 and so we thought it might be useful to reflect on our extensive experience of designing and running programmes to change workplace culture and cite 5 reasons for not having a leader.
- Silos – when you have no leaders it is far easier to build your silo and protect your team from all the problems which are of course caused by people outside your silo. The higher the walls the more secrecy you can have when building the blame-rockets to fire at the unworthy and dysfunctional parts of the organisation. A smart manager will carry an assortment of small arms carefully concealed about their person and ready to fire at whoever needs to be blamed in order to deflect attention from your own silo.
- Politics – it’s much more fun when you’re leaderless. You can really wind people up, collude against each other and make life hard for the less fortunate whose face doesn’t fit. Make sure you cosy up to whoever has the power and agree with everything they say. Protect them from snipers and never let them take the blame – you can always find a suitable scapegoat.
- Inertia – slow things down; procrastinate; sit on things until others are driven to despair. With no leader you can cause as much inertia as you like, sabotaging projects, showing disinterest in anything that wasn’t invented in your silo. Practice saying words like ‘think about, consider, scrutinise, and mull it over’. Put paper reports and contracts into a disorganised in-tray. Put viruses on your computer so you have an excuse for not reading email.
- Inconsistency – be spontaneous! Never mind goals and missions, just turn up to work and deal with whatever comes up in the moment. Learn to fire-fight! When there are no fires to put out put up your feet and take a well deserved rest. Work through your priorities in reverse, lowest to highest. Delegate anything you’re not enjoying. Be nice one day and nasty the next – the old good cop bad cop routine keeps people on their toes. Alternatively be the bad boss and choose someone in your team to be the counsellor and hand out tissues to those who can’t take it.
- Uncertainty – lose your confidence and give the impression you have lost the plot whilst in fact your plot is to keep people in the dark as much as possible. Practice poor judgment and even poorer execution. They’ll never catch on, people will think you are just a ditherer and need reassurance. After a while they will stop asking you questions – peaceful times oh yes! Whenever you hear someone being certain about anything, question them for the most finite detail until they are convinced their original certainty is now fuzzy and vague.
As the festive season approaches those of you who are fortunate enough to be leaderless can end the year celebrating all the projects that didn’t get off the ground; initiatives that ground to a halt after they got off the ground, and projects that took off but crashed before landing anything worthwhile. You can celebrate survival and the prospect of another leaderless year ahead which will no doubt be fraught with obstacles and full of the same misery you have endured this year.
Bah humbug!
A special thanks to RBS and the Coalition government for some of the inspiration responsible for making this article possible.
Have a fantastic Christmas full of warm Leadership cheer, and an awesome lead into the New Year!
