Muscular leaders with the support of majoritarian vocal mass of people are abusing leadership for exclusive majoritarian interests. And they perhaps would be the reason for our next mass extinction.
SAJI P MATHEW OFM
A month and a half ago England, after 70 years of Queen Elizabeth’s rule, got a new monarch. As I am writing this, on TV the farewell speech of Liz Truss, who had to step down as the Prime Minster of England just after 50 days of assuming power is being telecasted live. These extremes say something about the unpredictable and volatile nature of leadership. With 10,000 baby boomers, who naturally were people who would push themselves to reach their goals and were self motivated, retiring everyday; and as millennials and Gen Z, who are lazy, entitled and narcissistic, taking over the workspace, organizations, and every community on the planet; leadership is becoming as erratic as 50 short days, or perhaps, as unattended and neglected as 70 long years.
Not even 1 in 5 organisations and business has the confidence to say that existing leaders are effective enough at meaningfully achieving the business and organisational goals. New studies show that 84% of companies and organisations predict a shortfall of leaders who are capable of driving their business forward in the next decade. Leaders are under pressure to deliver results, but on an average they are getting less than 90 days to prove themselves. Leaders are lost in short-term profitability -be it money-wise, fame-wise, or even aggression-wise, than long-term value and meaning creation. Leaders with no commitment to the long-term future are increasingly becoming disconnected with political, social and environmental issues; and that posses a huge threat to the planet and its inhabitants.
Changing times need new approaches. Hoary muscular, shortsighted, profit minded leadership styles are bound to fail in achieving meaningful long-term goals. World needs leaders, but as change abounds, leadership styles need change too.
Managers manage, leaders lead
Borrowing the sense and sentence structure of William Shakespeare from his Twelfth Night, ‘some are born leaders, some achieve leadership, and some have leadership thrust upon them’ may summarize how one reaches the position of leadership, but time and again, the question of ‘how one leads’ has come under scan. Perhaps the question should be ‘why one leads?’ Shakespeare was merely emphasizing the unfathomable context and circumstances into which one’s life unfolds.
Entrusted, and at times even usurped, authority does not make one a leader. Authority comes from authorship. Authoring is an agonising, patient, laborious exercise. If you haven’t authored anything in life, you can only pretend to be an author or a leader, but may never have authentic authority; and most authority-hungry people do pretend. Everyone is a born leader is the dumbest thing I have ever heard on leadership.
Simon Oliver Sinek, an international speaker on leadership and the author of the book Leaders Eat Last, convincingly states that there are many people at the senior most levels of organizations who are absolutely not leaders, they are authorities and we do what they say because they have authority over us but we would not follow them. (They are just managers: keepers of money, power, tradition, structures and patriarchy.) And there are many people who are perhaps at the bottom of organizations who have no authority yet they are absolute leaders, exercising leadership qualities; and people follow them.
The Birth of a Leader
Let me narrate a parable spoken by Jesus. A father had two sons. One of them persuasively procured his share of the property from the father, left home, and spent all his wealth in despicable and reckless living. Like the modern-day popular recurrent economic depressions, the land experienced a severe famine: the son lost his job; his means of living dried up. Being helpless and defenceless the son remembered his father, and how he treated even his workers at home. ‘Let me present my case to him’, he thought, ‘for he would definitely understand, comfort and help’; he got up and went back to his father. The son did not return to the father because he was his father, but because he relied on and esteemed what his father had been doing. The son became a follower, and the father a leader. The possibility of trust and confidence in the father made the son a follower. Leadership is an inside emotion that strangely connects the leader and the follower. Every father, every mother, and everyone must aim to be leaders. The only thing one needs to be a leader is to have people following. Nobody heartfully follows a tyrant and a pretender.
Muscular leaders, who gain power and retain power through force, might, money, and unchallenged tradition and patriarchy are on the rise around the globe. Muscular leaders with the support of majoritarian vocal mass of people are abusing leadership for exclusive majoritarian interests. And they perhaps would be the reason for our next mass extinction.
Self Examination
Elections are the accepted means to leadership in every democracy and democratic organization. A system that does not have objectivity and transparency in electing its leaders is bound to fall; for in the words of Jesus, “anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.”
The obligations on people in authority to lead is binding because they enjoy the power to make people think and question for being quiet doesn’t always indicate peace, provide vision and direction, and offer comfort and help; and when they do not do it in deed they fail an organisation.
In this ever-changing and progressive world no leader has all the answers and knowledge; the leader knows it as much as the others perceive it. Therefore, it is better when a leadership is dynamic and fluid: let go the rigid unfertile hierarchical structures, and in a case-to-case manner the elected authorities allow individuals with competences and character to come to the fore to inspire, lead, and execute. From a muscular leadership standpoint it may look radical, unsettling and problematic, but it is liberating on multiple levels. Let structures be flat; and leadership too.
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