Category: Negative Leadership Traits

Enabling lies

Enabling lies

I drafted this blog a week ago after it bubbling for quite a while. I couldn’t quite get it right. I thought I had something to say that I felt was important but I couldn’t frame it quite right – maybe that’s another blog! So here goes.

I’ve been thinking a bit about lies lately. We hear cries of “fake news” nowadays, sometimes by politicians under pressure. In George Orwell’s 1984, the “truth” is re-written to reflect what the government wants its citizens to believe. And at a certain level, it seems they did.

At a much more granular level, for many of us, facing lies, or even telling lies, won’t usually be about momentous events. But in leadership, it can matter a lot.

But maybe there’s two people in that lie. The liar, and us, the enabler?

How often do we accept things said to or around us, that we know to be untrue, possibly then even advancing a conversation on the basis of the lies? Reasonably often in my observation.

iStock-479774396.jpgI’ve been on an invigorating three day course with PwC in Melbourne these last three days. It’s been a course about bringing the best of humanity, technology and business to life for our clients.  One of the speakers was Kirk Docker, the producer of an Australian television series “You can’t ask that”. He showed us a clip of interviewing a random man at a mall. The man started off joking about eating “past use by” chicken, then quickly talked about his traumatic upbringing which had lead him to a life on the streets.  “When did you lose your innocence” Kirk asked. “When I was about 8”, and was let down, said the interviewee. “What did the hard life as an 8-year-old teach you?” asked Kirk.

“That everyone lies. That’s what I learned. Everyone lies.”

A lie that is ignored runs the risk of being a platform for action or inaction. In leadership if you are authentic with a clear moral compass, it should be unacceptable to lie. It should also be unacceptable to let it pass.

Do you enable?

Stephen

 

 

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Do we need leadership?

Do we need leadership?

It’s surely worth asking the question, especially on a leadership blog! Maybe it’s an age thing, but I find myself questioning more frequently whether I need anyone to “lead” me. I think I’m pretty good at getting on with work, life, a career and looking after myself without any sense of another person or persons leading me.

It might be a function of the lack of leadership globally right now that is part of this thinking. In the United States, past Presidents, who compared to the current incumbent, appear in hindsight to have been great leaders. But they’re mute right now.  In the United Kingdom, a Trumpish front runner looks like having a good chance of making it to the leadership of that country. Neither of these two individuals are leaders to me. Yes they might have that mantle, but if leadership is about vision, values, an ethical compass, respect and inclusion, I think we need another word for these sorts of individuals. Quite a few come to mind, but they’re not repeatable in this forum!

So, in my smug little world where I don’t think I need leadership can that be right? Probably not. Leaders around me have and continue to create the environment for me and my team’s success, with strategy, vision, purpose and an environment for personal and professional growth.

iStock-926404310.jpgSo you might not feel leadership all the time. But good leadership doesn’t need to be in your face, just providing the appropriate context is often sufficient.

Poor leadership, including ruling by division and clinging on to power at all costs, we definitely notice.

And rather than seek to just remove ourselves from the influence of such behaviour, as leaders this is the time to step up, be noticed, drive inclusion and values.

More than ever it’s needed right now.

Stephen

Adult supervision

We don’t usually hear leadership referred to as adult supervision.

But the level of leadership some in leadership positions have reduced themselves to requires others to exert supervision. Like an adult does for a child.

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I guess we should be grateful that in the most powerful democracy we have some adults!

Stephen

Leaders that lie

According to the Washington Post, President Trump has told over 3000 lies since he was sworn in as US President.

Team and leadership
Follow the leader!

For many of those lies, you might think that any intelligent person knows they can’t be true, such as asserting that the border wall with Mexico was being built, when it’s not. Some of them might be based on ignorance – such as claiming that the US “loses” $500b on its trade deficits with China – when no-one actually loses money on a trade deficit. Others just appear to be made up bits of nonsense.

It’s trite to say how unusual it is that the leader of the world’s second largest democracy has such a relationship with the truth. But that is not as astonishing as how all these lies appear to be accepted or at best, excused by many people.

At times I think that those that follow Trump must be ignorant or stupid. They might be, but it might be that leadership is wanted more than we realise, in any form.  Even though I write this leadership blog and help people with their leadership development, I don’t personally feel any great urge for anybody to lead me. But I’ve noticed that many people do and over millennia we see examples of people foolishly and tragically following leaders – maybe out of fear – but often out of a desire to be led somewhere…anywhere!

Many people want a leader, warts and all.  Trump is that leader for many people. Did I just say that!

Stephen