Leadership

I have recently been reminded of the profound truth of two statements that border on the cliche but which are true nonetheless. The first, and more general, is that in any organization, the character, personality, and temperament of the personnel is the single most important factor in the health and success of the organization; the second, and somewhat more specific, is that the character, personality, and temperament of the head of the organization is the most important factor of all.

For whatever reasons, it is easier for me to imagine situations in which bad forms of character, personality, and temperament lead to toxicity and dysfunction. I hope that rather than a mere self-indulgent screed, that such a description will make the necessity of the right forms more obvious.

First, a word about the descriptions of organizations undermined by bad forms of character, personality, and temperament. We are prone to describe such situations as "dysfunctional," but that, while not inaccurate, is misleading. It is obviously true that organizations do perform functions, and performing those functions effectively and efficiently is essential to organizational success. But to focus on the functions themselves, and on the functionality of the organization's processes, is to emphasize the mechanical, the technical, and the outcomes. While it is true that organizations that suffer from bad forms of character, personality, and temperament do also suffer from reduced efficiency and efficacy, that is not the more important element.

The more important element is that such organizations are, to use the other current jargon, toxic; that is, they suffer from a systemic infection, not just reduced efficiency and efficacy.

Consider an extreme example, a kind of perfect storm of wrong character, personality, and temperament embodied in the leader of an organization. This hypothetical person is unscrupulous, arrogant, and --- at least relative to the demands of his position --- lacking in intelligence. This is a person who is absolutely sure of his own rightness; is not smart enough to see the larger picture or to question his assumptions and desires; and who feels not only free to impose his will on those he employs but who feels a kind of righteous self-assurance about imposing that will.

Such a person sees organizational leadership solely in terms of power: he must establish it and maintain it. The obvious way to accomplish this is to create fear and the most obvious way to do that is to punish enough people so that the rest become subservient. More often than not, that punishment takes the form of driving people out; simply dismissing them; or demoting them in humiliating ways. It doesn't take very many such events for the rest of the people in the organization to realize that they are dealing with power and nothing else, and that their alternatives are to conform, whatever new and different forms that takes from time to time, or to suffer.

Such a person, if sufficiently clever, knows that the stick is not enough; there must also be the carrot. In many cases, this amounts to the rewarding of two kinds of people: those who are truly and most obviously loyal and those who espouse some essentially harmless and unthreatening cause or program but whose support can be sold as courageous and principled when it is seldom anything of the kind.

This process is not about function, although functions are certainly affected; they are about the resultant infection to the institutional body. Fear is a great motivator but it motivates toward self-protection, toward reading the signs and symbols in order to say and do the safe thing, toward competition instead of cooperation and collaboration, toward survival as the only vital goal.

Which gets us back to the importance of personnel generally. In organizations run by those like our hypothetical example, the vicious, undermining, poisonous, gossiping, and back-stabbing are not only tolerated but actively encouraged. The inmates become their own jailers.

There's nothing new or shocking about this, especially after the huge institutional versions of it that dominated the 20th Century. The difference between the Stalinist Soviet Union and the hypothetical situation I described above is one of degree, not of kind. We've seen it all before.

It is one of many, many examples of how tempting power is and how corrupting it is.

Real leadership takes not only a principled vision and managerial expertise. It also takes the personal and professional courage to define the institutional culture, to face down the bullies, and to insist on everyone's commitment to the principles that inform the organization.

A difficult challenge, perhaps more difficult in our time than ever before because of the universal sense of entitlement and self-importance, but anything less is inhumane.

We should be aware of and grateful for the examples of right leadership that there are about us. And in those situations where people suffer from rule-by-fear, we should strive for reform or maybe even revolution.