ON LEADERSHIP AND LEADERS
"Never follow leaders." Bob Dylan
Early last week the
flagship BBC radio programme, Today, had, as it does each day over the festive
period, a guest editor; this particular morning the editor was the CEO of Barclays Bank Antony Jenkins. Listening to the programme what was most striking was how little
changed was the financial and business reporting. Any pretence at distance and
balance in the financial journalism of the BBC has long gone. Each morning the
un-mediated ‘wisdom’ of the City of London pours forth, - the market is king,
big bonuses essential, private good public bad.
 |
| Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins |
This particular morning
was not however without its comic moments. Thus we had a member of the banking
industry speaking to a class of schoolchildren. A representative of the
industry that gave us the financial crash of 2008, the train wreck of Northern
Rock and RBS, widespread tax avoidance, Libor rate rigging, money laundering
for drug cartels and a host of other crimes and misdemeanour's, telling schoolchildren that “we must all
strive to leave the world a better place than we found it!” It is one thing to
have someone pick your pocket, but to have them deliver moral lectures whilst
doing so is simply beyond chutzpah.
One of the children asked,
what might be termed the ‘kings clothes’ question, “Why given the performance
of the banks did they still get such large bonus payments? “Argh” our well
heeled spokesman responded with a weary sigh, “high bonus payments were just
one thing you must accept if you are to have a thriving banking industry,”
neatly sidestepping the fact that this is precisely what we do not have. Thus
fat bonus payments are simply like the sun coming up in the morning and going
down again at dusk, just the way things are. This is the authentic voice of
greed, the unmediated propaganda of the financial services industry.
The theme he chose for the
programme was ‘leadership,’ for me the most overrated of all qualities.
Having spent a portion of my working life working in a non-hierarchy I have
learnt just how much the idea of leadership distorts peoples experience of
employment, effectively meaning that the best part of their lives are spent in
a form of dictatorship, benign or otherwise. If we are to grow and develop as a
species, indeed if we are to survive, one thing we need surely to jettison is the
demand for leadership.
The great speaker as
leader must surely have been demolished by the presidency of Barrack Obama, the
finest orator president since Kennedy, yet what has all his fine words amounted
too? From Syria Palestine China Russia
Putin on the other hand, a
third rate gangster, is portrayed as an effective leader.[1]
Certainly he gets his own way, which of course is one thing that leaders are
supposed to do. However should you wish to converse with some of his Russian
critics, such as the journalist Anna Politkovskaya you will find the
conversation a trifle one sided.
Here in Britain
I suppose that one
minister who imagines himself a leader of men is the welfare minister Iain
Duncan Smith, ex-army. Probably the most incompetent minister in living memory,
who manages to combine grotesque crudity with cruelty and cowardice; the sight
of him sneaking out of the commons debate on food-banks turned the stomach.
Even the so called great
leaders such as Churchill or De Gaulle rarely stand close examination.
Churchill was a voice, a great voice that perfectly encapsulated the defiance
of the British people in 1940, but as a military leader he was a disaster; the
service chiefs constantly exhausting themselves trying to keep Churchill’s
hands of operational matters, or trying to repair the damage after he had done
so. De Gaulle on the other hand was the great fraudster and illusionist, the
man, if you believed the Gaullist propaganda line, who saved France US Paris France
Stalin, that other great
wartime leader, was in the key days following the German invasion in 1941
completely paralysed by funk and had to be dragged from his dacha outside
Moscow to return to work.[2]
Later others were shot, taking the blame for his failures.
The most successful
organisation of the Second World War, from a British perspective, an outfit
that shortened the war by at least a year and arguably two, was Bletchley Park
Actually exercising
leadership is comparatively easy; people are so willing to surrender to you
what power they have, glad to be relieved of the burden of decision making.
Life becomes a lot easier when someone else is in charge.
Of course when you are placed
in such a position of authority those placed below you in the hierarchy feel,
understandably, resentful at this arrangement. It is these tensions created by
inequality of power, income, social prestige that is the most difficult thing
for any manager to manage. Many people on your team harbour the belief that
they could do a better job than you, some probably could. Hierarchies squander talent
the way that Victorian plumbing leaks water.
I can already hear the
opposition to these arguments, those who protest that some sort leadership is
always essential. Maybe they are right, maybe we need leaders, people to take
charge and tell us what to do? The history of the last hundred years suggests
that this need carries with it, to put it extremely mildly, immense dangers. As
for the banks, an industry that gave up Fred Goodwin and Bob Diamond, I am not
sure they are in a position to give lectures on leadership, or anything else
for that matter.
One of my favourite images
of leadership comes from the revolutions of 1848. A young man is shaving, preparing for another
day of revolutionary exertions. Suddenly he hears shouting outside and going to
the window he sees a crowd moving along the street shouting slogans and waving
banners. He leaps down the stairs, lather still on his face, his braces loose
around his legs. “Wait for me,” he shouts pulling up his trousers, “I'm your
leader.”
[2] Stalin had received
numerous warnings, all from reliable sources, of German intentions, however
exercising the superior leadership skills for which he was lauded, he ignored
them all.
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