Hero leadership - Part 1
The recent media interest in AMP’s boardroom decision making really shouldn’t come as much surprise. Charlotte Grieve’s well researched article in The Age highlights the cultural history at AMP that has led to many corporate ‘heroes’ losing their halo and falling from grace.
But the issues go far beyond the culture at one particular institution. It is not really about how people are chosen to work at just AMP, whether the selection processes entrench the types of people who work there, or whether prospective applicants ‘self-select’ by applying there.
For now, I will look at one issue - why are we still looking for ‘hero’ or ‘trait based’ leadership at places like AMP or anywhere else? Where has that got AMP, or many other organisations? This idea of the ‘transformational’ or ‘charismatic’ corporate saviour is way past its use-by date.
Think about how often such leaders are sought, and why we apparently want them. And then, time and again, inquiries into corporate misconduct, most recently the Financial Services Royal Commission, highlight depressingly similar tales about how those leaders failed their organisation, shareholders and wider society. Is leadership so hard?
The Final report of the Royal Commission into the Financial Services Industry (Vol 1 p.8-9) didn’t think so:
…At their most basic, the underlying principles [that should guide corporate behaviour] reflect norms of conduct [including] : obey the law; do not mislead or deceive; act fairly …(etc)
And yet, the likely solutions often involve getting new ‘hero’ leaders to ‘clean up’ or ‘transform’ the ‘bad’ organisation. And around we go again..
This type of leadership, and our ongoing dependence on it, needs to be reconsidered. Is it really about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ leadership, or about the system we have built to support it? We have to reconsider our roles as followers. All leaders need followers to be successful (at least for a while), so what are we really asking them to do for us? Save us? Transform our organisation? Show us ‘the way’?
Why can’t we rely more on other forms of leadership (which do exist..), that are less personality driven, that involve us more as decision makers, that empower us to contribute beyond just taking orders? Such models work in many organisations, yet the (US-led) leadership hero culture, with the salaries to match, dominates..
No, I am not arguing for an anarcho-syndicalist commune style of leadership (as per Monty Python’s Holy Grail ), but something better than what we have, something than moves us all towards a more interactive style of organisational and personal growth.
That involves a better understanding, not of what a leader should look like or be like (and continue the 'trait' view of leadership) but of what each of us, as a follower, wants from a leader - as an employee, manager, leader, parent and/or shareholder. Believe it or not, you do get some choice about this, which includes voting with your feet if the organisation and leadership does not fit in with your values and ideas.
You don't have to be part of the decision to hand them the cape if you don't want to..