Real Leaders And Healthy Organizations

Below are excerpts compiled from the writings of Ian Welsh on the topic of leadership.

I don’t normally write about leadership.  Somehow, it’s become a niche subject: either the subject of some banal business book, or discussed by the military.  It seems remote from politics or even economics because we live in an elite consensus society, where leadership is rare because the price of stepping out of the consensus can be ostracism from the elite.

One very simple method of leadership is to find something, some things, to admire about people. Most people live in a sea of negativity. Their spouse is on their case, their kids think they’re foggies, their co-workers always want more, their bosses never speak to them except to complain.

If you admire someone, if you think they’re great, that’s something they may not get from anyone else in their life.  And they will do almost anything to keep that.

This isn’t all there is to leadership, of course, there’s a lot more.  You have to draw people into a dream, give them space, make any victories their victories, while taking the responsibility for the losses.  You have to hold them to a high standard, which is an implicit compliment since it indicates you think they can meet that standard.  You have to praise them, you have to protect them, you have to take blows for them and you have to treat them well.  The hardships they endure, you must endure (one of my rules was that if I asked someone else to stay late at work, I stayed late as well, for example.)

But the bottom line is simple: A good organization produces a surfeit of good leaders who agree with the organization’s mission. Decapitation only works on unhealthy organizations.

Managers in the US (the US doesn’t have many leaders) lead unhealthy organizations rife with disillusionment, designed to promote time serving managers who don’t take risks, who actively work to harm the rank and file of the organization, and who believe in nothing but themselves.

Such managers find it difficult to get anything done. They have to use fear, coercion, and lies to get the rank and file to follow orders, because their orders are usually both evil and against the rank and file’s self-interest. They know that managing organizations is difficult from their own experience, and they think that all organizations are like that.

But organizations like the Taliban or Hezbollah (not to conflate, I don’t regard Hezbollah as equivalent in many ways) actually believe in what they are doing. People join because they believe in the mission. Even large drug cartels have a belief in a mission and a winnowing of fools and poltroons that often (though not as often as belief organizations) allows them to replace leadership.

When real leadership meets real mission, people fall over themselves to join. They want to belong. They believe. They will work for virtually nothing. They will beg to be part of something bigger than them.

Most Americans have NEVER experienced this. They cannot understand it at a gut level. It is alien to them.

American leaders are obsessed with leadership because they lead organizations in whose goals no one believes. Or rather, they lead organizations for whom everyone knows the leadership doesn’t believe in its ostensible goals.

So American leaders, and indeed the leaders of most developed nations, think they’re something special. Getting people to do anything, and convincing people to do the wrong thing, when they joined to actually teach, protect the environment, make citizens healthier, or actually prosecute crooks is difficult. 

Being a leader in the West, even though it comes with virtually complete immunity for committing crimes against humanity, violating civil rights, or stealing billions from ordinary citizens, is, in many respects, a drag. A very, very well-paying drag, but a drag. Very few people have the necessary flexible morals and ability to motivate employees through the coercion required. They think it requires a soulless prevaricator who takes advantage of and abuses virtually everyone and is still able to get people to, reluctantly, do their jobs.

Functioning organizations aren’t like that. They suck leadership upwards. Virtually everyone is being groomed for leadership and is ready for leadership. They believe in the cause, they know what to do, they’re involved. And they aren’t scared of dying, if they really believe. Oh sure, they’d rather not, but it won’t stop them from stepping up.