Bad leadership and Workbook 2
Conversation is a tool, in the background, helping us to coordinate, collaborate, adapt and think together; to get the work done. We pay more attention when unsafe or unexpected things happen. Our investigations into why there has been a failure to communicate, usually focus on the acts and omissions of individual actors. Their failure to share what they knew and saw. A lapse that can justify sanctions; blame and shame; and the demand that next time, people should ‘speak up.’
A decision to speak or stay quiet, is the outcome of a reflexive conversation. A conversation we have in the privacy of our head. To weigh up the meaning of a situation to us and consider the implications for what we value and think right; and to calculate the cost of speaking or remaining silent. Current approaches to helping people speak up, assume we have more control over these deliberations than is justified. Outcomes are also shaped by the wider conversational culture in which we talk and work.
In the European Middle Ages, a wrong word or look, could mean losing your head, or finding yourself in a fight [1]. Today, we assume that we have evolved and have stopped silencing the voices we do not want to hear with physical violence. An unsafe assumption.
Words continue to carry a punch. Being told to shut the **** in front of colleagues, facing endless criticism, can feel like violence. While one’s head doesn’t roll across the floor, one’s capacity to think and collaborate drains away. Words are not an actual punch to the face but speech is ‘an action’[2]. It can cause harm.
History reminds us that authoritarian leaders are skilful in the way they take control of how we do our talking. They like to dictate what we can talk about as a means to control our thinking. Tell us what we should ignore; who does not deserve a voice. They are skilful at incentivising us to internalise their rules of conversation and to police ourselves [3]. Bad leadership thrives when we become compliant; stop thinking; lose our voice and become docile followers.
In her book defining six types of bad leadership (incompetent; rigid; intemperate; callous; corrupt; insular and evil) Kellerman argues a basic fact. Leadership is about organising individuals and resources to get things done. We should not assume that getting things done is always for the good; it can end in genocide [4]. We need to be vigilant.
The leadership role is not easy. It requires a ton of patience; good will and skill to coordinate a wide range of people, professions, opinions, assumptions, and feelings, to deliver a coherent set of services. Services that are compliant with an often-inflexible, politicised governance and policy processes that can seem detached from the realities of day-to-day delivery. Senior leaders can be forgiven when they wish people just do as they say and get on with it. Such a lapse into bad leadership will be less risky if said leaders have also invested in creating a culture of doubt.
I wrote my doctoral thesis about people who had the capacity to be constructively awkward. I focused on how they thought and behaved. I paid less attention to what others did to enable their speaking up. How the acts and omissions of others helped create a work culture and a moment in the workday, when doubt, questioning, argument, challenge were ok. Handbook 2 contains ideas for leaders who want to enable people to feel safe enough to be a bit awkward.
A decision to speak or stay quiet, is the outcome of a reflexive conversation. A conversation we have in the privacy of our head. To weigh up the meaning of a situation to us and consider the implications for what we value and think right; and to calculate the cost of speaking or remaining silent. Current approaches to helping people speak up, assume we have more control over these deliberations than is justified. Outcomes are also shaped by the wider conversational culture in which we talk and work.
In the European Middle Ages, a wrong word or look, could mean losing your head, or finding yourself in a fight [1]. Today, we assume that we have evolved and have stopped silencing the voices we do not want to hear with physical violence. An unsafe assumption.
Words continue to carry a punch. Being told to shut the **** in front of colleagues, facing endless criticism, can feel like violence. While one’s head doesn’t roll across the floor, one’s capacity to think and collaborate drains away. Words are not an actual punch to the face but speech is ‘an action’[2]. It can cause harm.
History reminds us that authoritarian leaders are skilful in the way they take control of how we do our talking. They like to dictate what we can talk about as a means to control our thinking. Tell us what we should ignore; who does not deserve a voice. They are skilful at incentivising us to internalise their rules of conversation and to police ourselves [3]. Bad leadership thrives when we become compliant; stop thinking; lose our voice and become docile followers.
In her book defining six types of bad leadership (incompetent; rigid; intemperate; callous; corrupt; insular and evil) Kellerman argues a basic fact. Leadership is about organising individuals and resources to get things done. We should not assume that getting things done is always for the good; it can end in genocide [4]. We need to be vigilant.
The leadership role is not easy. It requires a ton of patience; good will and skill to coordinate a wide range of people, professions, opinions, assumptions, and feelings, to deliver a coherent set of services. Services that are compliant with an often-inflexible, politicised governance and policy processes that can seem detached from the realities of day-to-day delivery. Senior leaders can be forgiven when they wish people just do as they say and get on with it. Such a lapse into bad leadership will be less risky if said leaders have also invested in creating a culture of doubt.
I wrote my doctoral thesis about people who had the capacity to be constructively awkward. I focused on how they thought and behaved. I paid less attention to what others did to enable their speaking up. How the acts and omissions of others helped create a work culture and a moment in the workday, when doubt, questioning, argument, challenge were ok. Handbook 2 contains ideas for leaders who want to enable people to feel safe enough to be a bit awkward.
