Wounded Leaders: How Their Damaged Past Affects Your Future. Allan Bonner
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for awarding themselves multimillion dollar bonuses, taking advantage of expensive perks such as corporate jets and claiming huge “golden handshakes” or retirement packages even while their company shares are plummeting.
There has to be a better way. We in the West have become so accustomed to thinking that we lead the world in technical and business know-how that we are reluctant to look beyond our horizons for something better. My search for proven styles of leadership in other fields led me to study the leadership used in a Karate school, or Dojo. There I found several concepts, which-I believe-could benefit modern business organizations. These include hard work, short turnaround times, respect for tradition, rank, ritual, and what can be termed followership-the capacity to learn from others. Leaders need to be able to relinquish their roles to allow followers to take over if they are better able to accomplish the task.
Of course respect for tradition, rank and ritual may seem contrary to the egalitarian principles our Western societies have tried to encourage during the last half-century. These and some other aspects may not translate well into modern corporate life. But I suggest that many concepts of the Dojo, including followership, skills development, the episodic nature of leadership, and short bursts of hard work can benefit our business organizations.
Another important prescription for more efficient leadership is empathy. Psychologists note those who seek and achieve high office and positions of power often display a bombastic and bullying nature, which masks fear and hurt. Academic literature, my practice and my observations of leaders and executives working under pressure suggest that wellness begins with empathy. There must be empathy for one’s self before there can be empathy for others or one’s organization.
This book examines how today’s troubled corporate culture came about, how bad a crisis it really is and how to address the leadership challenges it poses.
THE PROBLEM
Stories about the challenges of corporate leadership in the areas of ethics, human relations and profitability have dominated the business and academic press for thirty years. Corporate officers are in jail. Pension funds have been raided. The lavish personal spending of even the most revered CEOs has come under shareholder and media scrutiny. There has been a flurry of mergers and acquisitions during the period designed to produce “synergies”, “convergence” and economies of scale. Corporate restructuring has coincided with “outsourcing” to low-wage developing countries and downsizing among the Fortune 500.
In the Western democracies, education is often cited as the panacea for a wide range of troubles. Yet, ironically, corporate leadership and performance troubles seem to have become more pronounced as education levels have risen. Leadership challenges have multiplied despite a rise in the number of graduates of business schools and other faculties in the workforce.
Why do corporate leaders rise to the top and then, so often, fail in such spectacular ways? They misread markets and misunderstand cultures, causing not only the collapse of transnational expansion plans, but also high turnover rates and poor financial performance. Some engage in illegal activities.
There is a personal and organizational toll being paid for these failures. In the same way that the modern executive pushes the organization with downsizing, attacking new markets, mergers and acquisitions, the executive pushes himself or herself. Men seem to be more susceptible, but women are not immune to this personal toll.
In recent years our “advanced” societies have realized there is also an economic cost to this destructive behaviour with impacts felt far beyond the workplace and have begun to assess the damage. Mental disorders are exacting a very high toll in reduced economic productivity, medical treatment and social assistance.
As reported by Canada’s Globe and Mail (10.13.2013): “In fact, it is estimated that mental illness costs the economy more than $50-billion a year.” One of the reasons that number is so high is because problems are so widespread-an estimated 6.7 million Canadians suffer from mental illness—“and illness tends to hit people hardest in their prime work years. ” (Emphasis added).
One estimate for the United States is that about 15 million Americans will suffer from depression in a given year and that more than 35 million will experience a major depressive episode at some point in their lives. The economic cost is estimated to be approaching $100 billion-and depression is only one of several mental disorders. There are also costs associated with heart disease, diabetes, marital breakdown and other problems.
So what is it that modern leaders think they are achieving by the sacrifices they demand of themselves, the people around them and their organizations? What do they think they are achieving for their organizations with countless rounds of unproductive mergers and acquisitions? Is it inertia? Is it to fill time or put their marks on organizations? Do they think they must “get the job done” at any price, including their own health? With downsizing, failed mergers and so on, is it a case of “this hurts me more than you”?
The statistics on corporate failure are only representative of the human condition. These failures represent lost jobs, lost shareholder value, less pension money for retirees and perhaps even shorter lives. In turn, the children of workers, shareholders and retirees may be paying a price in lost educational opportunities, poor diet and fewer life experiences. In the modern global economy, there are no bystanders any more.
People at all levels of corporations and society are paying a price for these failures. Workers and pensioners are obvious examples, but so are the leaders and their colleagues who are often painted as the authors of these organizational failings. Obesity and hypertension are on the increase, and even appear to be a rite of passage to the executive suite. One quotation, perhaps apocryphal, but that circulates among executives I’ve studied, has a famous CEO saying that if you have not had a heart attack by age fifty-five, you are not working hard enough. Those senior executives who seem to escape physical ailments often seek counselling for psychological support. Still others cannot keep marriages and families together while pursuing corporate goals.
It is ironic that these days almost any discussion or examination of modern corporate life is dominated by the challenges and failures of today’s leaders. The very word “leadership” conjures images of big, larger-than-life personalities who can be role models for the rest of us. Think of Churchill, de Gaullea Reagan, Thatcher or Trudeau. Whom we choose as our models depends on our origins, culture, perspective and beliefs.
In North America, any list of business leaders is dominated by names from the US. Historically, these would likely include Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Whitney and Ford. We tend to think of these men as decisive, ethical, hard working, strong, competent, single-minded-and also excellent communicators. However, we also know that history is written by the “victors” and while their biographers may have been frank and fair we have to concede these men had an easier time of it than today’s captains of industry. It’s easier to exercise and project power when you have time to write a speech, or react to bad news when there’s no television or internet demanding instant answers and solutions-and analyzing what you’ve said before you’ve even finished speaking.
The odd thing is that even though today’s leaders live and work in a totally different world from their business ancestors, they persist in chasing the same old dream: bigger is better. Of course there’s nothing wrong with making more cars or widgets, if that is your core business. However, a widget maker who wants to generate more profits by taking over a very successful ice cream business based in a different country is likely to find he’s bitten off more than he can chew, lick, or swallow. And far too often our business leaders over the past three decades have chosen the latter option in the race to grow bigger, better-and richer.
THE MAGNETISM OF MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
There are numerous aspects of organizational life that could be studied as manifestations of the health of the modern corporation. We might examine recent accounting and ethical wrongdoing and come to the conclusion that there’s been a failure to instill in young people a code of good business conduct. We could also study extreme examples of executive compensation and attempt to link that phenomenon to the evolution of our consumer society. An anthropologist