Tag: leadership traits

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BLG Leadership Insights Features Proactive Leaders

Don’t let Hubris be your Downfall

The media has long tried to warn us not to take success for granted. If you have not already taken the queue from Gordon Gecko’s famous portrayal of greed-gone-wrong in the Wall Street movie series, pick up your classic copy of Oedipus Rex, or re-read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar or Macbeth.

What these modern movies, classic tragedies, and iconic plays all have in common is the tragic downfall of a protagonist who succumbs to weaknesses of his own. In traditional Greek, the operative term applied to such characters was “hubris” or overconfidence. Though conceived when the ancient Greek plays were transcribed, the word still applies to many modern leaders.

It is not surprising that when individuals reach extraordinary heights of success, they often lose touch with reality. The media frequently criticizes leaders who display too much pride, seem overly arrogant, or come off as seriously narcissistic. Less elaborately discussed is the gradual process by which these undesirable traits directly lead to the demise of their possessors.

It is important to discuss the symptoms of hubristic leaders so that it is easy to identify such individuals. It is also important to establish that not all confident leaders are presumptuous, and confidence alone is not a blameworthy characteristic. The danger is when after getting to the top, certain leaders start to become narcissistic, which can be blinding and detrimental to themselves and employees.

Certain industries are designed in a way that breeds leaders who think they are always right. Companies that reward the most confident and vocal employees with better opportunities, increased visibility, and company benefits incentivize their workers to adopt aggressive characteristics. With such incentives, it is no wonder that by the time individuals gain prestige, they feel they deserve it because they adapted themselves and paid their dues.

So how do we determine the point when pride and conscientiousness transforms into overconfidence, ignorance, and arrogance?

1.  When a leader starts ignoring the advice and opinions of others. Hence, they often prefer isolation, or act rude and brash when hearing suggestions out of line with their views.

2.  Another revealing act is when leaders overuse company perks for their own personal benefits. This often reflects a sense of entitlement and indestructibility.

3. Because of their inflated sense of superiority, leaders plagued by hubris often repeat actions long after they have stopped being effective. Either they are stuck in their outdated ways and have been ignoring relevant new trends, or they simply think they can get away with anything without being detected. Take the great fraud schemes of Enron and Bernie Madoff.

Despite years of warnings from movies and literature, it seems that certain leaders are still prone to go down a slippery path of self-destruction. Therefore, no matter how high the walls of success may be,  leaders need to keep their egos in check and their feet on the ground. After years of hard work, leaders should enjoy their success, but not let hubris be their downfall.

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BLG Leadership Insights Political Competence

Ego Champ

In “Champion”, Kanye West poses the self-referential question, “Did you realize that you are a champion in their eyes?”

By the final verse, West decisively answers the query: “Yes I did”.

West, often derided for his blinding hubris, certainly suffers (or benefits) from a case of acute bravado. However, West has cunningly co-opted this haughty bombast into his brand. With five platinum albums, fourteen Grammys, and a massive hip hop empire, West often flaunts his success in almost satirically extreme fashion (see tweet: “Just looking at my closet, wool suits, fedoras, trenches and furs…I’m bout to put fall in the hospital…Ima hurt the season”) (Kanye West Twitter).

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With this strategic bombast, why is West so often critiqued as someone who consistently slips into a winning for the sake of winning ego trap? West descends into this Charlie Sheen-esque “Winning” ego trap when he shifts his attention to petty fights.

First, famously, at the VMAs, West leapt onto stage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance of the Best Female Video award. Bleeding credibility and career momentum, West seized the microphone and announced that Beyoncé deserved the prize instead. Soon after, West apologized in characteristic, bombastic West fashion:

“I’m in the wrong for going on stage…[but] Beyoncé’s video was the best of this decade!!!!” (Entertainment Weekly, 9/13/09).

Similarly, West was arrested twice in 2008 for clashing with paparazzi. In the first incident, West smashed a photographer’s camera in Los Angeles International Airport. Later in November, he was again arrested for scraping a paparazzo’s nose in a scuffle. He responded to these arrests with a blog post asking: “Who’s winning, me or the media” (Guardian, 11/17/08).

These incidents join similar situations where West has initiated fights with President Bush, Matt Lauer, and 50 Cent. While these fights may sustain West’s brand in some fashion, they ultimately detract from his sales and sink his hip-hop agenda. Therefore, while West can embrace a bombastic ego, he must avoid winning for the sake of winning if he wants to preserve his empire.

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Creativity Managerial Competence Proactive Leaders

Labor Day


Through a sea of glistening blue (jeans), you spot a current of croissants and crullers rippling through the break room. Confetti streams the walls in tribute to Ralph from HR’s birthday and hints of nutmeg and cinnamon perfume the room. The mailboxes, disguised as Christmas stockings, contain beckoning paychecks and invitations to a weekend cocktail party celebrating the impressive numbers released from finance earlier in the week. A rare laughter swells out of Ethan Marcus’s office where a group is gathered watching viral YouTube gems. It must be Friday.

This phantasmagorical scene may be deep-fried in hyperbole but it still conveys an essential point of organizational culture: Fridays are different. Office norms loosen and a euphoric air envelops a once stale workplace. As a proactive, engaged leader, the challenge then becomes how to accommodate and engage in this culture shock, while simultaneously advancing an agenda that can’t break for Falafel Friday.

So how do you remain chill without exhausting air conditioning resources and freezing your agenda? A politically savvy leader knows how to infuse some productivity into the celebratory croissants. With your coalition partners congregated and their guards down, you have a unique opportunity to solidify the relationships that will ultimately mobilize your agenda. While your colleagues may burrow into their silos on Monday through Thursday, Friday pops these bubbles and allows information to waft around with the nutmeg already saturating the air.

Today is the shooting star of organizational phenomena; it’s a casual Friday preceding a long Labor Day weekend. My office is a ghost town and I think I saw a lonely hay bale blow by my desk 15 minutes ago. I have a creeping suspicion that my calendar is off and I’ve accidentally come into work on a Saturday or, more troubling, that I missed the meteorologists warnings to evacuate the area.

Nevertheless, I’m not squandering a perfectly fertile labor day. While I munch on abandoned pastries, I chat with coworkers and gain casual background on this office and my current campaigns. Without the pressured angst that pervades other labor days, I gain privileged insight into my organization. Meanwhile, I break to blog about this to the anonymous masses quietly celebrating their Labor Day Fridays in other office nooks and crannies. I hope this message reaches you in time before your day dissolves into a haze of lazy celebrations. If not, no worries. There’s always Monday.

Pic Credit: amirjina

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BLG Leadership Insights Features Managerial Competence Political Competence

Preserving the Skeleton

Yesterday, the media volleyed around stunning stories of tennis legend Venus Williams’ diagnosis of Sjögren’s Syndrome and her subsequent withdrawal from the U.S. Open. The story saturated mainstream news networks, receiving full court attention from health and lifestyle journalists in addition to devoted sports reporters. All this press served to racquet up both sympathy for Williams and intrigue into her “shocking diagnosis”, Sjögren’s Syndrome (Moisse & Childs, ABC News, 9/1/2011). In full disclosure, I also have Sjögren’s Syndrome, and fall in an exceedingly rare demographic as a young male afflicted by a predominantly older female autoimmune disorder. While I certainly appreciate the attention Sjögren’s will receive with the arrival of this high-profile case, I wish less to commiserate than I do to investigate how a leader navigates illness.

Venus Williams, who was recently ranked the 10th most powerful black woman in the U.S. and the 86th most powerful celebrity in the world (Forbes, The Celebrity 100), is certainly a leadership titan. She launched her own fashion line and interior design firm and is a co-owner of the Miami Dolphins. The list of accomplishments on and off the court is exhausting and diminishing for anyone who thinks they’ve found success.

Unfortunately so is Sjögren’s Syndrome. While the hallmark symptoms of the syndrome are dry eyes and dry mouth, the Sjögren’s Syndrome Foundation explains that, “patients may experience extreme fatigue and joint pain and have a higher risk of developing lymphoma” (Sjogrens.org). It’s certainly serves up a challenge for a part-time table tennis attendant let alone for a professional tennis star at the peak of her career.

We often speak of the importance of mobilizing an agenda, sustaining momentum, and tirelessly operating in a campaign paradigm. So how does a highly competent, politically savvy leader manage when the body starts attacking itself? I wish I had an easy answer for this nauseating challenge but (much to my parents chagrin) I’m no doctor and hardly a leadership expert.

What I do know and what we often emphasize is that organizations, like your bodies, are uncertain organisms. Just as you never know when Hurricane Irene will flood your foyer, you can’t anticipate illness. While we may wish our doctors worked next to our desks, we lack this luxury.

The key is maintaining your coalition and vigilantly preparing for disorder. God forbid the day arrives when your body turns on itself, but, if it does, you at least want to avoid having an autoimmune coalition that mimics your disease. Cultivate an earnest, empowered coalition that will brace your organizational body if your personal frame gives out. If Sjogren’s dries your glands, find a team that will lubricate your agenda and carry you to the finish line.

Venus Williams’ courageous response to her diagnosis was that, “[Sjögren’s] will help me to feel grateful for everything that I have. And at the same time it makes me want to get up and fight harder every single day” (Moisse & Childs). So have another cup of coffee, eat your deep fried Oreo, and confidently plunge into your campaign. But remember to remain mindful of your personal and professional health.

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Creativity Managerial Competence Political Competence Proactive Leaders

Bobblehead

It goes by many names. Nodder, wobbler, bobbler, bobbing doll, or, more commonly, bobblehead doll. The one name, though, that is rarely applied to these amusing spring-connected collectible toys is “leader”. While popular culture and The Office, specifically, advance the bobblehead industry by creating toys bearing the likeness of organizational leaders, many leaders would resist this association. The representation of a proactive leader with a flimsy and inflated head that nods ad nauseam with mechanical approval is not what most managers want sitting on their desk. Yet, as much as much as the politically competent leader may cringe at this symbol of reflexive apathy, it unfortunately hits too close to home for many pinheaded executives.

Often on this blog, we touch upon this notion of leadership styles and the distinction between facilitative and directive management. As we argue, facilitative leaders adopt an empowering laissez-faire approach that allows coalition partners to autonomously advance a shared agenda. These leaders are not (usually) negligent but instead favor a more hands off approach. Arianna Huffington is likely a facilitative leader as she creates an empire but then empowers writers and contributors to mobilize the organization and advance a common agenda.

Directive leaders are then the foil for their facilitative colleagues. They favor a very hands-on approach and carefully prescribe and choreograph assignments for coalition partners. Just as facilitative leaders are not necessarily lazy, directive leaders are not automatically paranoid or dominating. They simply favor a stricter management scheme and design campaigns that accommodate or necessitate such an approach. Sarah Palin’s current SarahPAC is more directively managed as Palin carefully choreographs her staff actions and maintains strict regulation of her public and private campaign elements.

Both facilitative and directive approaches are valid and effective depending on the organization, agenda, and coalition players.

So back to the bobblehead and the emergence of a third, detrimental leadership approach. The bobblehead leadership approach is a poisonous fusion of facilitative and directive styles. The bobbler leader may dictate specific elements of the agenda or may empower colleagues to define these elements themselves but, in both contexts, this leader quickly succumbs to a yes-(wo)man approach.

The wobbler evades difficult choices by simply offering his weak but dependable approval for all campaign elements. The nodder remains silent in meetings, but she always defaults into consent when an opinion is solicited. Ultimately, the bobbing approach is one of apathy and fear that produces a vacuous, feeble campaign.

So sit at your desk and chuckle as your bobblehead offers its unconditional, detached support for all your ideas. But eventually you need to spring into action and get your head in the game.

Pic Credit: brianjmatis