Managing Leadership^®

When times are tough, we talk tough. We sound the call to arms, announce the equality of all before the greatness of the challenge we face, and declare our devotion to everyone who helps shoulder the burden. It can be a thrillingly satisfying display of our great-hearted spirit, our boundlessly magnanimous condescension.

A classic example of this highly contrived concern and regard of “leaders” for their “followers” is effectively spotlighted by James Shapiro in his excellent work, “A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare.” In a famous and much quoted passage from “King Henry V,” Shakespeare has Henry addressing his troops before the Battle at Agincourt:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.”

The battle (1415) was a horrifically one-sided victory for the English. John Keegan tells the story with brutally close-up, blow-by-blow detail in his brilliant study, “The Face of Battle.” Despite being greatly outnumbered, the French suffered losses in the thousands, compared to perhaps a few hundred from the English side.

After the battle, Henry is handed a document reporting his losses. He mourns his fallen by naming the few nobles who died – only four, according to Shakespeare – commenting on each and specifying their rank. But, Shapiro notes, he concludes by rounding out the others as “none else of name.”

So much for his pre-battle promise of their being as brothers to him, raised from vulgar peasantry to a gentled condition. After they have served their purpose – and grandly – their principle remaining characteristic in this context (of their giving their lives for him in battle) seems to lie merely in their making up the remainder of the number of his losses.

How different is this, really, from the fuss, such as it was, made over the legions sacrificed to the folly and malfeasance of executives who involved their organizations in the various business leadership and accounting scandals of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the financial industry scandals of today. And how different is it from the rather more elaborate fuss made over these same executives as the degree of their culpability and the appropriateness of holding them accountable was and is debated with a sudden, and elaborately wrought, concern for justice?

It’s no good to pretend we understand leadership if our expressions of it so relentlessly result both in these disasters and these disgraceful responses to them. Modern managers need to shed this hopelessly exploitative, instinctively feudal approach to leadership. Until we learn to draw a more honest connection between our behavior as we prepare for, and as we emerge from, our challenges – whether they conclude in awful victories or more terrible defeats – we will make little real progress in learning how to express true leadership.

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Today’s tip: And speaking of not learning our lessons from a decade ago to today, please see this WSJ article by Dennis Berman about how there may be none to be learned – or no willingness to learn them.

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