Managing Leadership^®

We’ve noted over the past two days that a historic feature of international law holds that regimes that are tolerated by their people must be viewed as fundamentally legitimate. A problem with this is that it is often impractical for those people to do other than try to tolerate the otherwise intolerable, lending an implausible legitimacy to some pretty unpleasant regimes. As a result, leaders and followers alike can find themselves desperately collaborating in some disturbingly Orwellian devices to help them accommodate to the facts on the ground.

This happens in the world of work, as well, among organizations in all realms of life. The rhetoric is always fashionable to a fault, but the reality less so – and often calculatingly exploitative. And this leads to a second problem.

This is that there increasingly can be found an outside observer who is willing to drum up sufficient self-righteous indignity to ignore international law. The argument is made that particularly upsetting regimes are not legitimate, do not represent the will of their people despite the latter’s sullen tolerance, and that the international community is subject to an overriding moral imperative to intervene. These are extraordinarily difficult arguments to withstand, and so such interventions are becoming more and more common – and even are carving out their own place in the canon of international law.

And, again, a parallel development has similarly been influencing the world of organizations. Labor relations are legislated, community relations are regulated, and some of the most striking details of daily operations are mandated – from hours worked, to the employee selection and termination processes, to, of course, health care – and even the sort of product or service produced.

In the realm of international law, most of us understand the powerful logic being defied, and support at least one or another of the more gripping interventions, anyway. We recognize the insidious damage this does to the very international relations we aim to elevate, but we nevertheless act in the moment to relieve immediate suffering.

In the world of work, we do the same, step by step, until we find ourselves looking back in amazement at the massive, suffocating web of good will we have wrought. And the thing is that with respect to leadership, we have done the same.

We have introduced dynamics that no one can resist. And once again, we all are compelled to tolerate the new order, from wherever it is imposed. We take on the attitudes of the new definitions of leader and follower that have developed such terrifyingly fashionable momentum. We mouth the requisite formulae, answer the new incantations, and perform the carefully crafted, symbolic liturgy. And we do it willingly, we believe it. Because we have no real choice.

Whether we are left to determine if we wish to tolerate our leadership regime, or they are ultimately forced to submit to prevailing elite views of their proper roles and behaviors, we all ultimately find ourselves acting out someone else’s reality, and distorting our own. Not least among these distortions is our deepening misapprehension of what it all means. Including what leadership really means, and what are our roles and obligations with respect to it.

But you might ask, of course: has it ever been otherwise? And in any event, what are we do about it? We – employees, directors, shareholders, venders, partners, customers, innocent bystanders – managers? We will begin to take a look at that soon. Please stop in and let us know what you think!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of being alert to what we are doing to ourselves, please see what Steve Roesler has to say about the act of noticing. You will be directed to an eminently worthwhile video, and you will want, as always with Steve’s posts, to pay attention to the conversation taking place in the comments.  Please be sure to vote for Steve’s blog as the best leadership blog for 2009, as well.

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