Not everyone is a leader who looks like one...(and the fish stinks from the head)

According to universal consensus

• executive positions mean a higher pay grade; they come with expensive mobile phone, broadband streaming (for access to business content, of course...), even company car allowance (with unlimited fuel) and even a fixed bonus; plus they free you from the "intimacy" of a busy open-office and the constraints of a strictly bound, inflexible working life;


• And then, the higher the leather armchair, the less you have to work, of course, because many subordinate workers are there to do the boss's bidding and/or to do their work independently (with the boss's support, of course), driven by deep commitment;


• and of course there is the prestige, appreciation, authority and respect that automatically comes with joining the upper caste!

Yes, only then, when the careerists in management reach their destiny and the appointment is made and accepted by them, sooner or later comes the unexpected surprise not only for the subordinates but also for the appointees and appointers alike:

• Already in a 2017 global survey, the Gallup polling institute found that 85 percent of full-time employees are disengaged from their jobs, in no small part because of it, that workers simply hate their immediate boss (and everyone has an immediate boss, even those at the top of the ladder), much more than they hate the company or organisation that employs them;


• A survey by Big Office Day 2019 found that more than half (53 percent) of workers would give up a portion of their salary for a better boss, with 1 percent even sacrificing more than 15 percent of their earnings for one;


• Oracle and Workplace Intelligence 2020 research of more than 12,000 employees in 11 countries found that 68 percent of robots prefer to talk about their workplace problems and anxieties, 80 percent are also open to having an algorithm as an advisor instead of their direct manager - which, in the current climate of artificial intelligence, is not very encouraging news...

Where do things go wrong?

But what could be the reason? Within HR there is a whole industry built on competency-based leadership selection, leadership development, leadership development, leadership coaching and mentoring, so what is the problem, where are things slipping?

It seems that managers - working anywhere in the world, at any level, in any organisation - simply don't pay enough attention to their subordinates. Rather, our supervisors are trained and trained to adhere to and enforce corporate rules, resolutions, regulations, regulations, instructions, to fill out hundreds of forms, to compile reports, to run from meeting to meeting, business presentations and, of course, to exploit to the maximum the human resource capacities at their disposal, constantly increasing performance expectations (no wonder the 'conscious unbossing'!?), rather than involving and listening to employees, discussing with them the mission of the organisation, its long-term goals, the strategies to achieve them, or even the development of the activity, or discussing with their colleagues their personal or work community problems, their comments, their development opportunities, their short or long-term plans, the development of cooperation, synergy and communication within the work community.

For my part, I strongly believe that in order to prevent the decline in employee engagement/satisfaction due to bosses, the rise in voluntary turnover, and the turning away of young, talented potential leaders from organizational leadership (again: 'conscious unbossing'), first and foremost, we need to break down our paradigms about leadership and leadership development, which means...

1. ...a distinction needs to be made between the owner-manager roles interested in adding value to property and the organizational-manager roles interested in running the organization, even in medium, small, and micro-enterprises! Where, by the way, this is especially problematic, since not only are the ownership and management roles inextricably entangled, but even the busy-busy operational roles are almost inextricably entangled in this Gordian knot;


2. ...it must be accepted that 'leadership' is not some well-earned reward, earned privilege, and/or self-fulfilling (self-)prophecy, but a profession. Thus, like all professions, those who perform management/organisational/governance tasks must be trained, educated - including in economics/management and organisational sociology/work psychology - prepared for the profession and given practical experience, because the fundamental aim is not to become a leader (to be a leader) but to become a good or even excellent leader (to perform managerial tasks): "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and be more, you are a leader"(John Quincy Adams);


3. ...you have to be a leader, not a follower! Maybe it's the suit-tie/blouse-skirt combo, or the sports jacket/smallsuit, or maybe the shiny shoes, but a good number of organizational leaders, from the moment of their appointment, are vertically transcended and removed from the popular team and (work) community of their subordinates. However, until they find their way back to their role as a horizontal-community goal-setter, direction-setter, direction-keeper, synergy-creator, stimulator (with or without suit/small suit), it will remain a vain dream to identify, address and solve the 'human' problems of the (work) community in order to achieve medium- or long-term business goals successfully and efficiently. If a man is a leader, he is the one on whom others depend, and therefore he must always go further!" (Sir Ernest Shackleton);


4. ... like time-based pay scales at work, we should be moving up the pyramidal pay ladder: not standing on the highest rung,or clinging convulsively to that rung,but the highest value added should be in the highest pay category. Just an illustrative rhetorical question to make it easier to understand: in the case of, say, a team working on AI development, be it a start-up or a large enterprise, which colleague should be paid the most, the manager in charge of coordinating the developers or the software writer(s) themselves, hmm?