Leaders Should Make Heroes of Others: The Cynical Observations of Bertolt Brecht

I have had conversations in the last month with various individuals focused on the issue of recognition and the tendency to attribute success of team-driven efforts to individuals. This may happen either through the positions such individuals hold or the privilege of being those who have to tell the story.  In a world that may promote individualism, we see corporate leaders, or leaders of business units, or line managers, who become identified as being the only drivers of success of initiatives. 

Some will happily take all the work done by others, and appropriate it for themselves. This leads to those who engage in this behaviour to start framing whatever they do as being about them and them only. In the process, they may leave behind excellent individuals who have made a contribution but do not have the voice or the space to tell the story of their role. This is a prevalent form of corporate plagiarism.

The result is that all of us try to become this superhero because that is what the world seems to reward. We tend to forget that it is not possible for anyone to do everything themselves or without the help of others. That it is in trying to lift everyone in a team that you are able to achieve true success. And more importantly, it is in ensuring that you give credit, rather than take it, that your true leadership potential is shown. This requires one to go against the instinct of seeking all glory for oneself, and none for the other.

On the other hand, I have witnessed powerful experiences of the positive impact of giving credit to those who may not always speak about their roles. How internal and external stakeholders find it exciting to know that those who may not always hold very senior positions are behind significant and ground-breaking work. How that at times translates to a deeper relationship with clients who now have a better appreciation of the depth of the organisation they are dealing with and that there is no dependency on a person. If then the experience of not simply making those in front heroes has this impact, we may wonder why it is not the universal practice in organisations.

German playwright and theatre director Bertolt Brecht tackled this in what is one of my favourite poems. It is fair to quote the whole poem in this conversation.

Questions From a Worker Who Reads (Bertolt Brecht, 1935)

Who built Thebes of the 7 gates?

In the books you will read the names of kings.

Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?

And Babylon, many times demolished,

Who raised it up so many times?

In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live?

Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?

Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.

Who erected them?

Over whom did the Caesars triumph ?

Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants?

Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,

The drowning still cried out for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.

Was he alone?

Caesar defeated the Gauls.

Did he not even have a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.

Was he the only one to weep? 

Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War.

Who else won it?

Every page a victory.

Who cooked the feast for the victors? 

Every 10 years a great man.

Who paid the bill?

So many reports. 

So many questions.

Brecht makes simple what is really the most obvious. In his own style, he forces the reader to come to terms with the reality of how life really works. If we think about this in the context of the corporate world, how many go through periods of frustration because their work is not recognised; that those who have positions or access are the only ones glorified; and that only the favourites of certain leaders are the ones whose names are promoted.

Looking at it from another perspective, how many who have leadership positions are prepared to ensure that their team or members of their team get recognition rather than themselves. How many would be prepared to be the ones who are the ambassadors of their team’s achievement, rather than the ones who lead Brecht to have so many questions.

This problem is a challenge both for those who seek individual glory at the expense of others, or those who do not get the glory they deserve. If you are the one who is not getting the benefit or recognition for their work, think of what do you need to do to ensure that this is known without seeming arrogant? What can you do to find your own voice or how can you get others to give your voice a space? 

For those with a leadership responsibility, how do you to start to see the benefit from your team advancing rather than only yourself; how do you ensure you play the role of positioning your team vs positioning yourself as a leader.  Allowing them to attend that all-important meeting that would expose them to senior officers in their organisation. Enabling them to showcase their work with clients. All in all playing the respected role of a sponsor to your team and its members.

It is more obvious to those who are the victims of this behaviour that the alternative is better. Those who have a managerial responsibility have to travel a long internal leadership journey to see the benefits.

Maybe if this happened Brecht would have more answers than questions.

To Cause Change We Need to Lead with Courage

Through conversations I have had in the last two weeks, and especially on the back of the continuing racism in my country, my mind has been occupied by the issue of leadership particularly in the private sector. I mention the South African private sector in particular because of the real challenge we have, of a sector of the economy that still in the main maintains white racial domination.

In my mind I have asked myself the question as to what kind of leadership would allow a situation to continue that does not allow all forms of talent to thrive simply because people to continue with discrimination. On the other side, I have asked myself why would those who were historic victims of apartheid, and have a chance to be in senior management positions, do not do more to confront and change these historic tendencies. Noting the nature of corporate organisations, and the difficulties that come with going against the grain, I have been thinking more about the kind of leadership traits that would be necessary for the change that is so necessary.

I do not want to write a long treatise on leadership as there are too many texts on this. Mine is really a call to action for those of us in this generation who have been blessed with this responsibility. Contemporary leadership studies pioneer Warren Bennis (1925 – 2014), whose essays are a joy to read, summarised what he saw as four essential competencies of leadership in his famous paper The Alchemy of Leadership. He listed these as adaptive capacity, engaging others by creating shared meaning, voice and integrity. He found that leaders who had these qualities had a winning combination.

What struck me when I read this essay, however, was Bennis’ observation that an individual may have the requisite qualities for leadership and little or no opportunity to use them. He also makes this very interesting statement: “who knows how many people with the necessary gifts for extraordinary leadership are stifled by class, racism, and other forms of discrimination…”. He concluded that great leaders emerge only when they can find “a forum that allows them to exercise their gifts and skills”.

I have always felt that there was some characteristic of leadership Bennis identified in this paper was not explicit about it. In my view, buried in his essay is the important question of courage. Courage sounds simple, but is very difficult to practice. It is difficult because one always runs the risk of being unpopular and creating enemies if you go against a dominant practice. However, I know of no leader who was critical in a process of change but never had courage. It is actually the lack of courage that makes many of us not to do the obvious things we know need to be done.

Courage is not about being reckless. It needs to be exercised with tact; demands of you to engage others by creating shared meaning; wants you to have a voice which shows your purpose and character; requires of you to draw on your integrity; needs you to have the adaptive capacity which includes resilience, being a noticer (especially of talent!!!), learning, creatively and always seizing opportunities. If we become such leaders, it means we refuse to surround ourselves with Yes-Men (gender specificity deliberate). Courage means we should be comfortable with contrary opinions and be obsessed with creating diversity which enriches the work organisations do. Courage means we should be comfortable in saying no to people in our closest social circles if they do not meet criteria that are required for an opportunity. Courage is in being able to offer a contrary opinion to your senior if you believe their course of action is to the detriment of the organisation (you only do this if you voice and integrity). Courage is in being able to give opportunities to young people and not being imprisoned by fear of failure. Courage is in being able to think less of self and more of other.

Those of us, who have some leadership responsibility, should ask ourselves whether we have the courage to pursue and do the things we know are necessary. To cause the change that impacts on the many whose hopes and dreams are in our hands.

We need to lead with courage to cause change.

Is Growth Synonymous with Getting a Title?

I recently had a discussion with a friend that has had a profound impact on how I view growth. Maybe I should have known this, but the dialogue we had made it clearer.

For those of us pursuing a career, particularly in corporate life, we easily fall into the trap of thinking that growth will be defined by having a position in a bureaucratic structure. Generally, this involves being either head of something, all the way up to being the CEO if you have such capabilities and networks, with networks being the operative word. This is also not helped by the fact that organisations seek to reward on the basis of these titles in a number of cases, and not on the basis of contribution. It is only natural therefore that one may seek to get a job with a title as an affirmation of progress. Needless to say, this also means better income, benefits and all the things that go with it.

As we had a discussion, we were thinking about where I am now, and where I could grow. In the discussion we now had to confront the issue of whether I see myself being at the most senior level in an organisation. Even though I said yes, the most striking part of the conversation was when he asked me to explain why. The more we spoke, the more he seemed to create confusion in my mind. This he did by getting me to confront who I am, and what it is that people seek or value in me. His question was whether having a responsibility in a bureaucratic structure does not take away something that I already am contributing to the world.

We moved the conversation from being about me to a general discussion on people’s approach to careers. In that discussion we started to look deeply at the meaning of happiness and satisfaction in a career. It was through that dialogue that it became re-emphasised in my mind that having a bureaucratic title may not necessarily be the best thing for everyone who seeks growth. In essence, my friend argued that growth is a comprehensive process, of which organisational structure captures only a part. Growth is also an intellectual and emotional process.

The challenge we have generally is that, whilst it may be true that growth is not the same as getting a title, the world we are in starts to reward only that form of growth. The onus is on the individual to re-frame their growth story to the things that have meaning for them. If it is about leading others, is it possible to do this through a series of multidisciplinary projects, of high impact, that involve people, which are valued by one’s organisation? If growth is about intellectual recognition, is it possible to increasingly get assignments that require you to show thought leadership, and thus be recognised on that basis.

Of course, the above growth paths do not have to be mutually exclusive. You can lead others and show thought leadership at the same time. The point, however, is about one being able to define for themselves what is the meaning of growth for them and thus to take the path that will lead to real satisfaction. Whilst this process is harder because we always struggle to get to know ourselves very well, it is much better than expanding energies fighting a corporate battle for a title that may not lead to your happiness.

I have seen how, in the quest to satisfy an ego by getting the next highest position, or trying to get someone you like to get the next highest position, organisations have lost valuable people who may have been better capable but were either ignored or deliberately frustrated. This focus on titles can lead to unbelievable waste of talent and loss of focus.

Whilst my discussion with my friend did not solve all questions about the long-term growth path, it did illuminate for me the things I need to think about and also understand better what the world values in me. It may be that a title might be what I need to have, but it does not have to be. I am much wiser.

Vexing Question of Career Options

Yesterday I got into a discussion that was about something positive which raises so many questions. In these blog conversations, I have written a lot about things which relate to difficulties because maybe something positive is not happening and one experiences what I call “growth dilemmas”. However, when I had to ask myself in this conversation as to how would I deal with a situation where I had too many possible career or job options, some of which I would never have thought about, I realised also that positive developments may bring their own dilemmas.

Various questions come to me. How do I know which option is best for me? What if something may look best but something else could be better? If I also had a very good current job, why would even such options entice me? Why would I even start thinking about them at all?

Suddenly I realised that the answers to these questions are not easy. Actually, as I write this, I think you as the reader might be disappointed because I am not sure if I can provide answers. There are no easy answers, but maybe a framework exists. I invite you, as you read this, to share with us how you would or normally deal with this situation.

Carlos Ghosn (Chairman & CEO of Renault and Nissan respectively) highlights three simple yet important elements that one should consider when taking such career decisions. One is to do something that you like or have a passion for. Secondly, it is to do something in an environment that you like. He then adds that you need to go for something where you are able to experience diversity (find him on LinkedIn Pulse http://www.slideshare.net/LinkedInPulse/carlos-ghosns-crazy-good-career-advice).

One thing that is clear to me is that opportunities will not come the way we expected them, at the time we expect them, and from the sources we expected. They will come because, as it happens in life, those who need each other tend to find each other. Yes companies may use tools like recruitment processes to get there, but they are trying to find those that they need. And those of us in employment are looking for the companies that need us. And why do they need us and why do we need them? Maybe those questions are really the basis of the framework for a solution in addition to what Ghosn talks about.

A lot of us tend to only want to focus on a company, its brand and the title or position of the job that presents itself as a career opportunity. The greatest challenge, though, is coming to terms with who you are. An opportunity may come because of a technical qualification and some work you may have done. But in essence it is critical to think of who you are or who you have become through your life experience.

What is it that drives you and you know you can do? What is the kind of environment that you need in order to be able to do that? These are your needs and any opportunity needs to satisfy these needs. Of course you need a good paying job, but I have found that this is not the first question one should ask or worry about. This is essentially because your knowledge of what you are worth for such an opportunity will arise after a conversation with those who are presenting it to you, and their sense of your value will also come after such a conversation.

But then you may ask, how do I get to know what drives me and the environment that I want? I would argue that most of us know this; we just refuse to spend time creating the clarity about it in our minds. We get driven a lot by what others define life should be about, and we make decisions because that is what others want us to do. When the simple thing should have been deciding based on what we like. Of course this is written from the perspective of too many options. We need a complementary discussion as to what to do when we have too few options and we need to find employment just as a sheer necessity.

Vexing questions. No simple answers.

Building Relationships for Career Growth

I had a very interesting conversation recently with someone relatively experienced in the corporate world. In our discussion, I found it interesting that she thought in the main her work was relevant, and seemed oblivious to the value of networks and relationships. We spoke briefly about this, but it got me thinking about the related concepts of work, career, excellence and relationships.

Below I put together the kinds of things I highlight in conversation on this issue. Even though I have numbered them, they are not sequential and also not discrete, but should be read as a package. I welcome feedback on other aspects of them that I have not covered, but I trust you will find the issues raised provoke thoughts.

1. Whilst relationships do give you a leg-up in the workplace, firstly it is what you have done that gives you credibility. You have to work very hard to ensure you get into a phase of excellence so that you become somebody credible, especially to those who matter.
2. What you have done may give you credibility, but knowledge of it will create presence for you. It is not your boss’ job to make this knowledge, but your own. The tools you use to do that constitute for me the real art in personal brand development.
3. Spreading the knowledge about your work should be done with utmost humility. It is best done by others on your behalf. But, you may ask, how can I get others to do this my behalf when they have nothing to gain? The trick is for them to have something to gain from doing so or to feel they have to do so.
4. You need to establish the kind of relationships such that people will voluntarily spread the word about what you have done, thus enhancing your credibility, and / or encourage you in seeking to achieve your goals.
5. These relationships should be founded not on what you get, but on what you are able to give. If you give a lot, you will get a lot in return. It may not come to you directly, but, if people have received something from you, they always have a psychological need to give something back to you. They may not always even realise they are doing so.
6. The paradox in this process is that you are trying to get you individual brand to show, but must at the same time seek to ‘belong. As one leadership professor I encountered once wrote, “To accentuate individuality, heighten belonging”.
7. Your most important relationships may not be in your functional line of work. Spend time understanding the stakeholders who are really significant and / or are listened to by those who are significant. This also includes those who are likely to be impacted by the success of your work. It may work better if you invest in these relationships. Remember, you are not in this process for just some social interaction. It is a really rational process about your career development, being enhanced by using those age-old things every human being has: emotion, need for support and affirmation.
8. Most people spend too much of their time trying to get time with the most senior executive in their company. I find this to be such a drag of an effort for two reasons: firstly, senior executives are smart enough to see when they are being used just to advance a person’s agenda; secondly and more importantly, they do not have the time to be spending on things which do not have the apparent value for them at the time. So, rather than focus on getting to the senior executive’s calendar, spend the time on linking the work you do with what is on the senior executive’s agenda. And get those close to the senior executives to speak about this work. Over time they will want to have time in YOUR calendar.
9. You have to be genuine in your interactions with people. Human beings have this uncanny way of reading insincerity, and it can destroy all good efforts on your part.
10. Be comfortable with getting things wrong in the process. Since the process is not scientific, things will not just happen, and some efforts will not succeed. You will also not realise if you are making progress immediately, but over time you will get the signals.

However, all of the above is meaningless unless you invest time, quality time, into the process. And you will do this because you know the potential outcome.

Go ahead. Make meaningful relationships that will help boost your career. As I once wrote, do not be an island.  Even the most famous researcher is not recognised unless his / her work touches or engages others.

Finding one’s Ideal Job: A Lesson from Systems Thinking

In a career-related conversation I got into with colleagues recently, we engaged on how one gets to the job that they want or would like. More specifically, the issue was more about how does one deal with the fact that they may not like their current job, which was a real case for more than one person in the dialogue.

In our dialogue, we looked at the implications of focusing on the fact that one does not like their current job. The danger with this approach, I contended, was that, in life, when you remove what you do not like, it does not necessarily mean that what remains is what you want. And thus the difficulty is figuring out the place that one wants to be, and also the route to get there. I argued that sometimes, because the future is so far away, it may look impossible to get to. My advice was to borrow from the concept of Idealised Design, popularised by leading systems thinker Russell L. Ackoff (1919-2009).

Essentially, Ackoff’s approach is that the best way to deal with a problem in a system is to use dissolution, which is to redesign the system that has the problem or its environment so as to eliminate the problem. This approach was developed to look at organisations, but I stretched the discussion in our dialogue to get my colleagues to imagine their individual life as much of a system as an organisation. In this approach, using an individual’s life as the system, it would suggest its future trajectory is redesigned, and it would now consist of those elements that would make one reach that career goal. For this to happen, though, the precondition would be that those elements that characterise the individual should be scientifically feasible, capable of surviving in the current environment and also, be able to get the individual to adapt to different conditions.

In this model, it presupposes that the individual’s characteristics as we know them no longer exist, and the individual now has new characteristics that the individual would have designed to have they want. In this case, the individual visualises themselves as if they are already in the job that they want, rather than think about how to get to it. They would think about what they would have as characteristics in this idealised future job state. This approach would firstly simplify thinking about how to get to the future as the individual would work backwards from the idealised future state. Secondly, because one would not be constrained by the challenges they see in getting to that future, the individual would see an enlarged concept of what is possible or feasible. Thirdly, and no least important, this process would enable creativity.

I argued with my colleagues that if all of us spent more time doing this, than worrying about the difficulty of getting to the future we want, we had a better chance of defining the things we need to do today to get to that future.

This approach, however, does not mean one’s mind needs to only stay at the ideal state. My advice was that this should be married with a real focus on what would need to be done in the present to enable that future. Because the individual is already engaged in some form of work, how do you ensure that you remain energised to pursue this ideal? In that instance, rather than focusing on the fact that you may not like the current job, maybe if one spent their energy practicing those elements of the current job that relate to the characteristics of the ideal future job, then they are preparing themselves for that future job.

One of my colleagues then indicated that this makes absolute sense for her because of the saying from the Laws of Attraction that Energy Goes Where Attention Flows. This is also the beauty of a systemic approach, as it allowed for mutually reinforcing approaches to be used in looking at the problem. Through the idealised design approach, we had been able to get to a point where the individual sees their future state today, and also starts to practice the characteristics of that future state in their current job. She argued that by focusing on the positive aspects of the current job that relate to that future, than focusing on the negatives they do not like, then they are building faster to that future ideal state. They would attract the necessary positivity that would potentially attract to them those who could enable that future job.

Anyone can define the right future for themselves, without being constrained by the challenges of the present.

Migration, Diversity and Growth: A Personal Reflection

These past few weeks my beloved country has been in the news because of the prejudicial and violent actions of a few against foreign nationals, particularly those from our own African continent. From a different perspective, this has me thinking about the role of migration and diversity in a person’s own development. I have thought it best to do this through a personal reflection, which will show again the absurdities of those who pursued these barbaric actions but also the value of looking at migration in a positive way.

The first notable personal growth experience that was impacted by migration was during my secondary schooling. The apartheid education system had been designed such that it would make it either extremely difficult or almost impossible for black students to achieve anything in fields that required science and mathematics. Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, an apartheid education architect, is quoted in the 1950’s as having said "There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? That is quite absurd. Education must train people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live."

I happened to grow up in one of the so-called independent homelands created by the apartheid governments. One of the things that the education department did in this homeland was to allow for teachers to be sourced from other countries, such as Ghana and Mauritius, for subjects where there was a shortage. These immigrant teachers were to be a source of benefit for me as the school I went to had world-class mathematics teachers that were not the norm in similar black schools. It was through them that I was able to pass enough to get into an engineering graduate school.

When I studied engineering, a number of my professors came from many countries outside of South Africa. They brought knowledge that South Africa did not have, but which would be useful in developing a generation of professionals. I saw them as human beings who were not taking from me but adding more to what I was, and had chosen this country as the place in which they could display their knowledge and abilities.

I then myself became a migrant when I decided to study outside of my own country. In a class that was filled with students from more than twenty countries, it was a learning experience that ranks as the best personal decision I ever made. It was through the learning I made from others that I enhanced my own understanding of diversity, and I learnt critical tools that have been invaluable in my management career. In particular, I learnt the value of tolerance as a personality trait, and the importance of diversity, in all its forms. I had been welcomed in a foreign country as a human being.

I then had an opportunity to work in an exciting economic development project in my country South Africa. The development of this project required skills some of which we could not find in South Africa.  An immigrant British-trained engineer, who had worked on similar projects in the Middle East, was one of the critical people we had who played a role in ensuring a better understanding by many of us of the challenges that such a project entailed, and the steps needed to progress it. We also benefited by bringing back South Africans who had worked on projects in other parts of the world, in order to create a world-class team that could service demanding customers from all corners of the world.

In the same project, in one of my executive role, I had the responsibility of creating a research unit that we had defined as critical to our success. Two of the skilled professionals we brought to work in that unit were originally from Cameroon and Benin, and had become permanently resident in South Africa. We had a dream of training young economics graduates in one of the country’s poorest provinces, and also provide critical data and information to the provincial government which would be of use in designing policies that would positively impact the lives of ordinary people. These two professionals, working with other South Africans, put their heart and soul to their work in their adopted country, including training these young economists. We welcomed them with open arms. They were critical to my own success and I learnt a lot from them.

I now work in an African-focused financial services institution and my career success will be defined by how I understand the world, by me being able to interact with others, and by some who have decided to be migrants in my country, even if for some it is temporary and by some who decide to migrate to other parts of the continent. And it is in working with a diverse group of people, who have different professional backgrounds, origins, gender and race that I have come to appreciate more its value.

Whilst there are many South Africans I could also honour for how they have impacted on my growth, the recent experience has brought to my mind the need to see how those who are migrants have been critical to my success. It also has, in my mind, brought to focus the absurdities of the actions of a minority that has sought to damage our country and potentially deny us the possibility of learning and engaging others.

Migration can be a positive force and we can use it for as part of our development as it enriches the human experience. There is so much to learn about the world from others.