Ego gets attention but humility gets results

Many years ago my colleagues and I were waiting for the much vaunted visit of the Global President of the group - a multi million organisation. He was arriving to Western Europe in his Learjet accompanied, inevitably, with an entourage: CRO, COO, VP Human Resources, VP Revenue Generation, VP Legal. Legal? Why always Legal? Ok that’s another blog. We had already been forewarned by another subsidiary in Europe. The President was in a bad mood. Very bad mood. Our sister company Exec team got torn apart the night before. Be warned! Armed with this motivating nugget of information we planned everything in minute detail - even a spectacular lunch with copious quantities of wine designed to accelerate jet lag and dull the senses of these very senior executives.

The visit didn’t start well. We got a call from the airport first thing in the morning. “Where is my Limo?” “Er….well there is an executive mini bus waiting for you. Just walk out of the terminal building and……” “I am absolutely NOT going in a coach! The others can do what they want. I want a Limo and I want it now!” Well we didn’t expect that. The next few hours were taken up with us running around like headless chickens, trying to find a limo to rent at short - like immediate - notice. We found a 5 series BMW. It wasn’t good enough. He wanted a stretch Limo. We explained they are not so easy to find in the UK. After 5 hours of him waiting at the airport he finally accepted, under apparent duress, a black Mercedes S class with personal chauffeur at his disposal for the duration of his stay. He was not best pleased with our obvious ineptitude and disrespect.

Surprisingly the review meeting went rather well. Restaurant appointment cancelled the President finally turned up at about 2pm whereupon we found a pub still open and plied him and his colleagues with fish and chips and copious quantities of English bitter. Now English bitter, for those of you who haven’t tried it, really does make you go to sleep. My boss at the time launched into his pitch. It was a wonder to behold. He proceeded to bamboozle the increasingly sleepy executives with seemingly disjointed and unintelligible words and phrases. I genuinely had no clue what was being said. I suddenly realised that this is what it must be like to meet aliens on a strange planet with a completely unique vocabulary - like a junior crew member beamed into a strange planet from the starship USS Enterprise.

“Well, as you can see in line 23, subsection 14 in our strategic plan, we are compounding the strategic benefit of an independent derivative in the capital markets by hedging our new business portfolio through an optimum mixture of interest rate protection and floating liquidity results at a premium margin”. Or something like that. I genuinely thought I must be utterly stupid. How had I got to a senior position myself without knowing this stuff? And I thought I was a finance professional. Clearly not. Within an hour of this, and with no questions asked, the President announced his satisfaction at our “great performance” and retired to his hotel to catch up on some much needed sleep and his departure to the next set of corporate victims the following day - in his S class Merc sadly but then we couldn't get everything right.

Basically he and his colleagues never asked a single question. Clearly they, like me, had not understood a single word. And they couldn't possibly have wanted to display their ignorance of the topic in hand. I tell this story because it displays so clearly one of the many pitfalls of “leadership” today, be it top executives of a multinational company, leaders of a business unit or the young aspiring leader of a small team. Or political leaders. Leadership often seems to encourage arrogance accompanied by a significant dose of ego. And this does not help. As an aside I subsequently asked my boss what the hell he had been talking about? “I have no idea” was his honest reply “but it worked”. Live and learn little boy, I told myself, live and learn.

When I look back on my long career and think about all the many different leaders that I have met along the journey I am struck by one common thread; so many of them were arrogant, self serving, manipulative bullies. And really I am being rather generous. Yes, there were also a few exceptional leaders along the way. They mostly subscribe to my Blog! But sadly very few were so good. So few in fact that if my hands were to have a serious argument with a chain saw I would still have more than enough fingers left to count them all.

Yet I also observed something quite intriguing. The fact was I knew a few of them before they became so elevated…and so arrogant with inflated overpowering egos and dubious at best, standards of morality. It got me thinking…why did they change? Were they always like that, just hiding their egomania for when it could be unleashed....or is there something else going on? Here is, I think, what happens.

You start off with dreams of a better world, where you will be a driving force in that change. (I don't exclude the possibility that you start off thinking “I’m gonna be rich and powerful at any cost!”; but I'm making a point here.) You get promoted. As you get promoted you find one day that you have your own comfy office. Perhaps your own parking space. As you go through the ranks the office gets bigger, plusher and your salary expands allowing you to go on exclusive holidays and drive big fancy cars and live in a fine exclusive detached house. Your parking space gets closer to your office, eventually being right in front of the building entrance. Customers by the way are relegated to the visitors car park far away. Eventually, with a bit of luck, you find yourself in a really top job - perhaps the business unit CEO, subsidiary manager or global leader of a big organisation. Now it really gets nice. You get a big Mercedes, maybe even with a chauffeur. An office on the top floor - with special restricted VIP key code access. An office with fantastic views. It's all so seductive isn't it? So what is missing?

Ordinary people. Along with the plushness of your office your circle of contacts becomes ever more 'elevated'. It's the other directors you are seeing mostly. Gradually not even them. Certainly not the 'plebeians'. As you scale the heights of corporate titles you gradually, step by step, with every promotion, every square cm increase in office space, lose touch with the very people who got you there. You convince yourself that you have talent. Incredible talent. After all, you got there and they didn't. 'Cream always rises to the surface' it is said. {What a load of codswallop!} Gradually, because you think you are the most important part of the organisation you lose touch with the organisation. You lose touch with reality. People don't come to talk with you anymore. People whisper “he has changed”. You are blissfully unaware of how 'normal' people see you as you tell your wife you are working late again and then book another romantic dinner with your PA.

You get my drift. Honestly I have even seen a CEO try to get planning permission for an external staircase and elevator direct to his own office so that he could deliberately avoid meeting any employees - the “unwashed” let's call them, on the stairwell. I have experienced the executive office suit with its own restricted VIP key cards - so even if an employee wanted to make use of “I have an open door policy” they couldn't, because they couldn't get anywhere near the office suite in the first place. The Exec suite, floor or building are more secure than the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox. “Not without an appointment” the PA will bark over an intercom. And let's face it, ordinary mortals, the 'unwashed', are hardly likely to dare do that.

It gets worse. I have seen the office suite guarded by a team of security - on the inside - even once you get through the door - like a bad remake of 'Mission Impossible' the visiting senior managers are ushered into a waiting room to wait for the Emperor and his Court to signal that they are ready for you. Finally after an hour or two when you are summoned, it takes ages to walk the 10 metres to the Boardroom because the carpet is so thick that you really need snow shoes to get anywhere. Alpine skis and telescopic ski poles would have been better.

I remember once being ushered into my new office early in my career. It was the left over room of a long retired bank manager in a little branch office - it felt a bit like finding the 'Mary Celeste' - I almost expected to find his (and he would have been a man for sure) half eaten sandwich in a drawer. I think I did. It might have been a decomposed bat. But what startled me the most - and I am being deadly serious here - was the different chair sizes. I sat in the chair for the visiting “customer” and almost fell into it - it seemed lower than a normal chair. Then I sat in the managers chair - and hardly needed to sit - I was elevated so high it felt like I was stepping into a Scania Tractor Unit. A couple more centimetres higher in the stratosphere and I would have needed an oxygen mask. I realised of course that this was the old power play trick. Make the “opponent” feel small. And you much stronger. I thanked my lucky stars that the room was just a remnant of a bygone age. Here I was. A youngster on the up. I'm going to change the world. Only to discover in my career that this bygone age was alive and kicking. It still is.

Being tough is a sign of strength; humility a sign of weakness. Or so the argument goes. This is not to say that these arrogant egotistical leaders are all stupid. Far from it. A fair few I have met have been remarkably bright (whatever that means). Unfortunately being “bright” doesn't necessarily help with humility. On the contrary. One good example springs to mind. I will call him Dr Grim. One of the youngest Group CEO’s to be appointed he seemed to have a brain the size of a watermelon. He was so clever that whenever he talked he would speak so fast and draw a conclusion on a topic as complex as nuclear fusion so quickly that it left his audience still thinking about point two - in a conversation of 972 points. Unfortunately he was so fast that quite often he simply got stuff wrong. By then it was far too late to correct him because the point at which a normal 'unwashed' mortal realised his logical mistake was usually three days later. In any case, nobody would dare challenge him. For he was, as he always liked to portray, always right. I wonder why he thought that? Not hard to see. And therein lies the problem. Every time the arrogant person 'gets away with it' he just has his arrogance reinforced. It doesn’t change the fact that he is wrong. Quite often.

In fact I quite liked Dr Grim. I had many an awkward exchange with him. What I particularly enjoyed was that his arrogance made him brave and he had no qualms about embarrassing his superiors. A man after my own heart really. Such was his arrogance. Just like mine really. Probably not a good idea when it comes to your superiors….but quite fun to watch.

I digress. Arrogance has no place in leadership. It is based entirely on a myth. That leadership is one big competition. That humility displays weakness and that weakness is bad because you will get eaten by wolves. But its based on a past myth that never really existed. You see the world is far too complex for one person, however “clever” they may be. Pretending that you know everything, that you are superior to everyone else and that you are far too egotistical to ask someone something you don't know simply doesn't cut it. Sooner or later that leader will fail. And fail miserably.

Gerald Ratner was a hugely successful CEO of the Ratner Group Jewelry chain. He skilfully and successfully built a small failing family jewelry business into a huge retail conglomerate. Until he got so arrogant he accidentally almost killed the company. In 1991 at a Institute of Directors Dinner he said: “We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap." He compounded his disdain for his unwashed customers by going on to remark that one of the sets of earrings on sale was "cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer’s, but I have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings". Humility? I don't think so. Customers instantly stopped going to his stores, the value of the company fell by £500 million. It nearly went bankrupt only avoiding total destruction by a complete rebranding, a huge store closure programme and mass redundancies.

https://spiceenquirer.com/the-man-who-lost-10-billion-dollars-gerald-ratners-pr-crisis-story/

You can see the answer. Ego leads to ignorance which leads to failure. Arrogance leads to avoidable mistakes which leads to calamity. Humility trumps ego every time. Respect trumps arrogance.

Stop hiding in your office. Turn it into a universal meeting room. Somewhere any employee can use for private discussions or calls - you know the kind of thing; calls to their Scottish headhunter, “Beam me up Scotty, get me out of here!” Walk to where the unwashed employees are working. Hint: you will find them on the floors beneath you. Don't be shocked when you discover they are crammed into open plan floors like a Chinese sweatshop. Find the middle. Make your new desk there. On the open plan floor. No walls. Better still - really do 'make' your 'Ikea style' desk unit. That signal of humility will work wonders.

Sure a few employees will need to be inconvenienced, moved around, but it will be worth it. Of course you will need to introduce yourself to them. You see they don't know who you are. They have only ever seen you on the company website or in a shareholder annual report. That doesn't help. You are far older and fatter than the picture you use. Peculiarly your hair has gone black too. Work at your desk. Openly. No secrets. Slowly the brave ones might talk to you. Then a few more. You will hear things you wont believe. See things you never thought possible. Slowly but surely you will get the feel for what is really happening.

There is one incontrovertible truth that occurs the second you become a manager of people. From that moment on you will never ever hear the unadulterated truth ever again. You job now is to get as close as possible to it [the truth]. The more you step away, the more you are cosseted amongst your own peers, on your own piece of luxurious carpet, the more you will drift away from reality, secure in the deluded knowledge that you truly are the greatest. It will come as a shock to you one day to find out that you don't move like a butterfly and you definitely can't sting like a bee. Because you simply don't have a clue anymore.

Back to my introduction. Those global executives who never asked us a question were NOT great leaders. They were - deep down - insecure cowards. Arrogance is not a sign of strength. It is a neon flashing warning sign of deep insecurity and fear. Those executives didn’t ask a question - not because they understood everything - they couldn't - it was totally made up. They didn't ask because they did NOT understand and they were too frightened to admit to their own insecurity. Actually what they really needed was psychiatric help. I'm serious. Many so called 'leaders' do. It really is desperately sad.

I can do no better than to quote from the excellent website of Joe Contrera.

https://aliveatwork.com/the-single-biggest-cause-of-allleadership-failures/

“Decide your constant striving to feel self-worth and value by winning, being right, seeking pleasure, getting ahead, buying a new toy, buying a new anything, proving you are better than everyone else, constantly comparing yourself to others is futile because it is an insatiable need that can never ever be met externally for any length of time.”

In the end you will be only really successful for one reason. Because you have built and nurtured an amazing team around you. One that you trust and in return they trust you. You have rewarded them with your confidence and your admiration. You have put THEM on a pedestal, thanked THEM for their success, put THEM on the stage for the awards, not yourself.

You humbly retreat into the background, seemingly invisible, just your hand lightly on the tiller helping to keep people guided and in the right direction. Helping them to reach their own potential. When that is done, when they themselves are leading by your own example - with humility and real strength, then you know you are becoming a truly great leader.