Leadership and Self-Awareness
The sole purpose of leadership is to serve. While I am aware that by simply stating this, I have not thereby presented some revolutionary new discovery, I highlight this observation because in my experience, I have found that what separates great leaders from average or even terrible ones is not whether they choose to serve, but what they choose to serve.
A leader has no shortage of options from which to choose, when deciding to what they will dedicate themselves and their talents. These options range from total self-service on one extreme, to complete altruism on the other. In deciding where on that spectrum to play, a leader also decides whether or not they will be a great leader.
Extremes are dangerous. We have an abundance of examples from throughout history that tell us this fact. A leader who decides to be completely self-serving becomes a tyrant, dangerous to themselves and others, especially the people they lead, and some would say that this is no leader at all. A self-serving leader has but one goal — to ensure that at all times, their, and only their interests, are best served by their actions, as well as the actions of everyone around them. The concepts of teamwork and a shared objective commonly do not exist in the section of the spectrum in which this type of leader has decided to play. And where they do, it is it usually only because the leader is masquerading their own agenda as common goals and shared objectives. It is therefore common to observe self-serving leaders displaying sociopathic traits.
Try not to immediately think to only those exaggerated representations of sociopathy to be found in no short supply in popular entertainment. Psychology Today defines sociopathy thus: “Sociopathy refers to a pattern of antisocial behaviors and attitudes, including manipulation, deceit, aggression, and a lack of empathy for others. Sociopathy is a non-diagnostic term, and it is not synonymous with “psychopathy,” though the overlap leads to frequent confusion. Sociopaths may or may not break the law, but by exploiting and manipulating others, they violate the trust that the human enterprise runs on.”. While it is not my intention to imply that any leader who vaguely fits this description is a sociopath, there does seem to be a strong argument to be made, that leaders who display these traits to a significant enough degree are not operating on a psychological and emotional frequency ideal for leadership.
At this point, I would like to remind you that I am by no means an expert in psychology; but having had the privilege to lead and be led, I can appreciate the characteristics of good leadership enough to have opinions about it. I am therefore only observing things and processing them the way a good number of non-expert social observers would.
So, because enough of us know leaders that break instead of build, and because more than a few of us (whether or not we choose to acknowledge this) are in constant danger of ourselves crossing that line and becoming the very thing we dread and despise, it becomes essential to ask why there seem to be so many of this type of leader, and what, if anything, we can do to be better when given the opportunity to lead.
There are books, several of them written by highly qualified experts in fields ranging from business, military and non-profit leadership, to human behavior-related medical specializations. I encourage you to read as many of these as you can, for a more structured and standardized take on leadership behaviors. But for the purpose of this piece, the references are (perhaps unfortunately) limited to my in-exhaustive but completely authentic conclusions, based solely on my own personal experiences and observations. And they all come down to this:
Self-awareness.
Self-awareness, or the absence of it, is in my opinion, the single most important factor that determines whether or not a leader is able to objectively assess the effect that they and their leadership have on others, and perhaps attempt to self-correct.
You see, I do not believe that every horrible leader starts out that way. Most of them, I think, begin as quite decent people, capable of empathy, and reason, and acceptable levels of altruism and teamwork. They are able to align with, and effectively communicate shared objectives while charismatically encouraging the buy-in of the people around them. In fact, in many cases, these are the exact traits that resulted in their appointment to positions of leadership in the first place, often to the great approval of the people they work with. Why then, do these wonderful coworkers, more often than not, seem to almost inevitably degenerate into unrecognizable, monstrous caricatures of their former selves after they assume leadership responsibilities?
In many cases, if you traced it far back enough, it started with one bad day. A single bad day or event that was not properly handled, which then became the turning point at which mostly-subconscious decisions were made to preserve and/or promote oneself at all costs, without recourse to remorse or consideration for others who might be negatively affected. This change in behavior (or “turning heel”, for fans of scripted professional wrestling) is usually subtle at first, and is often met by slight confusion tempered with excuses made on the leader’s behalf by the people that they lead. These people make excuses, because having worked long enough with their now-leader in another dynamic (often as peers), they know that this behavior is uncharacteristic and chalk it up to the pressures of the new office, confident that it is temporary and bound to pass. Some of these people might even be close enough with the leader to draw the leader’s attention to this observed change in behavior.
This is the critical point at which a leader then gets a second, and perhaps final chance to course-correct and objectively self-assess, or even actively encourage more assessment of their leadership by the team. However, in the absence of self-awareness, the leader might never come to it by themselves, and even when they are fortunate enough to have members of their team who are close and candid enough to call out their unacceptable behavior, they still might decide to choose the path of righteous indignation, and never actually seek to uncover any possible merit in the feedback they’ve received.
A leader does not have to be carefree and lighthearted at every turn — a firm hand is sometimes required to get the job done. Even if this were not the case, it still would be an unrealistic expectation. Leaders are people too. Who is happy all day, every single day? I would certainly like to meet and learn from them. Leaders deserve empathy from their team too. Empathy is a two-way street if a truly motivating and inspiring leadership dynamic is to be fostered. Many middle managers would tell you how true this is. As an aside, perhaps no leaders deserve our empathy as much as people who serve in middle management because they have the great fortune of having to feel the heat both from above and below, and can often not tell which is hotter.
It might also be useful to note at this point, that you cannot label a person a bad leader simply because they have made choices that you do not agree with, or were not consulted on. Remember that even in a democratically elected leadership, not every executive decision is put to a vote.
However, a leader who does not care about shared objectives, who does not encourage communication, social engagement and candor, who feels or shows no remorse when vividly apparent missteps have been taken, who does not care how their actions affect the personal and professional lives of the people that they lead, and who sees the members of their team as interchangeable, indistinct and dispensable pawns or statistics in their own personal game of self-preservation and self-promotion, begins to sound a lot like the traditional definition of a sociopath.
But did I forget about the other extreme i.e. unbridled altruism and the dangers this could present when exhibited by a leader? No. No, I did not. However, as I seem to observe much fewer people agonizing over the terrible affliction of a leader who is too self-sacrificing, I am hopeful that I can be forgiven for not exploring that scenario thoroughly enough to make this the truly definitive article on the dangers of extremes in leadership it could have been.
