Sat down to
breakfast this morning, and was flipping through the newspaper sections rather
randomly. My husband was reading the front section of Aftenposten, so I settled
on the
Jobs section, where there are not
only employment ads, but often articles about new trends in the workplace as
well as advice from headhunters and work-life coaches. Wouldn’t you know, there
was a photo of two couples dancing the tango in connection with a leadership
course they’re taking. This particular course encourages its participants (leader
personnel from the company Siemens Healthcare) to learn to dance the tango as
part of learning how to team-build and be a better leader. In this particular
case, since there were no women attending the course (which is telling in and
of itself—not many female leaders out there, apparently), males were dancing
with other males, and the photographer snapped a photo of two of these couples.
There was talk about ‘stepping outside of your comfort zone’ and all that. I’m
sure it’s a lot of fun and hard work to learn the tango, and I would be stepping
out of my comfort zone as well to learn the tango and any kind of ballroom
dancing. But I would do this in my free time, not during work time, so it
wouldn’t matter that I was a slow learner. I’m not sure how learning the tango
has anything to do with learning how to be a better leader. Does it have to do
with learning to lead and have others follow, or vice versa? What happens if
you are trying to follow the lead of someone who never learns the dance, as is
often the case in the workplace? What happens if none of the trendy leadership
courses results in better leadership? I don’t get it, so someone has to please explain
to me why companies are spending money on such courses at a time when the global
economy is in a downturn. These courses cost money, a lot of money.
I have yet
to see the solid research/statistics that demonstrate the absolute benefit of
leadership courses for leaders. How do you measure the effectiveness of these
courses; how can you assess the results? Can you be sure that the methods work?
I’m a scientist, so I want to see the research data. Please show me the reports
so I can read them. I have no problems with an annual daylong seminar where
leaders can meet together in their workplace and share common problems,
brainstorm, or otherwise come up with new and creative ideas about how to lead.
I just don’t understand the emphasis these days (the new trend) on traveling to
out-of-the-way hotels and resorts for this purpose, for two or more days at a
time. The idea I presume is that you cannot just ‘go home’ at the end of the
course day; you’re stuck together with other leaders during the evenings where
social skills play a large role as well. Networking and more networking. I know
several leaders who shun these trips (or want to) as often as they can. A
decade ago, private companies spent money on sending their employees out into
the forests and mountains to learn how to work together as a team to survive
and maneuver through the inevitable problems that cropped up. These team
building courses seem to have paved the way for the new types of leadership and
team-building courses. Is this because the old ones didn’t work, or are the new
approaches the ideas that sprang up during the old team building and leadership
courses? Did someone ten years ago think—it would be cool to have leaders learn
to dance the tango together? Is that how it works at the top?
As
children, we learned the Golden Rule—‘do unto others as you would have them do
unto you’. In other words, treat people as you would like to be treated. I
learned this rule early on and it stuck. And when I have broken it, my
conscience tells me that I have wronged someone and to go and make amends. I live
this way in my personal life and I have behaved accordingly in my work life. I
can honestly say that I have tried to the best of my ability to treat those who have worked for me with
respect and honesty, and have been as professional as possible when dealing
with them. The awareness of your behavior and how it affects others in the
workplace are the two most important things one must learn as a manager, and if
you manage this you can be an effective manager or leader. I don’t think it is
more complicated than that. Unfortunately, when you are lied to, exploited or
pushed aside by company leaders, it makes it that much more difficult to treat leadership
with respect. It takes two to tango. You
cannot expect respect from employees if you do not treat them with respect. It’s
that simple, and that complicated. We say that about children and adults as
well; you cannot expect children to respect adults who abuse them or treat them
badly or indifferently. It doesn’t matter if the adults are parents, teachers
or other authority figures. I could already differentiate very clearly when I
was in grammar school, who were the good teachers and who were the abusers. You
remember both and you learn from both. Had I been surrounded only by abusive
teachers, I would have learned how to evade them to the best of my ability--how
to lie to them and how to be dishonest—how to play the game to see who would
eventually win control. They would not have deserved better treatment. The same
is true for abusive or exploitive company leadership.
My view of
workplace leadership is more along the lines of the top-down approach. If you
want respect from employees, start at the top and look down. Take a really good look at yourself, and then your employees. Companies should hire leaders
who know what the Golden Rule is, who have ethics and morals, who abhor
corruption and political game-playing, and who are not just interested in their
cushy titles and salaries. They should hire leaders who understand that the
buck stops with them. But companies have to value these types of leaders. This
is the type of leadership that employees will respect. This is the type of
leadership that employees will listen to, when new ideas, change, and challenges
confront them in a world of global uncertainty and instability. Employees will
look to leadership for guidance, but they will also pitch in and do their fair share
and more if they know it will help the company survive. I have yet to meet one
employee who was treated fairly by his or her company, who didn’t want to give
back his or her fair share to that company. In other words, those employees who
have been kicked around, exploited, lied to or treated poorly, and there are a
number of them, are those who do not want to give back their fair share to
their companies anymore. They have felt the injustice that pervades the system;
they know that they are dancing alone. Where they once followed another’s lead,
they now dance in place. Their leaders bailed out on them a long time ago. I
would say that’s the biggest problem in workplaces these days; employees have
to figure out everything on their own. There is no one to look up to, no one to
mentor them, no one to take responsibility for them and their professional wellbeing.
There are few good leaders who take their employees into consideration, who
prioritize them. I know of one leader who was told that she was too concerned about
her employees; that as a leader, she should be concerned with the company views
and policies and with getting her employees to ‘accept’ a new policy that
amounted to nothing more than a new way to exploit their competence and
dedication (getting them to work twice as hard for the same amount of money).
Suffice it to say that this company has a lot of problems and that the turnover
rate for employees is high. Employees can ‘see through’ a lot of the new
trends in the workplace, and leadership courses are one of those trends. Bad
leaders will not become good leaders by learning to dance the tango; they will
become good leaders by practicing the Golden Rule. I have yet to see a course
that focuses on the ethics of leadership. I have to wonder if it would be
well-attended.
