An analysis of the business of leadership and how we experience it
Inadvertently inciting an invasion
What might we call someone who has somehow developed the capacity to encourage 10,000 people to invade and overwhelm an Italian town? Does the term agitator capture it? Is it reasonable to call them a rabble-rouser? Might they be described as a guru, exercising their influence through a cultish arrangement?
At face value, there certainly feels to be something decidedly Trumpian about the idea that one person can mobilise this sort of response, especially with 6 January 2021 still relatively fresh in our memories.
According to the news stories, the person involved is called Rita De Crescenzo. One report of this event indicates that Rita has more than 1.7 million followers on TikTok. As a result of this, she is offered the supposedly benign epithet of being an influencer.
Apparently, Rita posted online that the village of Roccaraso in the Apennine Mountains had experienced heavy snowfall, which was all that was needed to see a huge number of those who owe some allegiance to this individual descend together upon the town. The locals were unhappy at this sudden invasion, which is hardly surprising when one considers that the arrival of 10,000 people meant that ‘Day trippers clogged the roads, jammed the town’s ski slopes and left piles of rubbish behind on Sunday, causing fury among many of Roccaraso’s 1,500 residents. The visitors were seen in videos shared on social media queuing to board buses after leaving behind discarded barbecues and makeshift sleds.’
One leads, the others follow
There are a huge number of people who now seem to be able to make a living from their presence online and the fact that a large number of people consider whatever they post to be worthy of their relatively close attention.
Suddenly, people are apparently able to monetise broad brushstroke roles such as content creator and influencer, the latter being entirely dependent on finding a way of holding in thrall a noteworthy number of people.
This seemingly ties in with the shift in our working lives, where we have ceased to be employees overseen by managers – and instead now have to labour under the notion that those who head up the organisations in which we work are worthy of the title leader which condemns us to decidedly passive and quiet role of follower. Followership, then, seems to be a state that the vast majority of us find ourselves in structurally…and which we actively choose for ourselves when it comes to so-called personalities online.
All of which means that we are allowing ourselves to be defined in terms of our being in the world not in regard to our own human agency but instead by the relationships that we have with those who we are compelled or choose to follow.
Where the relationship between leading and following is seen to be – and felt to be – dynamic, there is great virtue. If we eschew the idea of binary fixed titles, with one being the leader and others around them being the followers, we can entertain the important notion that there will be occasions where we step into leadership – and other times when we actively surrender ourselves to the positivity of followership.
To choose to follow is very often felt to be an act that can bring us joy. There are occasions, for instance, where someone in a social group will suddenly say, “Why don’t we go here, and do so-and-so?” and those of us around them will react positively to their suggestion…and derive great pleasure from agreeing to this and then from doing it. In this case, we have actively chosen to pursue a particular person’s perspective on the world, rather than found ourselves absorbed by an artificial structuring of the workplace or transfixed by the torrent of content offered by another than feels in some way as though it fills a yawning gap in our respective lives.
Where we make an active and informed choice to follow another, it is an intimate thing, based very much on how we feel about that person and the extent to which we trust them – and specifically trust the proposal or idea that they are advancing.
Unfortunately, as I have said on many occasions, in a corporate setting the dominant discourse of leadership-followership is a conceit that shrouds the interpersonal tensions that exist in a capitalist workplace. Hence, at work, few of us, I think, sense that we have actively chosen to follow the leadership of our companies. Instead, we feel compelled to follow them, because we are obliged to occupy a subaltern position.
We find ourselves acutely aware that the group of people to whom we are forced to relate as their followers have both a public and a private agenda; they very often have espoused values that they do not live by in practice. Ultimately, contemporary corporate leadership suffers in so many instances a major deficit, namely an absence of trust because of the artificiality of the dialogue that occurs between leaders and followers in the workplace.
Leadership untouched by reality
A friend of mine recently described how he was caught up in yet another reorganisation project. Jobs were being jostled and staff targeted for being laid off. As ever, the initial phase of this process was laughingly called by HR a consultation exercise.
Anyone who has been through this sort of activity knows full well that comment is notionally invited from all those implicated: where suggestions can be accommodated without altering the overall corporate intention of the project, these are acknowledged…but, ultimately, any response that challenges the thinking behind the proposed change and the plans that accompany it is disregarded.
As my friend’s boss pointedly remarked in a grim rhyming couplet when he asked her about whether it was worth making a formal comment, ‘You can have your say…Doesn’t mean you’ll get your way.’
This reminds us that – notwithstanding all of the noise about styles of leadership – we remain by and large faced by extremely traditional concepts and actual practice. The grotesque rant of the boss of JP Morgan recently about what he perceived to be taking place in meetings as a result of home working is perhaps the most pronounced and irritating example of the unchanged nature of leadership:
‘[Jamie Dimon] said: “There is no chance that I will leave it up to managers. Zero chance. The abuse that took place is extraordinary. A lot of you were on the f—ing Zoom … and you were doing the following: looking at your mail, sending texts to each other about what an a—hole the other person is, not paying attention, not reading your stuff. And if you don’t think that slows down efficiency, creativity, creates rudeness – it does. When I found out that people were doing that – you don’t do that in my goddamn meetings. If you’re going to meet with me, you’ve got my attention, you’ve got my focus. I don’t bring my goddamn phone, I’m not sending texts to people. It simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for creativity. It slows down decision-making.”’ [Emphasis added]
As ever, in respect to current discussions about return to office mandates, the intemperate quality of this intervention suggests that people wanting to work from home (and thereby, no doubt, enjoy some distance from such frightful behaviour and views) is felt by Dimon as a lack of followership in respect to his archaic leadership.
The fact that this individual – who, in a company context, is allegedly worthy of being followed because of the leadership qualities that he is alleged to possess – lapsed into swearing is telling. I have had occasions where people have fed back that my use of occasional swearwords in the course of an event have been disconcerting, something I took on board and ensured that I managed better in future sessions.
However, there has not been a time where my swearing arose out of anger about something. Dimon’s subordinates will have been impacted by his failure to manage his own irritation in a public context…and, if he can’t manage himself as a company leader, why on earth would anyone feel any trust to follow him in terms of managing the firm? Ultimately, it feels as though he’s cross about home working because of the way in which it impacts on the role that he allocates to himself as the main leader of a large bank. If the workforce are at home, they’re not actively following him in the imperial way that he expects.
Distorted leadership
Thus far, I have looked at how corporate leaders and influencers represent poor instances of leadership in our contemporary setting, insofar as their focus is primarily on people unthinkingly following. It is arguable that people are actively choosing to follow their preferred online influencers…but there is no fluidity to that relationship: you are always a follower of that influencer, the roles can never be reversed.
There is at least one public instance where yet another overly sensitive business leader is in a romantic relationship with an influencer, making them a wearisome abuse-of-power couple. James Watt was one of the founders of the beer company BrewDog – and he and his partner took to social media to deliver this lecture to the rest of us:
‘The co-founder of the BrewDog beer company has said that Britain is one of the “least work-oriented countries in the world” as he suggested that people should end their obsession with “work-life balance”. In a video shared on social media, James Watt said he and his fiancée, Georgia Toffolo, a social media influencer known for her time on Made in Chelsea, believed instead in “work-life integration”. The whole concept of work-life balance was invented by people who hate what they do,” he said. “So if you love what you do you don’t need work-life balance, you need work-life integration.”’
If Watt has found satisfaction in life, that is overwhelmingly positive. But to then cast judgement on those who have not landed on their feet as he has is an abuse of leadership…and a reminder of how we should in some key instances actively rebel against being consigned to followership. As ever with the capitalist legend of the successful entrepreneur, we are forced to celebrate their individual achievement, which effaces the fact that there is no such thing as the “self-made-man”, because at some point they are dependent on others.
In this instance, there is a workforce brewing the beer; bottling and packing it; logistically shifting it; marketing and promoting it, and so on. The entrepreneur has an idea and kick starts it: if they’re lucky, people will voluntarily follow them because their idea and their enthusiasm for it inspires those people. But it is a collective success, not one completely explained by the talent of a single individual.
In terms of the online communities, it is very likely the case that some followers are immersing themselves in relationships with influencers in order that they are then able to emerge as influencers in their own right. This is followership as an apprenticeship…and there are no doubt compliant people in the workplace who are pursuing something similar.
Populist Leadership
The other downside of contemporary leadership is the emergence of populism in a wide range of states across the globe. To an extent, it looks as though people lapse into a placid followership because it seems as though the leader is speaking up on their behalf.
The personality of Donald J Trump seems dramatically unsuited to the political role of a head of state. He appears publicly in the world as a vain and unbridled ego attached to both boundless self-confidence and a limited intellect. However, he acted as a lightning rod for over half the electorate in November 2024 and – despite his shortcomings and because of their collective desire to have their voice heard – people pledged him their support.
Failing to distinguish between these two phenomena – a desire to oppose the silencing effects of the political status quo at that time alongside the painful inappropriacy of Trump as a sensible and articulate mouthpiece for that resistance – leads progressives to denigrate not just Trump but those who used him as a political symbol. And, from a Gramscian perspective, that is not the way in which one can begin to support the development of a positive hegemony.
It is persuasion and not ridicule that will build a coalition of people coming together to improve the world. Mocking those who take a contrary view reminds us that populism is not simply a right-wing political manifestation; the progressive view goes so far as to assert itself as an incontestable truth and thence demands collective allegiance. Populism in both its forms, then, is a structural frame wherein the leader demands followership on the basis of their view of the world.
The silence of the follower
Whether it is contemporary corporate leadership, the prevalence of influencers, or populist politicians, what is apparent these days is that there is a rigid and immutable assertion that the leader occupies an elevated and unchallengeable place in the public world…and the followers should know their place.
There is a fixity in terms of the role in which one lands. If you follow a populist leader, you have embraced an assertive individual because your voice will not be heard in the current circumstances. But, in so doing, you are forced even further into silence by both the leader you have chosen to follow and those who see you now as an unspeakable opponent.
In the workplace, despite the constant requests for people to speak up, the fact remains that it is the leader’s voice that carries down the office corridors, across the shopfloor, and into the warehouse and the retail space…and the follower attends only to what comes down to them from above, although occasionally they are invited to repeat what they have heard in an act of corporate ventriloquism.
And in our private lives we are willingly assuming a subordinate role to people who – by some means of another – have found a way to broadcast their views and ideas, and to get their voices heard. That can simply mean that they share the fact that a tiny village in Italy has experienced heavy snowfall – but it prompts a complicit response from those that follow them.
Overall, then, I am making the case here that we are experiencing a crisis of leadership because our appreciation of it as a practice is built upon the idea that followership flows automatically from someone asserting their position as a leader. To that extent, we are denying the fact that the relationship between leadership and people colluding with it is presently constituted in a formal fashion. Instead, we should be advocating it as something fluid and dynamic, with human beings in social settings negotiating stepping forward into leadership when relevant – and acknowledging the choice that underpins followership…and the pleasure that can derive from positive leadership emerging in a group.
In a thoughtful analysis of followership from 1987, Robert Vecchio argues persuasively that,
‘A degree of responsibility for unit performance rests squarely on subordinates. Superiors, where their influence can make a difference, cannot be effective if subordinates do not subscribe to unit goals, or exert sufficient effort. Subordinates have a responsibility to be conscientious, and to expend energies for unit goals. In an enlightened view, both leaders and followers share in the responsibility of being productive and effective…The traditional view of leadership assumes that leaders are responsible for motivating subordinates and eliciting their commitment – that subordinates are initially lacking in responsibility and a willingness to commit.’
This usefully reminds us that followership is an active role, which can – in many ways – be seen as separate to leadership in that workplace context. This is why I constantly implore people in organisations to stop foisting their vacuous sets of corporate values onto people seeking to join or already in the company. Instead, the interesting conversation is to ask people what personal and professional values do they possess that lead them to work where they do – or where they would like to work – and what values prompt them to do the best possible job they can when they’re there.
Radical OD 